Angels Fall

found a spot near the lake to sit and read over the handout brochures she'd gotten from the hotel.
    She'd take time every day she could manage it, she decided, fanning out from the town, into the park, maybe dip just a little into the back-country. She was better outdoors, always better in the open.
    When she had her first full day off. she'd take one of the easier trails and hike up to see the river. But for now she'd better get started doing what her guide suggested and break in the hiking boots.
    She set out at an easy pace. That, at least, was one of the advantages of her life now. There was rarely any hurry. She could do what she chose to do in her own tune, at her own speed. She'd never really given herself this in the time before. In the past eight months, she'd seen and done more than she had in the previous twenty-eight years. Maybe she was a little bit crazy, and she was certainly neurotic, phobic and slightly paranoid, but there were pockets of herself she'd managed to till again, and pieces of herself she d worked back into place.
    She'd never be again what she'd once been—the bustling, ambitious urbanite. But she'd discovered she liked whatever she was forming into. Now, she paid more attention to details that had once blurred by. The play of light and shadows, the lap of water, the sensation of the spongy, thawing ground under her feet.
    She could stop where she was, right now, and watch a heron rise, silent as a cloud, from the lake. She could watch the ripples tan out over the surface, wider, wider, until they reached the tip of the paddles plied by a young boy in a red kayak.
    She remembered her camera too late to capture the heron, but she captured the boy and his red boat, and the blue water, and the dazzling reflection of the mountains that spanned its surface.
    She'd attach little notes to each photo, she thought as she started to walk again. In that way. her grandmother would feel part of the journey. Reece knew she'd left worry behind in Boston, but all she could do was send chatty e-mails, make a phone call now and then to let her grandmother know where and how she was.
    Though she wasn't always perfectly truthful on the how.
    There were houses and cabins scattered around the lake, and someone, she noted, was having a Sunday barbecue. It was a good day for it— grilled chicken, potato salad, skewers of marinated vegetables, gallons of iced tea, cold beer.
    A dog paddled out into the water after a blue hall, while a girl stood on the banks laughing and calling encouragement. When he retrieved it and paddled back to shore, he shook like a mad thing, showering the girl with water that caught the sunlight and tired like diamonds.
    His bark was full of insane joy when she threw the ball again, and he leaped back into the water to repeat the cycle.
    Reece took out her bottle of water, sipping as she veered away from the lakefront and strolled into the evergreens.
    She might see deer, or a moose, even elk—maybe the same one she'd spied that morning—it she was quiet enough. She could do without the bear the brochures and guides said lived in the forests of the area, even if the guidebook claimed most bears would leave it they sensed a human nearby.
    For all she knew the bear would be in a pissy mood that day and decide to take it out on her.
    So she'd be careful, she wouldn't go far. and though she had her compass, she'd stick to the trail.
    Cooler here, she thought. The sun couldn't get to the pools and pockets of snow, and the water of the little stream she came across had to force itself through and over the chunks of ice.
    She followed the stream, listening to the hiss and plop of the ice as it slowly thawed. When she found tracks and scat, she was thrilled. What sort of tracks? What sort of poop? she wondered. Wanting to know, she started to dig her guidebook out of her pack.
    The rustle had her freezing, cautiously looking over. It was a toss-up who was more taken by surprise, Reece or the mule deer, but they stood staring at each other in mutual shock for one breathless moment.
    I must be upwind, she thought. Or was it downwind? As she reached slowly for her camera, she made a mental note to look that up again. She managed a full-on shot, then made the mistake of laughing in delight. The sound had the deer bounding away.
    "I know what that's like," she murmured as she watched it race away from human contact. " The world's just full of scary stuff."
    She tucked the little camera back in