Chapter Seventeen

Tess

Enrico, Iniquus, and Tess had joined Iris and Craig at the family table when Gwen swished down the walkway, looking uncharacteristically girly. She’d not just washed but curled her long black hair. Makeup accentuated her eyes. And she was wearing contact lenses instead of her normal geek-girl glasses.

Dressed in the sundress that she schlepped around in her backpack in case she was invited on a date, Gwen had even polished her toenails and pulled on a pair of strappy sandals.

Tess reached back into her memory, trying to remember Gwen ever doing any of these things—let alone all these things—before.

Tess stood to give her friend a hug. “What an adventure, huh?”

“I’m so glad it turned out the way it did.” Gwen held their hug, swaying back and forth just like her mother had. And there was the same sweep of a comforting hand down her hair. “I was so grateful when I talked to Levi this morning. You slept? You're good?”

“I am.”

And when they pulled apart, Tess lifted a single brow to tease Gwen for this departure from her norm. Tess knew Gwen would interpret that correctly.

Gwen gave her a hip bump before lifting a bottle of wine in the air. “Here you go, Mom. Tess and I brought you something.” She held the bottle out to her mother.

“Gosh, thanks, sweetheart,” Iris accepted it and turned it to inspect the label. “You know, as the owner of a winery, I was just sitting here, looking out into the distance, thinking I’d like a nice bottle of wine on hand to sip of an evening. If only I had one on hand.”

“Stop, Mom.” Gwen turned to Tess. “That’s Mom’s sarcastic sense of humor. She calls it wry.” Gwen looked at her Mom. “It’s sarcastic . Since you like to taste other regional wines, Tess and I picked this up for you.”

“It’s very nice of you.” Iris kissed Gwen’s cheek. “Thank you. We’ll enjoy tasting it.” She held the bottle out to Craig. “Do you know this vineyard?”

Craig pulled his readers off the neckline of his T-shirt and slipped them on. “I don’t think so, no.” He looked over the top of the rims toward Gwen. “Did you pick it up in Windhoek?”

Gwen batted a hand through the air. “It’s a whole story.”

“The one you promised me about sleeping in a vehicle?” Iris asked. “Let’s have it.”

Craig turned toward the Iniquus men seated at the breakfast table. “I don’t know if you gentlemen have spent time in Africa, but I’ve found Namibia to be the land of storytelling and conversation. I hope you enjoy that about the culture.”

With that, Gwen took the seat across from Levi with her focus turned to her dad as he asked, “How did you girls come across this wine?”

“Tess, why don’t you tell it? I think I’d lace the story with profanity, and Mom doesn’t like that.”

“It’s sunrise,” Iris said. “Perhaps you can save the saltier language for this evening.”

“I think we can share the storytelling.” Tess smiled. “But I can start us off.” She took a sip of water and then put her hands on her lap. “Gwen and I were heading back to Windhoek at the end of a tour to Big Daddy when we happened upon a side adventure. First, you should know that we were in a vehicle with eight other tourists and the driver.”

“Otto.” Gwen sneered.

“Behind our vehicle, Otto pulled a trailer with camping gear and our personal items.”

Gwen made a “can you believe?” face. “But no freaking water.”

Tess stopped and smiled.

“Sorry, more coffee, less cranky.” Gwen reached for the carafe. “Keep going.”

Tess turned to the head of the table. “As you were saying, Craig, Namibia is a land of storytelling. Unfortunately, some of those stories are tall tales. For hours on end, our guide, Otto, waxed poetic about his months-long forays into the jungles in Botswana, Angola, and South Africa. He had tales of his mighty feats as he overcame situations that required cunning and might. Unfortunately, the times when we depended on him, he proved to be,” Tess sighed, “perhaps telling someone else’s stories of expedition glory.”

“Fertile imagination,” Gwen said as she lifted her coffee mug to her lips.

“A bloated ego is hazardous anywhere, but especially in places like Namibia where so much can go so wrong so quickly without access to resources,” Enrico said.

“Exactly.” Tess nodded. “And when you couple an ego with a four-wheel drive vehicle that somehow functioned as only a two-wheeled rear-drive vehicle, you run into trouble in certain terrains.”

“We got sand-bogged at Big Daddy.” Gwen set her mug down.

“That’s dangerous,” Iris said with a scowl. “He took you out into the dunes in a two-wheeled heavy vehicle? Mercy.”

Tess reached for her own mug of coffee. “To be fair, he seemed pretty surprised to discover the situation. Just like we were pretty surprised that he forgot to bring water.”

“What?” Iris scowled.

“Not just forgot but made the decision to unload the drinking water at our campsite. Luckily—” Gwen leaned to the side to give the server space to set her plate down. “Thank you.” She straightened herself and lifted her fork. “Luckily, we came out of the Big Daddy debacle no worse for wear.”

“Not entirely true,” Tess said. “We began the trek with four spare tires, and Otto went through all of them. As each tire punctured along the way, we’d keep stopping and changing them over.”

“That’s part of driving in Namibia.” Enrico accepted his breakfast plate from the server. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“I understood the problem with the tires. That’s not the outfit’s fault,” Gwen said. “Where they were at fault was that there was something seriously wrong with the vehicle.”

“Two-wheel drive with a trailer is difficult,” Enrico told the Iniquus men sitting across from him. “The roads are sometimes flat, but there are a lot of elevation changes.”

“Yes, that too, but there was a bigger issue,” Gwen said, cutting into her sausage, “On the way to Big Daddy, the car suddenly stopped. Just completely stopped. There was nothing. No click, no turnover, it absolutely flatlined.”

Tess said, “Otto looked at things, trying to figure it out. And finally, he announced it had something to do with the fuel.”

“He had an extra fuel tank in the trailer?” Enrico asked.

“Exactly,” Tess said. “He started the pump to move the gas from one tank to the other. It took a while, but at this point, we were all in good spirits, on our way to desert camping and dune climbing. The vehicle started after he did that.”

“Was the fuel the thing that made it start again?” Levi asked. “Or did resting for a few minutes do the trick?”

“That's astute.” Gwen sent Levi a warm smile. Her gaze held his just a second too long.

Tess whipped her head around to see how Levi responded.

He was reaching for the salt and pepper.

Averting her eyes, Tess looked down at her plate of eggs, toast, salad, and slices of meat.

Craig followed her gaze. “It’s wild meats from our range lands. We culled the ones causing issues. So if the meats a bit tough, well, so were their personalities.”

“Dad!” Gwen wrinkled her nose. “That’s so not funny.”

“We’re having zebra and wildebeest,” Iris said with her knife in her hand. “The one on the right is wildebeest. Try that one first.”

Gwen laughed at how long Tess was chewing that bite. “What do you think, Tess?”

She held a hand over her mouth to answer. “It tastes exactly how one would think wildebeest would taste.”

“Gamey? Tough?” Gwen asked.

“Yes, that.”

“The zebra?” Iris pointed to the left side of her plate.

Tess cut a piece to try. “Hmm. I think I did myself a disservice by assuming zebra would taste like horse. It doesn’t.”

“Where did you eat horse?” Reaper asked.

“Iceland. They raise horses as a meat source like we raise cattle for the same. These aren’t pet horses that they name. It’s all very similar to cows in the United States. But I found the meat more tender. Zebra is still a bit tough and maybe a bit—I know this is the traditional Namibian way of serving meat—a bit of sauce or spice might help.”

“To mask the taste?” Gwen asked.

“It’s not my favorite to be honest.” Tess wiped her mouth. “Back to the wine. With the vehicle back story in place, this is the tale of how Gwen and I came to be in possession of your gift.”

Craig rubbed his hands together. “Yup, I’d like to hear.”

“I was sitting up front next to our guy, Otto. And Gwen was in the middle of the bench behind us, forming a conversation triangle,” Tess explained. “Otto told us that he'd decided not to take the normal route home. The route would take us up into the mountains. He told us how beautiful it was up there and that there were these amazing vistas and these wonderful photographic opportunities.” Tess smiled. “He went on and on about what a fantastic opportunity it was.”

“He got you jazzed for a thing that wasn’t going to happen?” Enrico asked.

“Rude. Right?” Gwen asked. “He told us that up on the mountain, they often see some of the wildlife that we hadn't come across along the road thus far or that we would even see in Etosha.”

Tess nodded. “Wild cats at dusk.”

Iris scowled. “But he wasn't going to go? Did you pay for him to take you up there? That was part of the package price?”

“Yes, it was. But since he wasn’t feeding us either, we didn’t think he was following all the bullet points in the brochure,” Tess said. “I asked. He was worried about not having a four-wheel drive with the weight of the trailer. That and we didn’t have any more spare tires.”

Iris nodded. “It was a sound decision not to risk it.”

“I have to say, for all my time working in areas that are off-grid,” Tess reached up to press her thick curls out of her eyes. “I find comfort in having a satellite phone. And while I am forever grateful for the effort and care that you all provided me yesterday. Another piece to this story is that no one had a means of communication. No radio, no sat phone, no cell connectivity, and a cantankerous vehicle.” Tess grimaced. “After that conversation about rerouting, I started to pay attention to how far we were from anything. And how few and far between were the fellow travelers along our path.”

“Just ostriches.” Gwen ran two fingers across the table. “It put me in mind of Disney’s Fantasia. But Tess is right. We were out in the middle of nowhere. We had been traveling—I don't know, Tess, what would you say forty-five minutes without seeing as much as a house on the side of the road?”

“That’s about right. Up until that point of our story, houses dotted along the way. A tiny desert house would be off in the distance like a plastic piece on a Monopoly board. But as Gwen said, we had been traveling quite a while with pink sand, the ostriches running along, and nothing else.” Tess looked at Gwen. “Does this remind you of my lone cow in Texas story?”

“No water then, no water this time either.”

Tess sent a glance around the table. “Sorry. That’s a story for a different time. So there we were in this bleak, sandy place.”

Gwen sent the flat of her hand to show the movement of their vehicle. “We were coming up over the hill, and as soon as we evened out the vehicle, ‘it stopped.’”

Craig scowled. “What does it mean you stopped?”

Gwen turned to her dad. “I mean that the engine cut off. We rolled to a stop. Otto tried to turn the engine over. It didn't even click. Nothing was happening. It was just dead. Dead. There was nothing to work with there.”

“He did go back and try that fuel thing that worked beforehand,” Tess said. “He moved the fuel, and we waited for a while, and we got nothing. Now,” Tess sent a bright smile around the table. “Here’s the miracle of this whole episode, just before the vehicle stopped completely. Otto pointed at a small cluster of houses a few kilometers back toward the hills. And he said, ‘That’s the last there is for the next hundred kilometers.’”

“To anything?” Iris put her hand over her heart. “You girls are going to be the death of me.”

“We’re here, Mom. We’re fine.”

Iris leaned toward her daughter. Her voice turned stern. “Out in the middle of nowhere with no communications, and you said you had no water?”

“Tess and I learned our lesson at Big Daddy. We had water and food with us. Not enough for everyone, and you know how that becomes a dilemma. What happens when you come prepared for you while the others didn’t.”

“Reaper brought up that same dilemma yesterday,” Craig said.

“For me, I wouldn’t have shared.” She held a finger up, stopping anyone from jumping in. “Before we left, Tess and I both told the group about our concerns. We showed them how much water we were bringing and why. We showed them which snacks we picked—salt over sugar—and why. But did they listen? No. They bought chocolate doughnuts and lunchbox-sized water bottles.”

“It’s a choice.” Craig nodded. “And in this case, Gwen, I think I agree with you. They were on their own to FAFO.”

“FAFO, Dad?” Gwen tucked her chin. “Where in the world did you hear that term?”

“Fool around and find out? Isn’t that a thing you kids say now?”

Gwen grinned. “Yup. That’s exactly right, fool around.”

“So the miracle was the proximity of the houses and the distance in either direction to something else?” Goose asked.

“Yes, that and Otto happened to roll to a stop in front of a long drive to a winery,” Tess said. “The sign said seven kilometers.”

“But it was the heat of the day, Gwen, right?” Iris scolded. “Seven kilometers without knowing if the winery was open or still existed?”

“I didn’t go anywhere, Mom.”

“Otto decided that he'd hike to the vineyard. Half the group joined him.”

“With a little water bottle?” Enrico asked with a shake of his head.

“They didn’t know what they didn’t know. Until you’ve faced dehydration, it’s hard to fathom. Water seems ubiquitous.” When she said that, Tess could feel Levi’s gaze hard on her. She could feel that protective force that he’d radiate out like a magic shield.

But this time, something was different, like he was trying to tamp down a reaction that was borne of habit.

And it hurt to remember. It hurt to know that wasn’t for her anymore.

Tess focused on her fingers, laced tightly in her lap. It was unfortunate that they should cross paths. There was little she could do about it. She needed to get through a few days; then he’d be gone. And she could throw herself into her work.

Licking her lips, Tess screwed her courage in place.

When Tess lifted her gaze again, Gwen was fluffing a hand through her hair, sliding the strands behind her ear to expose her neck as she looked at Levi. “We stayed back and sat in the shade of the trailer. We figured there were more efficient ways to get some help.”

“And the other half of the group?” Levi asked.

“Sunbathed,” Tess said. “Gwen and I were comfortable enough in the shade with a gentle breeze except for a Kamikaze fly that continuously dive-bombed us with the most aggressive buzz I’ve ever heard.”

“Tess and I had been successful when we got sand bogged at Big Daddy, flagging down cars. And that was our go-to plan.”

Levi pushed his fruit bowl toward Tess with one last plump, gloriously red strawberry.

Gwen’s eye dropped to the bowl, then up to Levi.

Tess held her breath. It was another act of muscle memory on his part.

Levi blinked at the bowl, then pulled it back, leaving it untouched beside his water glass.

He was right to retract the strawberry.

That had been a call back to the way they used to be together.

Levi always saved the best bite for last, and he always offered that bite to Tess. Be it a piece of fruit or something sweet—even if they had ordered the exact same dessert—the last piece, the one that was a symbolic show of sacrifice, Levi offered it to her.

This might be too hard to do, Tess thought. Maybe she should take the car and head back to Windhoek until Iniquus left.

Being this close to Levi left her bereft for the death of their future together.

Her heart was broken. Shattered. The sensations overwhelmed her.

But she’d been through this so many times over the years that she knew if she sat very still and held her breath, it would pass. Mojo crawled under the table until he was over to her, digging his nose under her clasped hands and shoving his head forward until it rested on her lap. “Hey there, Mojo. Thank you for coming to say hi.” She bent to kiss his brow.

Tess was grateful that with that move she could both hide the trauma that surely painted her face and break the strawberry-connection spell.

“The vineyard was open?” Iris asked.

Craig leaned forward. “Well, it would have to be, Iris. They brought us a bottle of wine from there.”

“We could have broken in and stolen it, Dad.”

For her part, Tess felt lucky to have Mojo, and she was lucky that this was not her story alone.

Gwen was taking up the slack.

“A car came up, and Tess stood in the middle of the road. They had to stop. She asked them if they’d mind driving up to the vineyard and telling them our predicament. We also asked that if they saw a group of people walking up the road in sandals—”

“Sandals? It was a fourteen-kilometer round trip.” Enrico’s brows pinched together.

“Yeah. We thought the same thing,” Gwen said. “So we asked that if the driver saw the group would he let them know that the distress message was being delivered.”

“When the couple drove off, Gwen and I felt sure the vineyard would do something. I’ve found the Namibian people to be generous.”

“Did your group turn around?” Enrico asked.

“They did,” Tess said, stroking Mojo’s ears. “The fortunate thing is that even though Otto has an ego that could have led to poor choices, in the end, he didn’t take us up that mountain. It wasn’t a road that people regularly traveled. No food, little water, no communication, wild cats, and a walk back to the highway that might have taken days, depending on where we rolled to a stop.”

Gwen raised her juice glass. “So kudos to Otto for not being a dumb ass.”

“Gwen!” her mother’s brows flew to her hairline.

“To be honest,” Tess said, “This was one of the most amazing side quests that I've ever been on in my life. What happened next went like this: after about another half hour or so, the vineyard sent a tram vehicle that picked up all of us and took us to the vineyard. They said we could camp there. This was not a tragedy because we had camping equipment. The other people on the tour, though, were adamant that we not stay the night. They were all these digital nomads. They all had work meetings in the morning, and the Wi-Fi reception was too weak for them to do their jobs.

Dad nodded. “They’d have to send a new vehicle from Windhoek to pick you all up, turn around, and drive it back. You couldn’t depend on a patch repair on your vehicle.”

“Exactly,” Gwen said. “And that was the plan.”

“How far were you from Windhoek at this point?” Levi asked.

“We were still about Three hours away, then we'd have another three-hour drive back.” Tess looked under the table as Mojo turned and curled onto her feet. “So our magical side venture—the vineyard picked us up, and we arrived to have a lovely bottle of wine. The same as we brought to you.” Tess let her mind take her back to that time, seeping back into the carefree moment when everything seemed to go right. “It was very relaxing on the veranda. The temperature was comfortable. The sun painted beautiful colors across the sky as it was setting. Gwen and I were perfectly content.”

“And, as it turns out, about a decade ago, someone brought the owners some cheetah kittens without a mother to teach them survival skills, making it impossible to return them to the wild. Much like our Betty, the cheetahs came to call that vineyard home.”

“Not walking around like Betty, though, surely,” Iris said.

“They were penned. Not a sturdy pen, mind you, but I guess it was enough of a pen if the cheetahs never learned to climb. As we finished our first glass of wine and were feeling very mellow and happy, they said it was time to feed the cheetahs. To go out and watch cost sixty dollars.”

“To offset the cost of feeding, I’d imagine,” Goose said.

“Yes, that’s what we thought,” Tess agreed. “They did have a big bucket filled with meat. They took us out in an open-sided safari vehicle. The views were spectacular. The angle of the sun made the hillside look like something that would inspire an artist’s brush. We got to the enclosure, and the cheetahs were waiting for the guy. It was a little bizarre to see un-mothered adult cheetahs. They seemed to have been stuck in kitten mode, mewling and tumbling with each other. And so our adventure went. We had our little cheetah experience, then went back to the vineyard, where we enjoyed a lovely meal. And eventually, two vehicles showed up. They drove us back to Windhoek and let us out at the hotel. The end.” Tess smiled.

“We got in at four in the morning, Mom. That’s why we told you we were sleeping in vehicles. We had a bit more sleep in our rooms, then rented a car and came here, a bottle of wine in hand.”

“Well, girls, I'm glad you have those memories. What a great story,” Craig said, shoveling up a forkful of eggs.

Iris turned to Tess. “It seems that there’s some magic in the air. In the last few days, you’ve been in situations that very easily could have turned dire.” Iris squeezed Tess’s hand. “We feel so fortunate that things have turned out the way they did.”

“You gals need to stay safe,” Craig added. “We need you around telling the world what catastrophes are heading our way.”