She narrowed her eyes and studied Karena intently. "What season are you? Don't tell me, don't tell me, you're summer, right?"
She might have been speaking Swahili, for all the sense it made to Karena. "My birthday's in June, I thought that was Cancer," she said doubtfully.
"Not your birthday, silly, your season, your colors. Haven't you had your chart done?" Adelle said incredulously.
"I've never heard of it," Karena confessed, feeling more stupid by the second. "Do you teach at the college?" she asked, to change the subject, anxious to avoid any more confusing wardrobe comments.
Adelle shook her head. "I don't teach, I work as a librarian. I met Logan when he and Bernice Zimmer were an item. No wonder she's so bitchy lately. I wondered if they'd broken up. How about you; are you at the college? How did you meet our Logan?"
Karena remembered overhearing Edith asking Logan about Bernice the night before. Our Logan. She swallowed hard and went through the litany that had become all too familiar: logging company, log scaler, meeting Logan at the fair.
Adelle's gaze flickered over Karena, the plain dress, the unremarkable hairdo, the simple shoes. Then the woman got gracefully to her feet, leaving her plate on the stairs.
"There's Annabelle, for heaven's sake, excuse me, won't you?"
A few moments later Karena caught the curious glance Annabelle shot her, and the amused expression on her face when she turned back to the whispered conversation she was having with Adelle.
Painful recollections of weekend afternoons flooded back to Karena, of her cousin Marissa and Marissa's friends— sharp-edged, polished girls like Adelle and Annabelle would have been then—giggling cozily together in the bedroom supposedly shared with Karena in her aunt's cramped little house, of sly glances and hurtful whispers that inevitably drove her out to spend long, lonely hours in the park.
Teenage girls could be incredibly cruel when another girl didn't fit their mold, and Karena hadn't fit by a long shot.
She didn't fit now. She'd never known how to fit in with females like Adelle or Marissa, or any of the women she'd met here today.
What was she doing here, she asked herself wildly, feeling miserable and out of place. She wasn't fifteen anymore, boarding in her aunt's home. She had a place of her own, where she belonged. Suddenly she wanted only to be home.
She wanted to leave, she had to leave, just as she'd left that stuffy little bedroom years before when the girls played word games designed to illustrate how comically naive the girl from the bush was.
Panic started to build inside of her. If she didn't get out of here soon, she was going to make a fool of herself by bursting into tears, embarrassing Logan.
Where, oh where, was Logan?
Jack had laughed himself silly over Logan's woes at Itasca, but he'd cleared up a lot of questions Logan had as well, and the conversation had moved on to football. Logan hadn't heard how the Vikings made out in the last two games in the series, and he appreciated the lengthy update the others provided.
At first, he kept an anxious eye on Karena, but he saw Edith talking with her, saw Karena smiling, and he relaxed.
When he broke away and went to look for her, she was sitting on the stairs with Adelle Lindstrom, eating and chatting, and Logan suddenly realized how hungry he was.
He filled a plate with food, started over toward Karena and was interrupted by his host, who insisted on taking him downstairs and showing him a new wine-making kit he'd just bought.
When Logan came back upstairs and retrieved the plate of food, Karena and Adelle were no longer on the stairs.
He ate quickly, watching for Karena to come out of the bathroom at the end of the hall. When the door opened after a lengthy delay, however, it wasn't her.
Vague anxiety gnawed at him, and a guilty feeling that he should have kept her near him. He knew these people, after all, and she didn't. He set his plate down and went to find her.
A quick survey showed she was nowhere in the house, and a second, more thorough search confirmed it. Now he felt something akin to panic. Where would she go?
He made a quick excuse to John, and bolted for his car. She wasn't there, either. He started to feel desperate as he turned the key impatiently in the ignition and drove slowly up and down the streets, watching for her, willing her to be there, just ahead of him. But she wasn't either on the streets or, when he screeched into the lot, at his apartment. Too late, he realized she didn't even have a key, and he cursed his own stupidity as he raced for the elevator and the only other place he could think of where she might have gone.
The problem was, St. Paul had more than ninety parks.
Chapter Ten
In the park that was closest to his apartment he found her kneeling in the grass and trying to coax a squirrel to come and get the acorn she held. She was shivering a little in her thin dress, and he stripped off his corduroy jacket.
Relieved, and guiltily furious with himself for leaving her alone at the brunch, he sounded much harsher than he intended when he strode up to her and lifted her to her feet, clumsily shoving her arms into the too-long sleeves of his jacket.
"For God's sake, Karena, what the hell do you think you're doing? What happened back there? Why did you just walk out on me like that without a word?"
She looked up at him, at his thick wavy hair falling across his forehead, at the way his eyebrows beetled together in a frown above the rim of his glasses. It was the first time she'd ever seen him really angry with her, and a hopeless feeling of sadness welled up inside of her.
She doubted there was any way to make him understand. Logan was so easy in his dealings with people, how could she explain rationally her particular brand of reclusive shyness? She struggled for an explanation that would make sense to him, all the while knowing it was futile. If he'd known her this long, and he still didn't understand, what could she say?
"I couldn't stay there anymore," was what she finally managed. "You were talking, and I—I sort of lost you."
No, she hadn't asked anyone to find him. There'd been someone in the kitchen, getting ice out of the fridge. She'd waited until they left, and then gone quietly out the kitchen door.
Logan's hands closed and tightened on her upper arms. "Karena, this is childish. Those people are my friends. Surely you could just have come over to me and said that you wanted to leave, or sent somebody to tell me. Just walking out that way, it's—"
It dawned on him suddenly that he was acting more concerned over his friends' feelings than he was about hers. What was the matter with him, anyway? His voice gentled, and there was puzzled concern in his tone.
"What is it, Karena, what really happened back there to make you feel this way? Did somebody insult you?"
Karena shook her head, and the futility of even trying to explain how desperately lost and alone the gathering had made her feel overwhelmed her.
"Logan, I want to go home."
"Sure, you're cold, come on. I walked over—" actually, he'd run until his side ached "—but we can be home in a minute."
"Not your apartment, Logan. I want to go home, back to my cabin." He sensed resignation and defeat in her voice, and he felt her draw away from him, retreat into some part of herself he couldn't reach. Love for her made frustration and fear well up inside of him, and his words reflected it.
"But we still have a whole day left to be together. You can't just leave now," he protested passionately. The thought of spending the rest of the weekend without her made him desperate. His voice grew loud and he scowled down at her.
"Karena, you can't spend your entire life hiding out there in the bush. Sooner or later, you're going to have to deal with this irrational phobia you've got about cities, about meeting people." He let go of her arms in frustration and ran an angry hand through his hair.
"What was so awful about spending a few hours with my friends? They're all ordinary folks. All you have to do is be yourself around them instead of freezing up into a shell. They'd all love you if yo
u only gave them a chance."
His words hurt almost more than she could bear, illustrating as they did the most fundamental, devastating difference between Logan and herself, the difference she'd done her best to ignore, believing they could somehow overcome it.
She tried again to explain, all the while conscious of the anger in his eyes.
"Logan, I can't help how I feel. I can't make myself into something I'm not, any more than you can. Those people are your friends, you belong, you know how to talk with them, you're confident, relaxed, totally at home. But I'm not, I'm some kind of curiosity to them. It's like a game, with rules I've never learned."
She'd accepted long ago that she could never master the game. She was crippled in that rarefied atmosphere; she was trapped as surely as a wild animal in captivity. She belonged in the woods, a throwback to a more primitive time. What was it he had called her once?
A candlelight woman in a chromium age.
He'd said it wonderingly, as if it made her precious to him, but in reality he was spelling out the end of their relationship.
No matter how powerful the love between them, it could never bridge the gap between their worlds.
"I won't accept that, Karena. You could fit in, if you'd only try harder, not be so paranoid, for God's sake."
Was that what she was, was that the name for it? Had he looked up her special psychological quirk in one of those fat, foreign books in his bookcase?
"Please, Logan, will you just drive me back to Bemidji now, or should I take the bus? Because I can't stand being in this place any longer. I have to go home, Logan."
And her words, with their blunt honesty, shattered the bright, optimistic dreams he'd had of sharing this part of himself with the woman he loved.
Within an hour, they were out of the city and on their way back to Bemidji. Karena sat well over on her side of the seat. Her features were set in cool, remote lines, her hands folded in her lap. Logan couldn't know the steely control she exercised, the effort of clenching her jaw to stifle the sobs in her throat.
He tried to reach her with logic.
"Surely we could talk about this, Karena, reach some sort of an understanding. It's ridiculous to let a little thing like this come between us."
She tried to swallow the despair in her throat enough to answer.
"It's a very large thing, Logan, and it's always been there between us. You just didn't want to see it, and neither did I."
God help him, he was losing her, over something as ridiculous as a faculty brunch.
"Look, we just won't accept any social invitations. I don't really give a damn whether I ever see those people again. It's you I love, Karena. I've never loved anyone as much as I love you."
She closed her eyes against the tenderness in his face, the desperate entreaty in his voice, because she knew he wasn't being totally honest. They were a part of him, his friends, his work, his life apart from her.
"It won't work, Logan. You'd begin to resent me eventually for that social emptiness in your life, just as I'd resent you for forcing me to be part of it."
The agony of losing her made his voice hard edged and almost cruel.
"We've talked about the problems Mort has, how he's never learned to forage properly or pattern himself on other moose, the necessity for him to learn to function in the wild state before too much more time goes by. Well, it's the same with you, Karena, only reversed."
He scowled at the road ahead, aching with the need to make her understand. "You hide in the bush by yourself, but you'll have to face the outside world sooner or later. Danny's growing up, he doesn't want to live some fairytale Grizzly Adams sort of life. You'll lose him eventually. You've told me you know he needs a wider world than the one you and he have now. You can build a cave for yourself and hibernate in it, but you shouldn't keep him there with you, any more than you should keep Mort. Both of them need more than you can offer, unless you're willing to grow along with them. You're such a brave woman in so many ways, can't you be courageous about this?"
He was betraying her. She'd opened her life to him, allowed him to share her most private concerns, and now he was using those very things against her. He was also accusing her of being a coward. The pain like a cold steel weight in her chest gave way to righteous anger.
"What makes you think your way is the only right one?" she spat contemptuously. "What makes you think you know more about my son than I do? Just because my way of life is different, that doesn't make it wrong. It seems to me everyone hides in a cave now and then. What about you and your research, isn't that a cave you've been hiding in to avoid dealing with students?"
"You're right, of course it is. But I've ventured out, Karena, haven't I? You're not even doing that."
The rest of the trip passed in icy silence.
Both of them had been worrying about how they'd explain their return a day early to the children and to Betsy and Cliff. It was a great relief to find no one at home at the farm, and Karena scribbled a hasty note and tacked it on the door, saying that she'd taken her truck, and she'd be back for Danny the following day as planned.
"Karena, let me come up to the cabin with you tonight and we'll talk this through," Logan pleaded one last time as she took her overnight case out of his car.
How she wanted to, but it would only delay what was inevitable, and she shook her head firmly and tried not to cry.
"It won't work, Logan. Talking won't fix it."
She tried not to see the agony in his dark eyes as she climbed hurriedly into the pickup and drove away.
Tears alternated with furious anger at Logan, at his friends, at herself, all the way home. She spent the evening in an orgy of tears, too upset even to retrieve Mort from Gabe, and all night, she thought of how she should have been in Logan's arms instead of here, alone.
The next morning, feeling totally miserable and lost, she drove into Bemidji again, hours too early to pick up Danny, and found herself driving slowly to the apartment complex where Abigail lived. After three trips around the block, she parked, walked over to the building and worked up the nerve to ring the buzzer beside her friend's name.
Abigail welcomed her with sincere delight, tactfully guiding Karena to a comfortable seat in her bright living room and bringing coffee before she said, "Okay, spill it. How come you're here with me looking tragic and not in St. Paul with Logan?"
Karena started to cry.
It took a full hour before Abigail understood, really understood, because Karena had to go years back and explain. When she was done, Abigail silently got up and refilled their coffee cups.
"Once there was a man who wanted to marry me, but I figured I couldn't leave my mother alone right then."
Karena didn't see what Abigail was getting at.
"I was so wrong," Abigail said softly. "I saw it then as a choice between my mother and him, but it wouldn't have had to be that way. I could have married him and still taken care of my mother. There's always a middle road, Karena, if you care enough to find it."
"You're saying you think Logan is right about all this, that I'm the one who needs to change, just as he said?" Karena felt hurt and betrayed all over again, this time by the first woman friend she'd ever trusted.
"I'm only telling you not to throw away the chance for a lifetime of love and happiness because of one problem area," Abigail insisted with a frown. "I saw you two together, and you're right for each other. You're letting what happened to you years ago influence your life now. I don't think you should. The scene with those faculty wives, well, I'll bet there's hardly a woman around who hasn't sometime ended up feeling just as you did yesterday, as if she wore the wrong thing and felt out of place. You don't talk to other women enough, or you'd know you're not the only one."
"I can’t talk to women, that's the whole damn problem," Karena said in exasperation, slamming her coffee cup down and standing up. "I have to go and get Danny now," she said petulantly.
Abigail laughed up at her, her pixie face
glowing with affection. "You're talking with me, aren't you? I was a woman last time I looked. Hell, I've even got Max thinking so, and that wasn't easy." She sobered, a worried look on her mobile features. "Don't go away mad, my friend. Just think about what I said."
Betsy was out and Cliff was playing ball with the kids when Karena arrived at the Gardoms', and Cliff smiled his easy smile and blessedly didn't ask any questions at all. Karena was pathetically grateful. Her visit with Abigail had dofie nothing to quiet the turmoil of emotion inside her.
She did her best to listen to every detail of Danny's weekend on the way home, but her misery was like a physical pain gnawing a hole in her heart. Blessedly, Danny was unaware.
"Did you hear that, Mom, isn't that funny? Hey, you're not listening. I'll tell you over again, now pay attention—"
You'll lose Danny, Logan had warned. She turned her eyes from the ribbon of highway to steal a glance at this son of hers.
Animation and eagerness made his blue eyes sparkle, and his unruly hair was standing up in a cowlick at the crown, as always. His lashes were still unreasonably long and thick for a boy, and the tanned skin had no sign as yet of the eruptions that puberty sometimes created. But his features were subtly changing from the clearly defined purity they'd had in his childhood into a blurred facsimile of what they'd be when he was a man. He'd shot up at least three inches this summer as well.
Danny was growing up, there was no denying that.
You have to grow along with him, Logan had warned, or you'll lose him.
Just as she'd already lost Logan.
"I'll go bring Mort home," Danny offered as soon as they stopped in the yard, and she watched his lithe form disappear at a trot down the shortcut path.
She laid kindling in the kitchen stove and lit it, and then walked slowly, heavily, out to the washhouse and lit that one, too, noticing that it was starting to get dark earlier now. It was the first of September. Winter was coming, and she thought of the long dark months ahead, the stillness of the woods buried under snow, the isolation of her cabin.
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