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Just one more, it’s just one more. Maria’s fingers twist and dig into the dirt, where she can see an indent in the rock face, and she grips it. She looks lower and finds a spot that she thinks she can dig her toe into, and she does. With delicate pressure, she tests it to see if it will hold. It does. She pulls herself up with a grunt and starts again.
Just one more, one more. The process repeats itself over and over.
Look, grab, test, pull—just one more.
Look, grab, test, pull—just one more.
Her shoulders ache, her fingers and toes burn, she’s covered in sweat, and if she had something sharp, she’d chop her hair off right now so it would get out of her damn way, but she doesn’t, and compared to everything else she doesn’t have right now, it's a small thing.
Look, grab, test, pull—just one more.
Look, grab, test… fuck. The rock gives, and Maria’s hanging by just one hand and her feet desperately scrabbling into the rock face, praying she won’t go down, finally, finally she manages to grab hold of another outcropping, and she hugs herself to the wall.
“Shit, fucking shit,” she huffs tiredly against the dirt and rock. Her hand hurts. She must have scraped it while trying to find a hold. She hopes it’s not bleeding; she’s been having a hard enough time with the sweat. She gives herself just a moment more then she starts again.
Look, grab, test, pull—just one more.
Hours creep by, and when she looks up again, it feels as if she’s made no progress at all. But she knows that's a lie. She fights past that feeling just like she fought it all those years ago in law school when she used to worry that she’d never make it, that some obstacle would always manage to find a way into her path. But she’d fought too hard and too long to let herself be beaten by her own damn mind, and it’s the same here. She looks up, and she keeps going.
Look, grab, test, pull—just one more.
As the sun starts to get close to what would be dinner time, she looks to the stopping point that she had mapped out earlier and it’s within reach. She takes a drink carefully from her canteen and then keeps going. When her hand claps onto the wide outcropping, which she hopes is a small cave and not just a small ledge, she has the urge to ignore the same steps she’s followed all day, but she fights that urge as well. That's how people die, and that’s not what’s going to happen to her. So she carefully looks, grabs, tests, and pulls herself up. She’s relieved to find that it is a small cave, so relieved in fact that she allows herself to break protocol, drink another sip of water, and look to the horizon.
She sits for exactly 15 minutes and then goes to work, pulling off the small bag on her back. It holds a pair of heavy socks, gloves, rolls of gauze, a small tub of antiseptic ointment, and jerky. She meticulously cleans the cuts and abrasions on her hands and feet and then puts on the gloves and socks. She takes another sip of water and eats some jerky. She has to walk a fine balance of eating enough to keep her body moving with all the physical activity but not so much that she’ll run out. Same with the water. It’s all about resource management, and Maria knows how to do that. So knows how to look at a situation and decide what is needed and what isn’t. She can calculate the odds and figure out a plan. Once she’s fed her body, she pulls out the emergency blanket from her pack and wraps it around her body. It’s late summer, early fall, and thank god for that — otherwise, she would never have made it this far. It’s warm during the day but not so hot she’ll burn, and it's cool during the night but not so cold that she’ll freeze. So Maria counts herself lucky. She watches the valley for a moment more, then tucks herself into the wall, pulling the blanket tightly around her body.
This moment when she is waiting for sleep is when she allows herself to think of Tommy, of his soft brown eyes and his tender, callused hands, of the way his voice sounds when it rumbles over her skin late at night when it’s just the two of them. She thinks of how he must be feeling at this moment. Her horse has probably made it back to the settlement by now, with no rider, bag still attached to the saddle. They would have tracked it back to the ravine she had fallen down. She’d been stupid, and she knows it. Standing so close to the edge but she’d almost had the woman who desperately clung to the wall, begging for her help. The woman who now lays at the bottom of the ravine where Maria should be as well, but by some miracle, Maria had managed to grab hold of a small tree growing out of the cliff face three-quarters of the way down, saving herself.
All Maria had was the clothing on her back and the small emergency bag she always carried on her belt for situations such as this. She’d had to ditch her boots, hat, jacket, and overshirt, too much to carry. She knew the only way out of this ravine was up. There was no trail below that would lead her out.
She was lucky that while going to college, she’d gotten into rock climbing as a way to deal with the stress of school. When she climbed, she could shut the world out and just focus on what was in front of her. It’s been almost 25 years since the last time she’d scaled a rockface, but the muscle memory and routine kicked back in like it was yesterday. Yes, she was older, and yes, the muscles in her body were built differently than they had been back then, but Maria was nothing if not determined. Nothing in her life had been easy. She’d had to fight for every single step that she took, so this was just another obstacle that she was going to overcome just like everything else. Maria Miller had never been a quitter, and she isn’t going to start now.
So she did what she did best: she planned. She kept her mind where it needed to be, on her next steps, not on her fear or her regrets, not even on her hopes. She was going to make it to the top of this ravine, everything else after that would have to wait.
But here, late at night, she permits herself to hope—hope that she’ll see Tommy again, hope that she’ll get to tell him about the baby, unexpected but wanted, so new, just barely an idea, growing inside of her, hope that she’ll have a tomorrow.
In the dark, she lets herself cry for that hope.
Look, grab, test, pull—just one more.
But there was no more. She was at the top. She gasped into the dirt, her body weary, muscles cramping. It had taken her three days to reach the top of the ravine. She’d had to go slower than she would have in the past because there was no room for error. Error meant death. So it had been slow and steady wins the race and win she had. Now, she just has to hike the two-and-a-half days back to Jackson with no shoes and little to no food.
She takes ten minutes, according to her watch, to rest and marvel at the fact that she actually made it—she hadn’t fallen. Then she gets to work, cleaning and treating her hands and feet, retying her locs in a messy bun at the top of her head, and putting on the socks from her bag. They weren’t much in the way of protection for her feet, but they were better than nothing. She eats her last piece of jerky and drinks the last of her water. She knows of a creek on the way back where she can at least replenish her water.
Then she picks herself up, dusts herself off, and starts to walk.
It’s nearing the end of the next day, and she’s crossing through a field of wildflowers, blues, pinks, yellows, and oranges, all flowing together like a river in the wind. She opens her palms and skims them across the top of the blossoms as she breathes in the sweet floral scent, it mixes with the sharp smell of pine sweeping in from the mountains.
Maria thinks she’d like to come back to this field someday with Tommy and the baby, maybe have a picnic, maybe just pick some flowers for the house. She can imagine Tommy standing amongst the flowers, his face glowing with joy as he looks at their baby in his arms, he turns his smile towards her, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and holds out a hand, asking her to join him. He opens his mouth, and she swears she could almost hear him calling her name. Then she realizes she can.
Her head whips towards the sound, and she sees him on the other side of the field. He’s off his horse, his hand shading his eyes from the sun, squinting in her direction. Maria gasps, her breath suddenly trapped in her chest. She lets out a breathless sob as she starts to run towards him.
“ Tommy! ” his name punches out of her sharp and ragged as her aching legs carry her across the swaying field of blooms. His eyes finally adjust and he sees her clearly.
“Maria! Oh, Christ.” He sputters on an exhale and stumbles forward, legs weak with relief. His steps are stuttering at first, but as he moves closer to her his stride grows longer until he's sweeping her up into his arms.
They’re laughing and crying all at once, their hands pressing, squeezing, gliding over each other like they need to feel every inch to assure themselves that they’re real. Tommy kisses her hands where they’re cracked, cut, and bruised, then her neck, her cheeks and her brow. Finally, he takes her face in between his trembling palms and places a hard, searing kiss on her mouth. It's almost painful the hold he has on her, but Maria leans into it, desperate for the contact, for the proof that she’s real and alive.
Tommy pulls back only long enough for them to catch their breaths, then leans his forehead against hers, one hand wrapped around the back of her neck and the other on the top of her head.
“We followed your horse’s tracks back to the ravine and saw the body at the bottom, your-your hat and coat hanging from a tree most of the way down.” His voice breaks, and Maria presses her hands more firmly against his chest, feeling how fast his heart beats. He swallows and licks his lips before kissing her again, softer, longer, a hand stroking down her back, the other twining through her locs, holding her to him. “Maria, Darlin’, I thought I lost ya,” he whispers. “God, I thought I lost ya.”
He grunts, scoops her up into his arms, and carries her to his horse, who waits patiently by the side of the field. He puts her up on the back of Justified and then climbs up behind her, wrapping his arms around her to grab the reins. With a soft click of his tongue and a nudge of his knees, Justified starts moving towards home.
“Did you climb up the ravine?” he asks against her ear as she lays back tiredly in his embrace.
“Yeah,” she huffs, closing her eyes as the swaying of the horse starts to lull her to sleep.
“Damn, woman, you never cease to amaze me. Tougher than fuckin’ nails,” he chuffs.
She chuckles softly and squeezes his arm, which rests across her abdomen. “That ravine wasn’t gonna beat me. I’ve got a lot to live for.” She tilts her head to the side so she can lightly kiss his jaw. “A new husband at home, the fall fest just around the corner, apple cobbler at the mess tonight,” Tommy lazily laughs, placing a soft kiss at her hairline, “Oh, and I almost forgot, a baby now too.”
She hears Tommy’s sharp intake of breath and feels Justified freeze mid-stride as Tommy pulls on the reins. “Did you say a baby?”
“Yeah, a baby,” she repeats a smile curving her lips, eyes still firmly shut. “That okay with you?”
Tommy wraps his arms around her, pulling her tight against his chest. He then hooks his chin over her shoulder, pressing his lips delicately to her ear, and rumbles lowly, “Yeah, darlin’, I think a baby sounds just fine to me.”
“Good,” Maria says, patting his knee firmly, the matter settled. “Now, let's go home. I don’t want to miss that cobbler.”
Tommy chuckles into the afternoon air and spurs Justified homeward with a joyous whoop.