Crap! Erika broke into a full run, her agitation dropping away, as she rushed to her brother's side.

    It hadn't been a long slide - eight, maybe ten feet - but that could be enough to break something, if he had landed wrong. As she reached Frank, he lay there writhing in the dirt, face down, not a word being said, only a few faint groans mingled between his erratic breaths. Then even as those breaths eased just a little, a pained muttering replaced them.

    "Frank, are you okay?" She couldn't make out any sign of serious injury, but he was covered in dirt and debris and still rocking face down in the dirt, so she couldn't see most of him; only glimpses of his elbows, both of which were covered in abrasions from where he had slid down the incline.

    "Come on, Frank, say something."

    Abby put a hand on Erika's shoulder as she too cast a worried glance down to their hiking companion.

    "Frank?"

    The only replies that came were Frank's continued mutterings.

    Erika leaned closer. As she knelt down his words slowly came into focus.

    "Crap... crap... crap..." he said. "Crap."

    She sat a hand on his back.

    "What is it?"

    "Hold on," he said, stopping for a breath. "Just give me a moment."

    Erika stepped back, giving her brother the moment he requested.

    "It's just," he continued, "I think I broke something."

    Crap indeed. Of course he had.

    Could she and Abby even get him down the trail on their own? How far back were the next set of hikers and were they even coming down this path? Erika glanced around, her mind racing. And if it was a full compound fracture did they have anything that would help? She thought for sure that she had a first aid kit in her pack, but chances were it had nothing more than a tiny roll of gauze, a few bandaids and some antibiotic cream. That wasn't going to do much for a fracture. Sure, they'd only planned for a short day trip, but she still could have come a little better prepared. She knew better.

    "Let me take a look," she said. Abby stood beside her, her face panicked. She had just shut down. At least I'm moving, Erika thought. That's something.

    She knelt back down inching towards her brother. "What do you say, bro? Can I get that look?"

    "Nope," he said, a sense of odd relief rushing into his voice. "It's all good. It's not broke." He rolled onto his back, holding his phone up above him like a trophy. "Thought she was a goner for a moment."

    "You idiot," Erika said, kicking dirt at her brother as she stood.

    "Hey! Watch my eyes!"

    "We thought you were seriously hurt, jerkwad!"

    "Well," he said, rubbing at his eyes, "you about blinded me. Does that count?"

    "No." Erika fumed, running her head back through her yoga and breathing but realizing it would be useless. She was too mad. She held her tongue, knowing if she didn't she'd likely say something she'd regret.

    "You sure you're okay?" Abby asked.

    "Yeah, I'm good."

    Frank grabbed Abby's hand (Erika sure wasn't offering him one now), and stood, absently dusting debris from his sleeves and pants, then straightening himself up as if nothing had happened.

    "Did I miss anything?"

    "No, nothing," Abby said.

    And she was right. He hadn't missed a thing. No matter how much she tried, Erika couldn't work up her nerve. The conversation would have to wait, yet again. Why did it seem she was always waiting?

    She looked to her brother.

    "Well let's go then," he said. "What are we waiting for?"

    And there was something in the seriousness with which he responded, the cold practicality of it, that had suddenly drowned out all hint of mirth, and something more in the way Frank had cast aside his own fault for the delay that sent her spiraling down unwanted trails of memory. He could be so much like their father, seizing control when you least expected it. But surely Frank was nothing like that man. She couldn't accept that.

    The thought itself was unbearable; and yet now it was there, and she couldn't unsee it. Apparently there was more on her mind than she'd realized. So much more.

***

    Erika sat in a hard plastic chair, the type one thought only existed in old school rooms, but somehow found their way onto industrial floors and offices of antiquated operations.

    She wiggled a little, trying to get comfortable as she waited, but with no luck. Even if not for the hard plastic seating, the fumes would have eliminated the option for comfort. She could hear the loud exhaust of the fans operating in the high-ceilinged print floor just on the other side of the office wall, but even those fans and the vast echo chamber of the work floor seemed to do little to alleviate the smell of the wide-format solvent printers. A mix of oils and resins mingled with the smells of paper and vinyl, the overall blend leaving Erika with a throbbing headache and a cottony sensation on her tongue.

    She filled a small paper cone with water from her father's water cooler and sipped at it trying to at least rid herself of the dry mouth. As she stood there, lapping up the last drops of water from the cone, finally her father had arrived.

    A thick man with a grizzled face and an old-fashioned side part, John Henthorn carried a strong presence in every room he entered. He commanded the floor by virtue of birthright, something that he never questioned but owned with every forceful look and confident step.

    "Excuse me," he said, brushing past his daughter and settling into his desk chair and a backlog of emails.

    Erika wanted to say something back, to ask him if that was it – if that was all he had to say for himself. She had been waiting since six. A quick glance through the large office window revealed the clock out on the work floor, where the hands clearly marked the time as quarter until nine. Hunger nibbled at her stomach, but more than anything her annoyance at her father dominated her thoughts. Still, instead of calling him out for leaving her waiting for almost three hours, she took a gentler approach.

    "Are you almost ready?" she asked.

    "Hmph." That was the closest her father came to speaking. A mild grunt of acknowledgement.

    "We can reschedule for another night if you want." She meant it as an olive branch, a peaceful out for her father. He didn't take it as such.

    "No. Don't you dare."

    "Dare? What? I'm just saying if you've got work--"

    "—-You can stop right there. I said I'm going to take you out to dinner and I am. You can have a little god damn patience for once."

    Erika had shut up then. He was right in one thing. He had told her he was taking her to dinner. He hadn't asked. John Henthorn never asked for anything. He told you how it would be and you went along with it or you faced the consequences. Telling him that she would not be joining the family business had been the most difficult thing Erika had ever done. What affection had remained between them seemed to have died with that decree.

    "Jesus H. Christ," he continued. "You'd think I was asking the world of you."

    "I don't think that," she said.

    "You sure as hell act like it. Now sit your ass down and give me five fucking minutes and we'll be on our way."

    "Dad!"

    "Erika!"

    For a moment they stood locked, two gunmen at high noon waiting on the draw. Only Erika couldn't bring herself to say anything. All she wanted was to mend that relationship, to be able to talk to her father, share her day, and somehow put an end to the tension that had risen between them. She didn't recall it being there when she had been a child, but of course then she had done as she was told. Only as a young adult had she begun to make her own life decisions – decisions that were inconsistent with John Henthorn's script for their reality.

    She said none of this. She only tried once more to ease the animus and restore some calm to the evening. This dinner would happen and at the very least she didn't want the entire affair to be soured by this feud. She needed some peace.

    "I just know things can get busy," she said. "That's all."

    "I'm never too busy for my little girl," her father said. "Come here."

    He motioned her forward, and, though she didn't want to, she did as she was told. As she stepped closer, her father wrapped her in a tender if not formal embrace. Reluctantly she embraced him back.

    And there it was. That assurance, that off-handed scrap of affection tossed her way to keep her on the hook. It's how he worked; it is how their relationship worked. Every time Erika wanted to hate him, to really hate her father, he somehow convinced her that all her anger existed as nothing more than misplaced anxieties and paranoid hysterics. His misdeeds were in her head, because of course this caring man couldn't be anything but a loving father. He never hit her. He never assaulted her in any physical way whatsoever. No, all John Henthorn's punches came in the form of softball emotional jabs, ones that left Erika wondering if all the abuse were simply in her head.

***

    "Hello? Earth to Erika?"

    Erika glanced up from the trail.

    They had left the narrow confines of the descent from Bee Rock far behind. As she'd been lost in her memories, the trio had wound their way down the wide sand-strewn fire road past a few stone structures dotting the Spring Canyon stream and through yet another chain-link fence and on towards the Old Zoo grounds.

    Abandoned in the sixties after the animals were moved to the newer zoo a couple miles north, the Old L.A. Zoo had been converted to a park, the previous cages left standing. The tiny metal and stone cages remained now, a dark oddity of past sins and cruelties either closed off and visible as a relic of the past, or adorned with picnic tables rehabilitated for childhood birthday parties.

    Frank stood in front of Erika at a fork in the road. The right path ascended back up above the old zoo grounds and behind the large rock enclosures that scaled all the way up from the park beneath. The left path wound through the happy grounds past the locked-off cages and the picnic tables.

    "Which way?"

    "This way," she said. Erika chose the left path. Her mind had wandered dark alleys long enough this afternoon.

    She smiled as a group of school children ran past, their laughter trailing out behind them and easing her thoughts like a miracle tonic. Whatever the status of her relationship with her father, Erika had asserted her independence this past year. She was at work on her Master's degree. She had a job. She had friends, and a boyfriend whom she loved. And why shouldn't she be with him? He'd been there for her as she asserted herself for the first time. He understood her because he faced the same demons. They helped each other become stronger people, and soon they might even have a place together. They were considering it.

    Considering? she thought. No, it's decision time.

    Time to leave all the second guessing and all that negative attention behind. Hell with it. This was her day.

    Erika latched onto the nearest cage, spun herself off the trail and into the cramped interior, and shouted out to Abby and her brother.

    "Oh, by the way, guess what? David and I are moving in together!"

    And there it was. No going back now. She'd let it out into the world and there would be no backing down. Abby rushed up into the cage and embraced her in a tight hug.

    "Oh my god! That's great. I'm so happy for you."

    "What she said," Frank nodded.

    "Thanks for the enthusiasm, doofus. Here!"

    Erika tossed her phone out to her brother. She didn't even stop to consider that he might not catch it, because of course he would. You couldn't let the what-ifs and the maybes bury you, else you'd never enjoy the moment. Sometimes you just had to know that everything would turn out just fine.

    "Take a picture!" she yelled. "Okay?"

    "Hmph," he grunted, catching the phone. "Sure."

    He tapped the button, snapping a shot of Erika and Abby smiling out from between the rust-stained metal bars of L.A.'s dark past, capturing a memento of that joy that came in the calm before the storm.

    It was out there now and Erika had a photo to mark the occasion, tangible evidence of the decision. Yep, she thought, smiling back at her brother as he rattled off half a dozen more shots with the camera phone, there is NO going back. Slowly her smile faded, the thought repeating itself over and over with each new click of the camera.