The Color of Love (The Color of Heaven Series) (3 page)

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

With growing concern, I faced 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…

The phone rang suddenly, and I sat up on Kaleigh’s bed. Glancing down at her with weary eyes, I realized that she was asleep. I must have drifted off as well.

The phone rang a second time so I hurried out of her room to answer it.

Please, God. Let it be good news
…

Storms

Chapter Nine

Adapted from the journal of Seth Jameson

The blizzard raged on throughout the day and didn’t let up until after midnight. By then the temperature had plummeted to dangerously below freezing and Aaron and I had no choice but to remain inside the aircraft.

We were lucky in that we found one of the pilot’s winter jackets balled up in an overhead luggage compartment. I handed it to Aaron to claim as his own.

The following morning the storm cleared and the sun shone brightly, but we had some trouble opening the door and lowering the steps because of the monstrous drifts that had blown in and surrounded the plane during the night.

When we finally forced the door open, it became clear there was no way we could travel anywhere in fresh snow of that depth, so I tore four aluminum panels from the galley area, lashed them to our boots and fashioned two pairs of practical snowshoes.

Bundled up for the weather, I grabbed the red tent in my pack and we ventured outside to search for a large enough area to lay out a visible signal or perhaps tie it to a tree top.

The first thing I did was locate my compass and scan the area for landmarks.

“Are you afraid we’ll get lost?” Aaron asked.

“Not if I take a bearing.” My eyes lifted. “Do you know how to read a compass?”

He shook his head. “No. City boy, remember?”

“Come here, then,” I said. “You should learn.” I held the instrument up so he could see it.

All at once I felt a pang of regret as I remembered that this compass had been a gift from Carla. She’d given it to me for my birthday the year after Kaleigh was born and she’d had something inscribed on the back.

I didn’t have to withdraw it from the leather case to remember what it said. The words were imprinted on my brain, because on so many occasions, they’d weighed on me like a piano on my back.

So you’ll always find your way home. Love Carla

I swallowed uneasily as I remembered the promise I’d made on the plane.
Had God actually been listening?
Perhaps not.

Steadying myself in the snow, I focused on the task of teaching Aaron how
not
to get lost.

“The first thing you need to do is establish a field bearing so we can navigate in a straight line. See here… This is the direction-of-travel arrow, and we’re going to backtrack that way.” I pointed. “In the direction the plane came down.”

“Why that direction?” he asked.

“Because we probably cleared out some trees,” I replied. “It makes sense to signal from there.”

“All right. Maybe we’ll find Jason,” Aaron added.

Probably not alive, I thought.

Choosing to keep that to myself, I continued the compass lesson. “Next we rotate the housing until the red end of the needle is centered above the orienteering needle. Now take this reading here, and this is our bearing. We’ll pick out some landmarks along this route and keep track so we’ll be able to find our way back to the plane.”