Losing The Trail

We finally find her by the side of the road, standing in a clump of chalk-blue chicory, fingering yellow coneflowers, a few feet from a thirty-foot drop into the river. Beside me, my father slumps in the passenger seat, his fingers stained from baiting worms all morning, his head hanging in defeat.

He and I were fishing a few yards below our rental cabin when he looked up and immediately knew my mother was gone. My father called the county sheriff while I walked among the nearby cabins, forcing myself to cry my mother’s name louder and louder, rousing only a dog and my own feelings of embarrassment.

Now I ease my father’s car up to her, careful not to cause alarm, and we get out. Ahead of us on the road a boy jumps from a trestle bridge into the river to the delight of his friends on the bank.

“Mom, what are you—” I was about to say “doing,” but I catch myself. “What are you looking at?”

Read more

© Lewis Koch