and I had not discussed his age again, but I felt a new tension in his touch at night, poignant and infectious.
For the first time in years, I began to have difficulty sleeping. In the mornings, I often stationed myself at the kitchen window, where I could watch Adam take the horses through their routines, his body lithe, undaunted by its own history.
When the certainty of the spring thaw hit the Appalachians, Adam began preparations for his first mountain trip in well over a year. We also had a wedding anniversary coming up—a big one, our thirtieth. We normally celebrated with a simple dinner out, but this year he seemed to have something more in mind. His mood had lifted in the last few weeks, his trip preparations were more elaborate than normal and his usual, already-on-the road, distraction was absent. He really piqued my interest when he asked if I had any plans for amusing myself while he was gone. He seemed happy when I told him I had none.
He whistled softly to himself as he trod back and forth from the house to the truck. Then he stopped at the office door. “Come with me?”
“Come with you?”
He beamed. “Yes. I’ll make it worth your while. I want to give you an early anniversary present.”
Within the hour, we were on the road, heading north.
All day Adam refused to say where we were going. I had joined him a few times for his horse auction trips to Lexington and Louisville, and we seemed to be taking that familiar route. But when we reached Kentucky, we headed east instead of west. By evening, my suspicion of a second, impromptu, honeymoon was confirmed. Adam pulled over at a motel, a row of cabins nestled against a hill several miles outside a little town called Jensen. “Look good to you?” He beamed at me.
The motel was rustic and on its way to being run-down. But the air, as I rolled down my window, smelled of mountain evergreen, sweet and fresh. “Perfect,” I said.
The rotund man in the office peered up at us from his low chair when we asked for a single room. His eyes ping-ponged back and forth between our faces, and he snorted at the “Mr. and Mrs.” Adam signed in the registry.
My good mood vanished. A current of anger flashed through me. I snatched the key off the desk and strode back to the car for our luggage.
We dropped our bags in the small, dark room that smelled of mountain damp, of wood and stone. “What are we really doing here?” I asked.
Adam went immediately to the thin, yellowed phone book on the nightstand by the bed. He opened it, flipped a few pages triumphantly, then held it up for me to see. By his finger on the page: four listings for Hope. One R. Hope. “My gift to you, first a middle-aged Roy Hope then a middle-aged Adam Hope.”
That literally knocked me off my feet. I dropped down on the lumpy bed, my mouth gaping. “He’s here! You found him!”
“No, not yet. But I remembered him saying he came from a mining town in west Kentucky. So I went to the library and did some research. Hold your horses.” He dug through the duffel bag of his clothes, then unfolded a small Kentucky map with several towns circled. I counted three more north of us.
Adam swept his finger along the zigzag of red circles. “Jensen sounded familiar, so I brought us here first. If we don’t find him here, we’ll just keep going until we find him or somebody who can tell us where he is.”
Such a simple and elegant solution! All my efforts had centered on explanations and understanding while he had sought a direct, practical resolution. “Happy anniversary!” I laughed.
We went to a little café for dinner. The place seemed ebullient and shiny. We held hands at the little Formica booth and ignored the few odd glances from nearby tables. Adam detailed his plans for remodeling the stables. We speculated on how soon our grandson would be walking and how our family would be expanding with more grandchildren.
We returned to the motel and showered. He sat cross-legged on the bed, waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom; I sat behind him and put my arms around him. “Are you afraid?” I asked.
“No, not of changing. But I’m not sure how this works. I don’t want to let you down.”
I squeezed him tighter in my