“Just look through that little window, and once you like what you see, press the button.”
A woman who had been watching Rory stepped closer. “Would you like me to take it so you can be in the picture with your family?”
“Yeah!” Rory handed her the camera and skipped over to Ursula and Mac.
Family. Mac almost corrected the woman, but thought better of it. It didn’t matter what this woman thought. She couldn’t know he’d lost his family, that other than a scattering of distant cousins, he was alone. Rory didn’t seem to mind.
“Closer,” the woman ordered. Mac put an arm around Ursula and a hand on Rory’s shoulder to anchor her in front of them. The woman nodded. “Now, act like you like each other.”
Ursula laughed, and Mac turned toward the sound. Rory looked up, her eyes sparkling. The woman snapped the photo.
“Let’s do silly faces now,” Rory suggested.
“You might want to save your pictures,” Mac said. “There are only twenty-seven exposures on that camera.”
She frowned at him. “Expo...?”
“Exposures. Pictures. You can only fit so many on a roll of film.”
The woman returned the camera to Rory. After a nudge from Ursula, Rory thanked her and turned the camera over to examine the back. “Where’s the picture?”
“On the film,” Mac explained. “You can’t see it yet. When you finish taking all the pictures, I’ll send it to the developer and they’ll print paper photos for you.”
Rory didn’t look convinced. “You can’t see it at all?”
“Not until it’s developed. It’s old school.” He squatted down beside her. “It’s sort of like a secret code. The light goes through the lens, here, and leaves an imprint on the film, which looks like a long strip of plastic. The film processer has to expose the film to certain chemicals, kind of like getting the key to the code. Once the film is developed, the processer shines a light through it onto special paper, and it makes a picture.”
“Oh, okay.” Rory seemed to buy into the secret code scenario.
“Now, since you took a picture, you need to wind the film. Turn this knob until it stops, so the next section of film will be ready when you want to take another picture.”
Rory wound the film, fascinated by the new toy. By the time she had the camera set, the train was boarding. Other than a couple with a baby, Rory was the only child in their car, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She followed Ursula onto the train and plunked down in the seat beside her. Their car was about half full. Mac settled into his seat across the row, with an empty seat next to him. The train started. Rory gazed out the window as the city of Anchorage whizzed by outside. Her fascination lasted for about five minutes before she was digging in her backpack.
“Would you like to sit by the window so you can see better?” Ursula offered.
“No.” Rory pulled a deck of cards from her pack. “I want to play concentration with Mac.”
She’d already beaten him twice by the time the sky had lightened enough to see out the windows. They were out in the wilds now. Everything seemed stripped of color—the deep snow blanketing the meadows, the pale bark of birch trunks against the dark gray of spruce in the background, the silvery sky along the eastern horizon. As they rounded a curve, Mac glimpsed the front of the train, a splash of blue across a stunning white scene.
Stark. Cold. And yet there was beauty here, the lack of light and color putting the emphasis on form and shadow. Miles and miles of snow and ice surrounded them, but the train kept them warm and moved them forward. There had to be a metaphor in there someplace.
Up ahead in the car, the baby cried, and both parents jumped into action finding a bottle. Rory scrambled past Mac. “I’ll go help.”
“Rory, wait—” Ursula tried but before she could stop her, Rory was skipping up the aisle toward the baby.
Ursula scooted into the aisle seat and leaned outward to check on her, but Rory was already kneeling beside the mother’s armrest. “Hi. I’m Rory. I have a baby named Griffin.”
“That’s a nice name. This baby is Alice.”
“She’s a girl? Hi, Alice.” Rory smiled and leaned closer. The mother didn’t seem to mind having her there.
“She’s fine,” Mac whispered to Ursula. “The mom has everything under control.”
“Let me know if she needs rescuing,” Ursula whispered back. “Rory’s help can be a little overwhelming.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Mac assured her. The mom spoke to Rory and allowed her to hold the bottle. Rory seemed thrilled at the responsibility. Mac leaned closer to Ursula. “How did the teacher conference go?”
“It went well. She’s definitely doing better in school. And I did ask about the pictures she was drawing when she was supposed to be working. It turns out, she was drawing her mom and dad. She said she didn’t want to forget what they look like. We have all her family albums. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to hang a picture of Rory’s family in the kitchen, where she can see it before she leaves for school every morning. We did that yesterday when we got home.”
“Do you think it will help?”
“I hope so. Her teacher says she’s noticed a change in Rory. She seems less inwardly focused and is interacting more with the other students. She mentioned you.”
“Who did?”
“Rory. She was there for part of the conference, and she told her teacher she’d met this man who needed cheering up, and we were all going to Fairbanks for the weekend to see the northern lights.”
“So I’m Rory’s good deed.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Mac turned the idea over in his mind. He didn’t really like the idea of being someone’s project but if it helped Rory... Still. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“Am I your project, as well?”
“No, Mac.” Ursula looked amused. “You’re not my project. You’re my friend.”
Before he could comment, Rory returned. “Alice is going to sleep now. She’s six months old, and she doesn’t have any teeth yet.” She’d started to climb over Ursula to the window seat when her head snapped up. “Look! A moose!”
Everyone crowded to the right side of the car to snap a photo of the young moose gnawing at the bark of a tree not far from the tracks. Rory used her new camera, although Mac doubted she would record anything but a blur in the distance. Once they were past the moose, Rory talked Mac into moving toward the window so she could sit between him and Ursula. She picked up the pack of cards, but paused before she laid them out.
“At school, the teacher’s reading us a book about a girl named Anne. She’s an orphan.”
Ursula smiled. “I remember that book. It’s a good one.”
“Yeah.” Rory looked at Mac. “Ms. Longton says an orphan is a kid whose parents died. So I asked her if I’m an orphan.”
Mac drew in a breath. Rory didn’t look upset, but it was sometimes hard to tell. Before he could decide how to respond, Ursula asked, in a matter-of-fact voice, “What did she say?”
“She said yes, but that I’m not like Anne, ’cause I have a godmother. So I still have family.”
“That’s right.” Ursula reached for her hand and squeezed it. “We’re family. You and me, and Sam, Dana and Griffin.”
“Yeah.” Rory looked at Mac again. “So, I was wondering, are you an orphan?”
“Me?” Mac’s parents had died when he was in his thirties, one shortly after the other. He was an only child. Other than a scattering of cousins, he had no family left. “I suppose I am.”
“Because your daughter died.”
“No, orphan means my parents died. But I was grown up when that happened.”
“Oh.” The tip of her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth, which Mac had learned to recognize as a sign of deep concentratio
n. “Then what do you call a daddy or mommy when their kid dies?”
What indeed? There were words for others left behind, for children without parents, wives without husbands, husbands without wives. But there didn’t seem to be a word for parents living without their children. Was the situation so unthinkable that English had never seen fit to invent a word for it?
Mac shook his head. “I don’t know, Rory.”
“I don’t know either,” Ursula said, “but I think they’re a mommy or daddy, still. When someone you love dies, they stay alive in your heart.”
Was she right? Mac felt he’d lost his moorings, now that he was no longer a father, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe he’d always be Andi’s father, as long as he kept her memory alive. There was something reassuring about that.
“Ursula, are you an orphan?” Rory asked.
“No, sweetie. My mother is still alive. She lives in a retirement home in Wyoming. I was thinking we might fly down and visit her next summer, so you can get to know her.”
“More family?”
“Yes. More family.”
Rory bounced in her seat. “Goodie. I like family.”
Ursula gave her a smile that somehow expanded to include Mac in its warmth. “Me, too.”
* * *
URSULA OPENED HER EYES, unsure what had disturbed her sleep. She squinted at the bedside clock. It was well after midnight. Across the room, tucked under a down comforter, Rory’s even breathing assured Ursula she was sleeping soundly.
And no wonder. Rory had spent the entire train ride bouncing from seat to seat for a better view of the sights, or playing cards with Mac, or chatting with the various people. By the time they’d arrived in Fairbanks, she was on a first-name basis with most of the people on the train.
Rhoda and her husband had been at the station to meet them. Just as Ursula had predicted, Rhoda was thrilled to be able to return the hospitality Ursula had shown her. After a huge dinner, they’d all settled into the hot tub and watched the northern lights put on a show overhead. Rory’s giggles formed a soundtrack to the dancing lights, but eventually she ran out of energy, and Mac had to carry her to bed.
Outside the bedroom, the floor creaked at the head of the stairs. That must have been the sound that woke Ursula in the first place. And she had a good idea who was sneaking down the stairs in the wee hours of the morning.
She slipped out of bed and pulled snow pants, a coat and a hat on over her pajamas. Carrying her boots in her hand, she tiptoed down the stairs, carefully stepping over the creaky board at the top. Sure enough, when she opened the door, she saw Mac standing alone in the clearing, gazing into the shifting sky. The lights had petered out about the time they went to bed, but they were active again, dancing across the heavens.
As her eyes adjusted, she could make out the details of the scene from the light reflecting off the snow. She slipped into her boots and went to join Mac, snow crunching under her feet as she walked. If he heard, he gave no sign. She stopped a few feet away. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He kept his gaze toward the heavens.
“Are you okay?”
He turned to look at her. “I am. For the first time in a long time. I don’t know how long it will last, but right now, right here, I’m okay.”
“I’m glad.” And she was. She’d watched him today, going out of his way to make this a special day for Rory. Patiently playing cards, pointing out the sights, listening intently when Rory explained why the girl caribou still had antlers and the boys didn’t. Mac was a good man, and he didn’t deserve the pain he’d been carrying around.
She’d seen that today, too. Occasionally he would draw into himself, almost as if he’d suffered a physical blow. When a brown-eyed young woman asked her companion about vegetarian restaurants in Fairbanks, Mac had turned his head toward her and then quickly away, and the sadness on his face almost broke Ursula’s heart.
But tonight, in the silence, he seemed to have found serenity. Maybe there was something healing about being alone in the night. “Would you like me to leave?”
“Actually, darlin’, I would like very much for you to stay.” He held out a hand. She took it and he pulled her closer and wrapped an arm around her. They stood together, staring upward as the green lights played tag among the treetops and streaked across the sky, accompanied by the occasional touch of violet.
Ursula wasn’t sure how long they had been standing there, but her feet were beginning to get cold even inside her felt-lined boots. Time to go in. But before she could say anything, Mac turned toward her and tipped her chin upward. He stopped to study her face for a long moment before his lips touched hers, softly, tenderly. And Ursula forgot all about cold feet.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Ursula was awakened by Rory bouncing on her bed. “Aren’t you awake yet? We’re gonna ski and then go see the ice statues today.”
Ursula yawned. “Good morning. What time is it?”
“Seven thirty. Miss Rhoda already gave me chocolate chip pancakes and she said I should let you sleep in. But I told her you always get up earlier than me and you wouldn’t want to miss breakfast because you say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
Ursula laughed. “Absolutely. Just give me a few minutes to dress and I’ll be down.” She watched Rory scurry away. Goodness. She hadn’t slept this late in years. But then she usually didn’t spend an hour in the middle of the night watching the northern lights, or another sleepless hour lying in bed thinking about a kiss.
A kiss. A simple thing, two pairs of lips making contact. No different really than a handshake, or even an accidental brush of elbows. But she’d never had a handshake that stole her breath and set her heart pounding. Three kisses was starting to become a habit. And, delightful though it might be, it was a habit Ursula needed to break.
She probably shouldn’t have suggested they spend the weekend together. It was a spontaneous idea. Rory loved the northern lights, being named after them, and Ursula had been toying with the idea of taking her to see them in Fairbanks one day, so when Mac mentioned he’d never seen them, it all seemed to fall into place. Rory liked Mac. She’d always been close to her daddy. Maybe Mac filled that need for masculine attention that Ursula couldn’t.
And spending time with Rory was good for Mac. He was different when he was with Rory—relaxed, content, happy to live in the moment. But was it wise, letting Rory get attached to Mac? He might throw it off from time to time, but that darkness was still inside him, a threat to his happiness and the happiness of everyone around him. Guilt and blame had stolen much of Ursula’s childhood, and she would do whatever it took to make sure that didn’t happen to Rory.
But she wouldn’t think about that right now. Today was for spending time with friends, and viewing the World Champion ice sculpture competition, and making Rory happy. So that’s what she was going to do.
* * *
RORY’S EYELIDS DROOPED as she climbed into the back seat of Ursula’s car, hugging her pillow. Mac packed their suitcases into the back of the car while Ursula tucked a blanket around her. Before they even reached the Seward Highway, Rory was asleep.
Mac turned in the passenger seat to check on her. Pale locks of hair escaped from the ponytail she wore and twisted across her cheeks. Her head nestled against the pillow, her lips pursed like a baby’s as she slept. Mac smiled. “She’s worn out.”
Ursula laughed. “It’s an illusion. Rory’s never worn out, just recharging. Tomorrow morning, she’ll be bouncing all over the house.”
“I figured she would fall asleep on the flight.”
“It was her first flight, ever. No way she was going to miss anything.”
“She did seem extraordinarily excited over a cup of ginger ale.”
“Well, I don’t let her have soda at home, so it’s a special treat.”
“It was a treat for me
, too, seeing Denali in the moonlight from the air.”
“It was something, wasn’t it? And those ice sculptures were incredible. Rory loved the Mad Hatter’s tea party, and I couldn’t believe that school of tropical fish. Beautiful.”
Mac didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he watched Ursula’s profile as she drove, the lights on the overpass highlighting her cheekbones and the silver streaks in her hair. Beautiful, indeed. Yes, the talents of the ice sculptors far surpassed anything he was expecting, but he preferred the honest beauty of nature. The snowcapped splendor of Denali, the dancing colors of the northern lights and the face of a woman who laughed and loved and lived.
A beautiful woman, generous and kind. She’d been a true friend when he needed one. And holding her in his arms last night, even if only for an hour under the pulsing skies, he’d known she could be so much more. She filled a void he hadn’t even known existed.
She glanced his way and smiled. “Tired?”
“Not especially. Just thinking over the weekend. I’m content.”
“I know what you mean. I love visiting different places in Alaska, but it always feels good to know I’m on my way home.”
Home. That was the feeling Ursula created, wherever she was. That sense of comfort, of belonging. It was no wonder she was a success as an innkeeper. Even Blossom felt at home at the inn. He’d been concerned she might protest when he left her with Catherine, but the dog simply acknowledged his farewell with a thump of her tail before she curled up on her bed and went to sleep.
Rory didn’t open her eyes until Ursula had pulled into the garage. Mac went around to retrieve the bags while Ursula shook her shoulder. “Wake up, sweetie. We’re home.”
Rory yawned. “Is Blossom still here?”
“I’m sure she is.”
“I’ll go see.” Rory stumbled toward the back door.
Ursula came around and picked up her suitcase, while Mac grabbed his and Rory’s. When they stepped out of the garage, Mac noticed the green glow against the treetops in the distance. “Looks like the northern lights followed us home.”
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