Jen's Legacy.

She watched him walk away, then stripped off her swimsuit, feeling some measure of relief almost immediately as the air was able to get to where the irritation was most severe, and then put her damp shirt back on to keep the sun from burning her already tender skin. It took a will of iron, not to scratch at that irritation.

She wouldn’t bother with her shorts as the discomfort was worst around her middle and between her legs, resolving not to wear her swimsuit during the day again while they were walking. It would be like deciding to get rid of both bra and panties, and advertising the fact to Royce, but she didn’t care.

She made up his fire as needed, and did as he asked, unpacking his bag, setting the sleeping bag out; putting other things aside; the dried food in sealable pouches; the water bottles and other things, curious to see what he carried in his pack. She checked every so often, noting the water level behind those slabs, seeing it deepening, and to pour more water over herself.

He had most things in sealable pouches, one, containing various items of a first aid kit, and a zipped pouch with small bottles of other medical things. She remembered he’d put some of that on his hands to ease the rawness after their climb. It smelled of Eucalyptus oil.

In the front pocket was a metal can, and bundled with it were numerous letters, all held together by several elastic bands, and below them a sealed plastic pouch with some large denomination bills in it and some loose change. The ornately and finely decorated can, had a name engraved on the top of it; Jen Healey.

She sat back, knowing what it contained; Jen’s ashes. The ashes of the woman he loved. His late wife. He’d brought them with him. He’d added another label just below it. Written on that was another name; ‘Claire Healey’. She felt confused. It was the same first name as her own.

She began to understand. She’d noticed him falter when she’d told him her name at the beach, and began to understand even more now.

Quickly she read a note that lay on top of the other letters, written on different paper and more recent. It seemed that he’d added more to it each time he had chance, and since he’d set out on this walk.

‘Dearest Jen, and my beloved unborn daughter, Claire.’

Claire’s mind screamed out at her as she read those words. Jen had been pregnant! They’d called their unborn child, ‘Claire’.

She began to understand his response to her now when she’d told him her name back at the beach and how her asking about Jen had hit him so hard. Clumsy of her, but she hadn’t known.

He’d lost a baby and his wife in that plane crash that he’d told her about, and he’d survived. His pain must be unbelievable, and the torture of knowing that if he had been in her seat, and she in his, she would have survived, and their daughter too. She could not help but shed tears, reading that.

She read on through misty eyes.

’The last three months have been hell without you, and I have to struggle, each day, to go on, however I can.

I thought the Canyon walk which we did on our honeymoon five years ago, would help me make up my mind about what to do with my life.′

He’d broken off then, and had added more at a later time.

‘I was right. Ever since I set out, I sense your presence close to me; with me. I am retracing our exact footsteps from that time; stopping where we stopped, reliving those many tender moments when we made love, played, and laughed together; seeing what you saw.’

Except now, she, Claire (another Claire) had come into his life and thrown him off that schedule.

’I can persuade myself that you and Claire are both with me every step of the way, at least in my mind, helping me go forward.

I made up my mind some time ago how I would end this, and I need to ask your forgiveness for what I am going to do, but I have no choice. I am more and more with you, rather than in this other world that I no longer feel any kinship with and that does not need me. The pain of losing you and our unborn baby is too much to bear. I have tried to move on, but it is proving beyond me.

I intend to end this empty charade that my life has become, but only when I get to that place where we shared so much; and where all of this will end for me, and far too soon after it began. If there is an afterlife, which I hope there is, then we shall be re-united once more. If not…. It cannot be any worse than where I am.

Ever yours, your loving husband and father.′

Royce.

The bottom fell out of Claire’s world. She knew what he intended now. Her time frame for what she must do, had just closed in even more.

She blanched and swore, fighting for air after reading that note, feeling as though her life, which to her had just begun since meeting up with him, could just as quickly come to a crashing-end if anything happened to him, not sure what she would do without him.

No wonder he placed such little value on his own life to have thrown himself down that climb to get to her and to have leapt into the river as he had.

His life had as-good-as ended before he’d encountered her. He had been ready to give up. But rescuing her had stopped him from that.

She knew what she’d felt, and what he had felt when they’d been able to relax better together--she’d seen it in the way he looked at her-- and it had steadily grown from there, after the first, difficult few hours. She needed him in her life maybe even more than he needed her in his, but that would soon change once she’d woken him up.

His life’s thread had been pulled out of shape, had become unravelled and was approaching the end. She would twist her own life-thread into the unravelling end of his and tie them together as permanently and as solidly as she could. If it meant that her virtue had to be sacrificed to achieve such a revolutionary new direction for both of their lives, then that was the way it would be, and there was no better time to begin that transformation than now. Right now.

She checked. He was still working on that far slope. She should go and get him, even as she was, naked, bring him in, wrap herself around him, and never let him out of her sight again.

She was fully waking her up to her own feelings where he was concerned, though she’d felt those beginning feelings even before that climb.

He was the only man she wanted in her life, and he intended to kill himself at Witches’ Cauldron—a symbolic place for lovers—leaping into that maelstrom and disappearing from the face of the earth forever, as others had, in difficult times.

It had been a sacred place for the Indians too.

She knew exactly why he’d set out on this walk now, and she would not allow that to happen to him, could not. She had a stake in this game; her own life, and she needed to change his mind however she could, and quickly. She had to give him a reason to want to live by showing him her own powerful feelings for him, and hoped that they could be returned; knowing that they were returned, from what she had seen when he had been looking at her.

She had three, maybe four days before they got to the Cauldron, but she had already decided to dispense with everything she had been taught about morality and restraint. They had been meant to protect her for the first years of her life, but there was a time when they had to be pushed aside. This was that time.

He was hurting so much, but this was the first she knew just how much. To lose both his wife and his daughter…?

She could barely imagine the pain he must be feeling. Yet he had come to her help without any consideration for his own safety…maybe also part of that death wish… risked his own life in a way she had barely understood until they had made that climb together. How easy it would have been for him then, just to have let go, on one of those climbs, except she had been with him and had needed him. As long as she needed him, he would stay with her.

He had saved her life without any hesitation, risking his life in unbelievable ways to do so. Now it was her turn to save his, whatever the cost, no matter what it might take.

She would not go into those other letters. They were love letters that he and Jen had exchanged before they’d married, from the few sentences she’d read. They were private, though all of it was, except it now began to involve her.

He cannot have intended for her to unpack as far as she had, so she replaced everything from that front pocket exactly as she’d found it.

There was already eight inches of water behind the slabs of rock he’d stood up across the channel, piling other rocks behind them to resist the force of water as it deepened. Another few minutes and it would make a comfortable place for her to lie in as he’d suggested she do.

She lay her shirt to one side and sat in the water to think about this problem that she had just been presented with, splashing water onto herself, feeling relief again, then moved smaller rocks from under her, so that she could sit more comfortably in the deepest part, bathing her feet, splashing water up onto her over-hot body and up, under her breasts, feeling most of the irritation on her body, subsiding.

“Forgive me, Gran, for what I must do.” She actually spoke that thought aloud, and put those thoughts of her family--so far distant from her at this moment in time and space--aside. What mattered was the here, and the now. And Royce.

She was lightheaded, disconnected, and not sure she was not dreaming; wondering if any of it was as real as it seemed, with this sense of urgency about what she knew she would have to do. She could still see him working on the hillside, but he was near the bottom now, collecting the wood together. She laid back in the water, with only her breasts and her face above the water, and decided upon her next course of action.