The Color of Love (The Color of Heaven Series) Read online

  “You’re right,” I said. “We need to keep warm and make it through the night without freezing. That’s the most important thing. Help me get some stuff out of my pack.”

  Chapter Five

  We barely slept a wink that night.

  Because I had only one sleeping bag and we couldn’t find Aaron’s jacket (it must have blown out of the plane when the wing broke off, along with his cell phone which was in the pocket), we had to share what I had in my pack. This included an insulated parka I’d brought in addition to the jacket I was wearing.

  We didn’t talk much. What exactly do you chat about with a total stranger when you’re shivering in the cold and weighing the fact that you just survived a plane crash, when others didn’t? And two of those lost souls were only a few feet away, so it seemed proper, somehow, to remain silent.

  When the sun finally came up, I nudged Aaron, tossed off the sleeping bag, and rose stiffly. My body felt sluggish and heavy from the cold, but my hands and feet were okay. I told Aaron to keep checking his extremities and not to ignore any numbness, then I crossed to the hole in the side of the plane to examine the situation in the light of day.

  “We need to get out of here and see where we are,” I said, “and make sure the wreckage is visible from the sky.”

  With the daylight, it was easier to establish what we were dealing with, at least in terms of an exit strategy. I made sure my gloves were on tight, then attempted to push some of the prickly branches out of the way. I discovered we were wedged tightly up against a giant black spruce.

  “We won’t be leaving through here,” I said, giving up the task.

  “Let’s try the door,” Aaron suggested.

  Together we managed to open the passenger door which included an integral set of steps. I descended first and hopped into a foot and a half of snow.

  “You stay where you are for now,” I said to Aaron who stood on the steps. “It’s important to stay dry.”

  There was not a single breath of wind in the air as I waded through the snow to gain some distance from the plane and get a better view of the wreckage.

  “Jesus…” I whispered as I took in the devastated nose section and strips of steel ripped like thin ribbons from the length of the fuselage. The tail end was in shreds too. It was a miracle Aaron and I had survived.

  “It doesn’t help that the plane is white,” I said to him. “The trees are tall and covered in snow. The branches are hiding most of the wreckage. Let’s hope we left an obvious trail of damage when we were landing.”

  A snowflake fell on my nose just then. I looked up through a hole in the trees at the cloudy sky.

  Great… Just what we need.

  “They should know where we are, though, shouldn’t they?” Aaron asked. “I mean…the pilots must have radioed that we were in trouble.”

  “Of course,” I replied, wading back to the plane. “But still, we should do something to make it easier for them to spot us. I have a red tent in my backpack. We’ll find the nearest clearing and fly it like a flag. And we should keep busy today in case they don’t find us right away. We’ll need to light a fire to keep warm and then take stock of what we have for supplies.”

  I returned to the steps and glanced briefly at the pilots’ frozen remains, visible through the smashed-in window as I climbed back up.

  Again, I thought about what had been on my mind as the plane was zigzagging through the turbulence and I believed we were plunging to our deaths.

  Carla and Kaleigh.

  Chapter Six

  The snow began to fall lightly around 9:00 a.m., and by noon Aaron and I were huddled inside the plane, grateful to have a roof over our heads while a vicious blizzard raged outside.

  I didn’t bother to find a place to lay out my tent as a distress signal because it would have been buried within an hour. Either that, or it would have been ripped away by the wind.

  And we couldn’t venture out to search for Jason.

  All we could do was sit and wait out the storm, uncomfortably aware that any potential search and rescue attempts would also have to be postponed until the weather cleared.

  o0o

  “I guess it’s lucky for me that you’re a mountaineer,” Aaron said as he rubbed his palms together over the small fire I’d lit on an aluminum tray inside the plane. “I can honestly say, no one else I know would pull an ice ax, ropes and a thermal sleeping bag out of his carry-on.”

  I leaned back in my seat and regarded Aaron curiously. “I have two axes. One for each hand. But you must know something about climbing if they hired you to film us going up the side of the volcano.”

  He chuckled. “No, I’m a city boy through and through. This isn’t even my day job. I’m just here because I own a decent high def camera and a Go Pro.”

  “You’re kidding me.” My eyebrows pulled together in surprise. “So you don’t know anything about climbing?”

  “Not a thing.” He raised his boot to show me. “I just bought these hiking boots two days ago, and I got the Go Pro because I wanted to film tropical fish when I went snorkeling in Mexico last year.”

  “What’s your day job, then?” I asked, intrigued but unimpressed.

  “I’m a therapist, and I teach guitar lessons on the side.”

  “How do you know George Atherton?”

  Aaron continued to hold his hands over the fire. “He’s a client.”

  Maybe it was bad manners, but I laughed. “So are you his therapist or his guitar teacher?”

  “Therapist. But don’t worry, he hired an experienced D.O.P. to be in charge of the shoot, and from what I hear, the guy’s a real pro.” Aaron leaned to the side and gestured toward his camera case at the front of the plane. “I doubt I’ll be shooting anything now. My camera’s probably wrecked.”

  “Cameras can be replaced,” I carefully reminded him.

  Aaron’s gaze met mine. “Yeah. We were lucky last night.”

  While we considered the loss of life and pondered the miracle of our existence on that day, the wind howled like a beast through the treetops overhead. Then suddenly…boom! There was a thunderous explosion and the whole plane shook.

  Aaron jolted and looked up. “What was that?”

  I remained seated in a lazy sprawl, slightly amused as I peered up at him. “Relax city boy. A big clump of snow just slid off a tree and landed on the roof.”

  He let out a breath and relaxed. “Ah.” Then he frowned. “No chance we’ll get buried alive in here…”

  “Don’t worry,” I replied. “I’m keeping a close eye on the situation.”

  “Good to know,” he said uneasily.

  As I watched him lay another stick on the fire, I wondered if I should search for that bottle of single malt scotch, because the poor guy was seriously out of his element. He could probably have used a drink or two right then.

  I could have used a couple myself.

  News

  Chapter Seven

  Carla Matthews

  Boston, Massachusetts

  I was in the kitchen cooking cheesy bowtie pasta for Kaleigh when the telephone rang. She had just arrived home from school and was doing her homework on the sofa.

  “Hello,” I said, resting the receiver on my shoulder as I strained the pasta over the sink.

  The voice on the other end caught me by surprise. I immediately set down the colander and turned to face Kaleigh, who was punching numbers into her calculator and scribbling in her notebook.

  “Hi Gladys,” I said. “It’s nice to hear from you. It’s been a while.”

  Over a year, in fact.

  Not that I was counting the days or anything.

  But seriously. One would think a sixty-year-old woman living alone would take more interest in seeing her only grandchild.

  Like mother like son, I supposed.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  She breathed heavily into the mouthpiece and let out a tiny whimper.

  With growing concern, I face
d the sink again. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied at last, “but something’s happened to Seth. Have you been watching the news?”

  “No,” I replied. “What is it? Was he climbing?”

  Did he fall? Was it altitude sickness again?

  I’d been preparing myself for this phone call since the first time he left me, eleven years ago.

  Heart racing, I waited for Gladys to go on.

  “He was on his way to Iceland to be in a movie about that billionaire, George Atherton, but they lost track of the plane. They think they crashed somewhere up north, probably over the Atlantic. I can’t believe it.”

  She began to sob into the phone while I strove to comprehend what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe it either. A plane crash? Surely there had to be some mistake.

  “How many people were on board?” I asked.

  “It was just a small private jet so there were only three passengers, plus two pilots. I didn’t even know he was going to Iceland. He didn’t mention it to me. Did he tell you?”

  I cupped my forehead in my hand while a wave of nausea crashed over me. “No. The last time we spoke was Christmas Day and he didn’t say anything about it. He called from out west, somewhere in the Rockies. Other than that, it’s been over a year since we’ve seen him.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m always telling him to go home and be with the two of you, but he never listens. That boy… He was always such a free spirit.”

  Free spirit…?

  How about commitment-phobe?

  I exhaled and tried not to think negative thoughts, not at a time like this. “Are they sure the plane actually went down? Is there any chance they just lost contact with it?”

  I didn’t want to give up hope. Not yet.

  “They interviewed Atherton on the news a few minutes ago,” Gladys told me. “He’s very concerned because the pilots sounded distressed when they last heard from them. They were heading into a storm and wanted to change course, but then they lost contact completely. It was like the plane just disappeared into thin air.”

  My stomach turned over again. “Oh, God, I can’t believe this. Have they started searching yet?”

  “Yes, but they don’t even know if they’re looking in the right place, and now they’re saying there are blizzards in the area so they might have to hold off. But if the plane did change course, it could have crashed anywhere. From what I understand, they’re searching the waters north of Newfoundland, looking for some sign of the wreckage.”

  Wreckage. The word turned me into a big puddle of grief. I couldn’t bear to think about Seth being on that plane when it was careening from the sky, and how terrifying that must have been.

  “This is a nightmare,” I said shakily. “What am I going to tell Kaleigh?”

  “I don’t know,” Gladys replied. “But let’s not lose hope. I can’t accept that he’s gone. Not my boy. I have to believe he’s still alive out there somewhere.”

  I nodded and wiped a tear from my eye. “I’ll keep my hopes up too, Gladys,” I replied, “and I’ll say lots of prayers. Keep me posted if you hear anything. And I’ll do the same.”

  We hung up and I took a moment to gather my composure before I went into the living room to tell my daughter that her father’s plane had gone missing.

  Chapter Eight

  That night I climbed into bed beside Kaleigh to read to her, but it wasn’t easy to focus on the adventures of a vampire bunny while I was waiting fretfully for news about Seth’s plane. Nevertheless I carried on and tried not to behave in a way that might upset her before bed.

  When we came to the end of the chapter, I closed the book and kissed the top of her head. “Time to go to sleep now. We’ll read more tomorrow.”

  I was about to slip out of her room and return to the computer to check for news about Seth when she called out to me.

  “Mom?”

  I paused in the doorway and turned around. “Yes?”

  Her forehead was crinkled in that familiar way that caused my heart to throb. Kaleigh had always struggled with sleep issues. I suspected it was going to be a long night.

  “I feel bad,” she said.

  Slowly I returned to her side and sat on the edge of the bed. “Because of what’s happening with your dad?”

  “Sort of.”

  I stroked her dark hair away from her face. “I feel scared too, honey, but I’m trying not to lose hope. Maybe the plane landed somewhere different, that’s all.”

  She continued to peer up at me with those anxious eyes. “That’s not what I feel bad about,” she explained. “I feel bad because…”

  “Why?” I gently asked. “You can tell me.”

  She hesitated, then finally admitted the truth. “Because I’m not very upset.”

  Her words hit me like a punch in the gut, but I worked hard to hide it. “What do you mean?”

  Kaleigh shrugged. “I know he’s my dad and everything, but I’m not worried like you are. I don’t feel like crying, and that makes me think I’m a bad person.”

  At last I understood, and I couldn’t blame her for how she was feeling. She was only eleven years old and Seth hadn’t been around much. She barely knew him.

  “You’re not a bad person,” I insisted. “And you’re right, you don’t know him very well, and that’s not your fault. He travels a lot and you’ve never had the chance. But I do know that he loves you in his own way.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked. “Did he tell you?”

  This was torture. I didn’t know how to answer her question, so I did what any good mother would do. I lied.

  “Of course he told me. He tells me all the time, and don’t ever think otherwise. The reason he couldn’t live with us is because…” I paused. “He was always…” I wasn’t sure how to phrase it. Then finally I found the right words.

  “Your dad is a free spirit,” I told her. “He has a passion for climbing big mountains and that has nothing to do with us. That’s just the way he’s built. He can’t stay put in one place for very long.”

  “Then why did you marry him?” she asked, point-blank, and I felt my head draw back slightly.

  These were not easy questions. I’m not even sure I knew the answer to this particular one myself.

  “Because I was in love,” I finally said, “and I wanted you to have a father.”

  She stared at me with a look of bewilderment. “But I don’t have a father,” she said. “Not like my friends do. They have dads who come to their dance recitals and help them with their homework.”

  Swallowing uneasily, I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m sorry about that, Kaleigh. Please believe me when I say that I always wanted that for you. I thought that if your dad and I got married, he might stick around and do all of those things, but it just didn’t happen that way.”

  My relationship with Seth had always been complicated, and to this day I wonder why I clung so tightly to the hope that he might eventually change and become the man I wanted him to be.

  We’d been dating only briefly when I got pregnant with Kaleigh. Not long after I told him about it—I was only two months along at the time—he received a phone call from a buddy in Australia and high-tailed it out of town before I reached my third trimester.

  Off he went to climb Everest again, explaining that it was the opportunity of a lifetime, that he would be leading a prestigious team of climbers to the summit for a whopping paycheck that would solve all our money problems and give Kaleigh the life she deserved. He’d said he wanted to marry me. We would tie the knot when he came home.

  Of course I let him go. I never wanted to be a ball and chain to any man.

  He sent money when he could, but otherwise I didn’t hear from him for weeks on end, then weeks stretched into months, and I had no choice but to figure out how to survive on my own. He didn’t even make it home for Kaleigh’s birth.

  Whenever I asked Seth when he
’d be coming home, there were always excuses—like he had another climb coming up and he had to train, or he was traveling Down Under to scope out new trails across the Outback for novice adventurers. There were always paychecks of course, and he promised to send money home. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t.

  It wasn’t long after Kaleigh was weaned from the bottle that I accepted I’d be raising her alone, and for a few years, I did exactly that.

  Then we received a phone call.

  He was coming home at last—after a disastrous climb up K2 in Pakistan where he’d suffered severe altitude sickness. His climbing partners had to drag him, barely conscious, down the mountain on a makeshift stretcher with ropes. They never did reach the summit.

  He said that was the climb that made him question his decision to live such a roving lifestyle, one without commitment to anything outside of the next peak. He wept on the phone and begged me for a second chance. He promised he was a changed man and knew what was important now. He told me he wanted to get married, and the sooner the better.

  On the day we greeted him at the airport, I was hesitant. Cautiously hopeful, at best. But when he scooped Kaleigh up in his arms, held her against him, and kissed the top of her head, I knew something was different. He gazed at me with tears in his eyes. He looked so gaunt.

  What can I say? I melted. And I forgave everything.

  I truly believed he was home for good that time.

  o0o

  I don’t know what it was about Seth Jameson, but sometimes he had a way of breaking down my defenses and making me forget all the false promises, and all the times he’d walked out on me.

  On top of that, I’d been struggling as a single mom—both financially and emotionally—and let’s face it, I was lonely. I wanted a family, and I believed, after that close brush with death, that Seth had finally changed his priorities and valued the same things I did.

  I was wrong. Six months after we signed the marriage certificate at city hall, he was gone again. Just like that. Back to the Himalayas…