The blowing vent of hot air and thermos of bitter black coffee were restorative. Liam was grateful to be spared a lecture about ignoring road closure signs. A tow truck followed the ranger with the rental car, and the train of vehicles were soon cutting the shortest path back below the snow line.
The rescued passenger was caught up on developments. “They took your brother to the hospital.”
“Where was he found?”
“In your car’s backseat.”
Liam thought he checked that area when he crawled into the vehicle. “Is he all right?”
“He should make a full recovery. You will see for yourself.”
The last of snow and mischance blew away from the windshield, yet a sense of propinquity made Liam look back more than once. The forest shrank away behind them, and was absorbed, to a branch, into an unperturbed nightfall.
The relation was dropped off at the hospital’s doorstep forty minutes later; he stepped into the lobby to inquire after his brother. Brief confusion ensued, and a nurse returned from a murky corridor moments later to inform the visitor that the patient was already discharged.
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Home,” was all she supplied.
The rental car had been left at the curb; its last clump of snow was lost somewhere between Lassen and Red Bluffs. Liam drove back to the boarding house, but his brother had not returned here. With no idea where he should be, the Christmas gifts were left outside his apartment door.
The traveler pressed his way through The Coastal Redwoods, yet was remiss that the two brothers had missed occasion of a better parting.
Majestic sequoias were more pictured than seen against the night sky, and he was not sure if it was The Pacific Ocean or the edge of the Earth that cradled the road in places.
Reaching the airport, the rental car was dropped off and Liam paced until he found a dark-ish corner in the terminal. There he would catnap in anticipation of daylight and Starbucks firing up its espresso machine. Perhaps he would rejoin the residue of the dream started on the mountain.
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