said.
Ruby gave me a look—that look—and started off ahead of me.
Something made her stop. She turned to face me. “What’s out here? What the hell are we going to find?” She knew I couldn’t answer the question, but she did look a little less bothered.
Initially, bushwhacking through the forest was easy enough, but the underbrush quickly grew thicker, and the mass of vegetation underfoot tripped one of us up every few steps. I used a stick to clear away some branches, but our trek was like a boxing match; we’d duck one tree, only to get thwacked in the face, neck, and arms by another. Every hundred yards or so, I checked my GPS for course corrections.
The route took us through one steep trough that required us to inch our way down. I could hear Ruby’s labored breathing behind me. The hike would have been moderately challenging without her cancer. At some point she stopped and, resting against a tree, took a long drink of water from the camel pack. The scrub provided excellent shelter for chipmunks and other woodland critters seeking a hideout. I wondered what else the land could be hiding. Had Uretsky put something here that he wanted us to find? If so, what could it be? How would it give us an advantage?
Ruby slumped to the forest floor, breathing hard. “I need to rest a bit,” she said.
I looked up. We still had plenty of sunlight.
After a few minutes we continued, walking west, swatting flies and branches in equal measure until we came to a sudden stop at a steep cliff face. My breath caught when I looked down at the jagged rocks jutting out from the clay-colored surface. As my eyes focused on the depth, the ground below began to swirl, the brown of dead leaves revolving until all color slipped into black. I felt the horizon pitch and roll, as if it had come unfurled from the earth.
I staggered backward and felt Ruby’s hands grip my shoulder to steady me. Seeing the height of the cliff, without any warning, with no time to prepare, hit me hard—instantaneously, I became light-headed, dizzy, and nauseated. I took ten steps in retreat before I found my bearings once again.
“We’ll take . . . the long . . . way down,” I said to Ruby between breaths.
The unsettling sensations lingered but eventually quieted down.
Ruby looked very troubled. “Is it getting worse, John?”
“You mean my acrophobia?”
A branch I had cleared catapulted backward and nearly knocked Ruby off of her feet. “Hey!” she said, surprised. “I’m your wife, remember!”
“You’re my everything,” I said, apologizing with a kiss on her cheek. “And to answer your question, yes, I think it’s getting worse, but hasn’t Uretsky made every facet of our lives worse?”
We marched on, with Ruby keeping close behind me. On my GPS display, the little triangle that represented “us” continued to close in on the x that represented our destination. A hundred yards to go . . .
What would we find?
Fifty yards . . .
I looked back and saw Ruby valiantly battle through a thicket of branches. Was her heart beating as fast as mine? Was her pulse racing, too? She knew we were getting closer.
Twenty yards . . .
I pushed my way between two pine trees—the forest version of a car wash. That’s when I had this thought about paths, the ones we take and the ones we don’t. I’d tried my best to live free from regret, but at that moment, I regretted becoming Elliot Uretsky so profoundly that I knew I’d never forgive myself. No matter what the outcome, I had an incurable disease called regret. Life, I thought, was full of paths, like the one Ruby and I were forging through this forest. There are paths made for us, and paths that we make. Sometimes we stumble upon a route we think about taking but, for some reason, don’t. Or worse, we walk one way and look back wistfully at the way we had left behind.
Ten yards . . .
I looked back at Ruby—pale, her pert nose blackened by dirt. A herd of flies roamed about her head like a haphazard halo. I wondered what path I took that led me to her. What made her apply to the same school as me? Why did we take the same class? Was it a series of choices, or was it all somehow predestined?
Ruby came toward me, her body trembling with exhaustion. Behind me was one final coppice