"See. This is the kind of high I like, Adam," Nicole said with a playful smirk before drawing in a big breath of fresh mountain air.
"Amazing!" Adam bellowed into a moderate breeze while Brody zestfully craned his neck toward the fire tower that loomed above them in the middle of it all. Four flights of wooden stairs led to a white square cabin with huge windows facing every vantage point. A tall, thin radio/cell tower was pinned to its side.
Kearsarge North's summit, once the site of a mountain-top hotel that burned at the turn of the 20th century, now features the last standing fire tower in the White Mountain National Forest.
"I want to see what it looks like from up there!" Brody pointed and yelled as he charged up the stairs with renewed energy. Adam, Nicole and Candace all laughed, especially when he tripped on the third step.
"Doesn't it figure that the boy who likes to pull fire alarms would be the first one up the fire tower," Candace quipped dryly. "I'll go make sure he doesn't fall off."
"We'll be up in a few," Nicole told her friend. "I want to show Adam around."
Nicole led Adam across several smooth rocks and pointed to the north, where Mount Washington presided over the entire mountain range with regal grandeur. "Stay in shape because next summer we're going to climb that ... Washington. It's about twice the elevation of this."
Adam nodded and smiled as he sized up the range's majestic signature peak. He honestly looked forward to the challenge.
"I can't believe how small everything looks from up here," he said, now peering into the lush, green valley below.
"That's why I love it up here," Nicole said, her brown-and-blue hair shining in the sun and dancing with each passing zephyr. "It puts everything in perspective. You quickly realize any problems you're having in your life at that moment are actually very small in the grand scheme of things."
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. This is the big picture," Adam said, spreading his arms wide to embrace the panorama in front of him.
"It's the big picture until you look up at the stars on a clear night and realize that all of this," she said, sweeping her hand in front of the mountains, "is microscopic compared to the universe."
Adam shook his head and smiled. "You're always so deep, Nikki," he said.
"Am I?" she gasped, pretending to be taken aback by his observation.
"Thanks," he quickly added, almost too softly for Nicole to hear it, but she did. And she could tell he meant it.
"Thanks for what?" she asked, sensing an opening to truly communicate with this boy, who suddenly seemed more like a man.
"Where do I start? Where do I end? Thanks for being who you are, for getting shot trying to help me, for visiting me in jail, for being there when my father died, for being here with me today and showing me a place like this ... for getting me to finally read 'Wild,'" he concluded with a sheepish grin.
"Hold on a minute," she interrupted him with a playful gleam in her eyes. "I didn't get you to read that book. You read that on your own."
"You know what I mean, Nikki," he said.
"You'd prefer to go to prison, select the book there and then read Strayed before acting on my literary suggestions straight-away," Nicole said in a mock British accent, before turning more serious. "I'm just glad you're reading, Adam ... and hiking ... and smiling ... and grieving for your Dad ... and living through the ups and downs. You've really come a long way and you should be like totally proud of that. Aren't you?"
Adam raised his eyebrows, grinned and nodded.
"Yeah, I guess so," he said.
"Good," she said, giving him a friendly hug.
"Derek is a lucky guy," Adam said with a sudden lump in his throat.
"I know. And one day, sooner than you think, some girl will say she's lucky to have you ... and she'll be right," Nicole said confidently as a strapping man — with a pair of young, squinty-eyed boys in tow — approached them with a camera in his hand.
"I'll take your picture if you'll take ours," the man offered with a smile as wide as the view in front of them.
"Absolutely," Nicole replied, accepting the man's camera and snapping a photo of him and his sons standing on a smooth rock with Mount Washington looming in the background.
As chickadees whistled their whimsical song, echoing off the rocks and ferrying on the summer wind, the mountains held still and calmed Adam's soul. It all sounded, looked and felt like heaven as Nicole draped her arm across Adam's shoulder and they posed together to capture the moment.
The big man holding up Nicole's iPhone didn't have to tell Adam to smile. He already was. He had gone through hell and survived. And he was free — unlike his former friend, Thomas Harvey.
"Thanks ...," Nicole told the man, letting him fill the blank where his name should go.
"Vin," he said, offering a firm handshake to each of them.
"I'm Nikki and this is Adam," she said.
"Nice jersey," Vin said, nodding toward her Tom Brady shirt.
"Thanks."
"It's great to meet you guys and thanks for taking our picture," Vin said. "What a day to hike, huh?"
"What a day indeed," Nicole said, beaming as the man led his boys toward the fire tower. "Shouldn't we go to the absolute top, too, Adam?"
He savored her question, her friendly face, her lively blue eyes and her wild hair for a moment, and then he gazed up to see his brother and Candace waving at them from the glass windows of the tower's observation deck.
Adam waved back, patted Nikki on her shoulder and said, "Let's go!"
She followed him and up they went.
###
About the author:
Jack Chaucer lives in Litchfield, Conn., with his wife and twin toddlers. He is a 1991 graduate of Marquette University and has worked at four different newspapers in Illinois, Rhode Island and Connecticut over a 22-year career in journalism. He began writing novels in 2009. “Rocco & the Russian Mountains” and “Freeway & the Vin Numbers,” both published in 2010, are available for free at booksie.com: https://www.booksie.com/Jack_Chaucer
Chaucer’s adult sci-fi thriller “Queens are Wild” was published as an e-book in 2012 and a paperback in the spring of 2013. The e-book is available for purchase at most major online retailers and the paperback can be bought at Amazon.
Connect with Jack Chaucer online:
Twitter: @JackChaucer
Website: https://www.queensarewild.wordpress.com
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/10499865-jack-chaucer
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