Rooms - James L. Rubart [31]
“Good seeing you again, Watson.”
It seemed funny before it came out of his mouth. But it fell flat when she simply said, “Thanks.”
“You ride up here often?”
“Mostly during the off-season. Too many summer seekers driving this road during this time of the year, and it’s a narrow road.”
“I noticed.”
“So, are you staying right in town?”
“No, a little bit south,” Micah said.
“I’m Sarah Sabin.”
“Micah Taylor.”
Sarah nodded.
They looked at each other a moment past awkward. Micah got off his bike, leaned it against the picnic table, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other.
“Want to walk down to where the trail washed out?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“Sure.”
From the look of Sarah’s long, muscular legs and her gait, he guessed her athleticism wasn’t limited to biking.
When they stopped, Haystack Rock, three miles south, filled their view. Below them a beach stretched a quarter mile before it stopped at a small cape jutting out into the ocean. Four otters ducked in and out of the swells one hundred feet down.
“Crescent Beach,” Sarah offered. “You used to be able to walk down there from here. Not anymore. A winter mud slide washed out the trail back in ’94, and they never rebuilt it.”
Bits of the old wooden railing leading down to the beach were still visible. They walked in silence until they found a flat spot of grass to sit on with a perfect view of Haystack Rock and Cannon Beach in the distance.
Sarah rubbed her left knee, and when she took her hand away, it revealed three small scars, two on either side of her kneecap and one in the middle.
Micah nodded at her knee. “That’s from?”
“ACL surgery.”
“How’d the injury happen?”
She took so long to answer Micah wondered if she’d heard him. When she did, it was in a whisper. “Olympic trials in ’02.”
“Winter Olympics. Skiing?”
“Yeah.”
“Wait a minute. You’re that Sarah Sabin? Cover of Sports Illustrated, supposed to win more gold than any other American female in history?”
She turned to him with a small smile and nodded. “After two surgeries and three years of trying to come back, I decided it was time to start another life, so five years ago I came here.” She ripped up tufts of grass, threw them up, and let them float toward the ocean in the light breeze. “Got away from the sport, the pressure, and the guilt people loaded me down with for ruining their dream.”
“Shouldn’t it have been your dream?”
She laughed. “It was, but others wanted to jump on board and do that whole live-vicariously-through-me thing.”
“Your dad, right?”
“With him, just the opposite. He was one of the few who truly didn’t care how I did on the slopes. He taught me to ski, was my coach for most of my career. He believed in me, was my champion but never once pushed me to be something I didn’t want to be. Dad loved me fiercely.” Sarah turned her head away. “I miss him so much.”
Loved fiercely by your dad? He had no clue what that would feel like. Miss him? His dad had slaughtered any chance of having that emotion when Micah was a kid. Still, he blinked three times before he spoke.
“How’d he die?”
“Cancer. Four years ago.”
“I’m sorry about your dad. Sorry about the injury, too.”
“Don’t be. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder what might have been, but I don’t have the slightest regret.”
“How can you not have regrets?”
“God works all for good.” She looked out over the ocean. “If not for the accident and my dad’s death, I think I’d be in a radically different world. Not a good one. One without God in it.”
Micah shifted his gaze to three sea lions basking on the rocks below them.
He knew the radically different world she would have lived in. It was the one he lived in now. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea getting to know this girl. He didn’t need someone else needling him about the God-stuff.
“So that’s my dad; tell me about yours.”
“No.”
Sarah laughed. “No? Just no? You have a dad, don’t you?” She leaned back on her elbows and looked up at him.
“Yep. Still alive.”
“And . . . ?”
“Kind of an off-limits subject.”
“Got it.”
Great. First the God-stuff, now questions