Rooms - James L. Rubart [45]
“Want to walk to the beach?” Micah asked.
“Sure.”
They wound their way down to the little beach, full of boulders the size of Volkswagen Beetles. The tide was out, but even so, there was little room to maneuver around them.
“Ever done a long bike ride?” Sarah asked.
“Define long.”
“More than one hundred miles in a day.”
“No.”
“We should do the STP together.”
Micah raised both eyebrows as he stepped over a cluster of small rocks.
“The Seattle-to-Portland bike race. One day, two hundred miles. ’Course a lot of people split it into two,” Sarah said.
“And we’d do it in one or two?”
Sarah waved her index finger in front of her face.
“Oh, wow. You mean I’ll have to get in shape?”
They padded farther down the beach. “Sorry for avoiding the question earlier,” Micah said. “I don’t have a clue what my plans will be once I’m done down here. I suppose I’ll go back to Seattle and come down here three or four times a year for vacation. Relax. Get perspective. You have any better ideas?” He said it with a light-hearted spin, hoping to bring a bit of playfulness to the conversation. It didn’t work.
“You wouldn’t like my suggestion.”
“I’d love it.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“Try me.” He wiggled the fingers of both hands, inviting her to ask the question.
“You’re sure?”
Micah nodded, even though he wasn’t sure, a queasy feeling growing in his stomach.
“I think you should start a plan right now.”
“To?”
“Get things right with your dad.”
Oh, boy. Here it comes. “How is that supposed to work? I have no relationship with my dad. I don’t want one. He doesn’t want one. Done. Over. End of plan.”
Sarah put on her sunglasses. “You don’t need a relationship with him to take care of what you need to take care of.”
“Oh, really? So tell me, Watson, what this mysterious thing is I need to fix.”
Sarah gazed up at him. “Forgive him, for whatever it is he’s done.”
Micah rolled his eyes. He ought to write a book: Cannon Beach Conspiracy. How an ordinary software businessman was ambushed into dredging up his dead-and-buried past.
The problem? It was still very much alive.
Micah sidestepped a wave the incoming tide sent farther up the beach than its cousins.
“I’m sorry, I said too much.” Sarah pivoted and shuffled down the beach.
Bull’s-eye. Way too much. But he’d asked for it.
She stood twenty yards away, the wind ruffling her hair, obscuring her face, then blowing it free a second later. As he approached her, Sarah turned toward the sun, and tears trickled out from under her sunglasses.
Micah didn’t speak till seven waves had rushed up the sand, then retreated back into the surf. “You okay?”
She didn’t respond.
“Want to talk about it?”
She sniffed and laughed at the same time. He reached into his shorts pocket, found the softness of a light blue tissue, and pulled it out.
She took it from him. “Why am I crying, right?”
The question wasn’t directed at him. But the answer was. She glanced at Micah before turning back toward the white-flecked waves that pounded the sand. “Because I’ve been praying for you and your choices for many years.” She walked back toward their bikes.
As they ambled down the sand together, the rays of the late-afternoon sun danced on her hair, turning it golden. He knew she meant months, so he waited for her to correct herself. But she didn’t.
“Months,” he said softly, “you meant many months.”
Her face flushed. She stopped, looked at him for a moment, then hiked away. “No,” she called without turning around, “I meant years.”
CHAPTER 18
Micah tried to resist, but Saturday afternoon he called Sarah to ask about the “praying for years” comment. He’d asked her about it on Friday as they rode back into Cannon Beach, but she deflected the question. If she was home now, she wasn’t answering, and by midday on Monday, she still hadn’t returned his call. He needed someone to talk to.
An idea flashed into his mind. A way to get answers to the two questions bouncing around his brain. After checking in with Shannon to make sure everything was running silky smooth at RimSoft, he closed his laptop