Until Spring

by Pamela Browning

  Mary Kate beamed. "Duncan said that training a llama to like wearing the halter means adapting to the llama so it will trust you. Then, because it trusts you, the llama is ready to develop a habit, for instance, putting on a halter. So after I was sure she trusted me, I stood on the same side of Dearling every time I took out the halter, and I held it up to her face very, very patiently while I talked softly in her ear. Pretty soon Dearling got so she wasn't scared, and finally one day I just slipped the halter over her nose."

  Jane wondered if training a child could be accomplished in the same way—by adapting to the child to establish trust and then encouraging the child to develop the habit of good behavior. While she was pondering this, Mary Kate dropped back to walk beside Dearling and to whisper into the llama's ear. When she returned to Jane's side she took her hand.

  "Actually," Mary Kate confided, "after I got the halter on her, it wasn't all that easy to lead Dearling. It was because at first I left the halter too loose, and she didn't like it. And then she wouldn't walk—she'd sit down! That was funny, but I didn't think so then."

  "What did you do?" Jane asked with an amused glance at Dearling, who seemed to sense that they were talking about her.

  "Oh, I'd get behind her and push at her backside, trying to get her up on her feet, and she'd just chew her cud and look at me like I was crazy. Duncan laughed at us, but then he came into the pen and showed me how to tighten the halter so it wouldn't flap against her head. After a while Dearling was walking right alongside me. This summer I'm going to teach her to pull a cart. Then she can take us for rides. You'll like that, won't you, Jane?"

  "Well, I—" she began, but suddenly stopped. She wished that she could think of an easy way to tell Mary Kate that she didn't plan to stay at Placid Valley Ranch that long. While she was casting about in her mind for something to say, Mary Kate thrust Dearling's lead into Jane's hand and ran ahead to the mailbox.

  When Mary Kate came back, she resumed leading the llama and handed Jane the packet of mail.

  Jane leafed through it and found several business-size envelopes with windows, a journal from a llama-breeding association, and a small pink envelope postmarked Albuquerque, which could easily slip out of the packet if she weren't careful. Realizing that she'd fallen behind Mary Kate and Dearling, she slid the pink envelope into the pocket of her coat and tucked the rest of the mail under her arm as she hurried to catch up.

  From where she walked, she could barely see the house within its shelter of evergreen trees, but something softened inside her when she remembered that she lived in that picture-perfect house now, if only temporarily, and had her own warm bed to which she returned every night. She also had food to eat whenever she was hungry, Amos had a little plastic cat dish that Duncan had surprised them by bringing home one day, and she drank from her own favorite coffee mug on which Mary Kate had written her name in fancy flourishes. And Duncan. She had Duncan.

  Duncan to talk with, Duncan to joke with, Duncan to watch television with, and Duncan to eat meals with. At first she had felt constrained in his presence, it was true, but their relationship had become easy, even comfortable. If Jane had had a brother, she would have liked him to be just like Duncan Tate.

  "This summer, maybe you can help me train Dearling to pull the cart," Mary Kate said, picking up the threads of their conversation.

  Jane decided that there was no avoiding this and that she might as well confront the matter head-on. She wasn't about to participate in promoting any kind of falsehood, especially one as misleading as the one that tempted her now.

  "What's wrong? Don't you want to work with me and Dearling?" Mary Kate peered upward, suddenly anxious.

  "It's just that I won't be here this summer," Jane said quietly.

  "Not be here! Why, you have to be here!" Mary Kate exclaimed in real dismay.

  "Duncan and I agreed that I would stay at the ranch until spring," Jane told her as gently as she could.

  Two red patches appeared on Mary Kate's face, one on each round cheek. Her chin jutted in defiance.

  "I don't want you to leave," Mary Kate said from between tight lips.

  "I never meant to stay here," Jane pointed out. "I only stayed because I was sick and couldn't leave."

  "Well, I was talking to Duncan just the other day, and we talked about this summer and the llama cart and everything, and I said you could help maybe, and Duncan said he'd try to talk you into staying longer than spring. So there."

  Jane didn't know how to reply to this. Did Duncan really think she might stay longer?

  Mary Kate appeared tense and fretful when they parted, but Jane waited until after dinner with Duncan that night to broach the subject of her staying until summer. True, she could have let it ride, but she had become sensitive to Mary Kate's emotional makeup, and she didn't think it was wise to raise the child's hopes. Better, she thought, for Mary Kate to know from the outset that Jane was not going to become a permanent fixture at Placid Valley Ranch.

  She chose a quiet moment after dinner when Duncan had finished watching the evening news on TV. He listened carefully while she told him all the reasons that he shouldn't lead Mary Kate to think that she, Jane, was planning to stay at Placid Valley Ranch beyond the time that they had agreed upon.

  Duncan, who was sitting in his big leather chair near the fireplace, stared at the floor in front of the hearth for a long time after Jane finished talking.

  "I suppose I was wrong," he said slowly. "I didn't realize that Mary Kate would take it for granted that you really would stay through the summer. Maybe I encouraged her to think there was a possibility, but I thought she knew that it was just conjecture."

  "She takes everything literally, and she doesn't understand conjecture," Jane told him. "Mary Kate is a child who has experienced enough rejection in her life. I wouldn't want her to think that I'm rejecting her, too."

  Duncan smiled at her. "You've become attached to her, haven't you?" He had a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

  "Well—"

  "I watched you walking up the drive today with Mary Kate holding your hand. You looked as though you belonged together."

  Jane jumped up, suddenly feeling agitated. She stood staring into the fire, trying to sort out her feelings. She had tried to build a relationship with the girl, mostly because she felt sorry for her.

  But to be more honest about it, perhaps the reason that she had grown close to Mary Kate in the short time that she'd been here was that she herself craved closeness. She had Amos, but he wasn't a human being. He couldn't talk to her. But Mary Kate did, and Mary Kate had made her feel welcome here, even needed. Jane had never identified within herself that desire to feel important to someone before, and it came as a surprise to her that the urge existed at all.

  "Mary Kate needs the gentleness of a woman," Duncan said. "It's good that you're here for her."

  Jane whirled and looked at him, but his gaze was too penetrating. She turned away and opened the glass door over the face of the mantel clock. The key lay beside it, and for the next few seconds she wound the clock. It was just busy-work, but something to do with her hands seemed important at this point.

  When she had closed the glass cover again, Duncan said, "You're welcome to stay at Placid Valley Ranch as long as you like, Jane. I thought you knew that."

  Because she didn't know what else to do, Jane sat down on the edge of the raised hearth, the fire warming her back.

  Across the room, Amos lay curled up on the couch, the tip of his tail trailing across his nose.

  "You know the plan," she said.

  "If you want to change our original agreement, we can always renegotiate."

  "You're so kind to me, but I want to be free to set out on a life of my own. To have a home of my own or to find the home I left. To make friends. I want meaningful work that will allow me to be independent. I'm not ungrateful, but now I'm at the point where I can see an end to my quest, and I want to get on with it."

  "You really know w
hat you want, don't you?" he said. His eyes were somber now.

  She nodded.

  "The last time I saw such determination was when my wife left," he said reflectively.

  "You haven't ever spoken of her before," Jane said. She wouldn't have known about Duncan's former marriage if Mary Kate hadn't told her, and she was uncomfortable pursuing the topic.

  "Sigrid found someone else, and she left me a couple of years ago. By the time she'd made up her mind to go, there wasn't anything I could do or say to make her change her mind."

  "Do you ever see her anymore?"

  "No, she lives in Albuquerque with her new husband. We keep in touch, but—" He shrugged.

  The mention of Albuquerque reminded Jane of the pink envelope that had arrived in today's mail. She jumped up and went to the closet, where she rummaged in her coat pocket and produced the envelope. Silently she handed it to Duncan.

  He slit the envelope with a brass letter opener and read the contents quickly. When he had finished, he tossed the pink paper onto a nearby table.

  "Well, what do you know," he said heavily. "It's from Sigrid. She's had a baby girl."

  He looked so sad that Jane sat down on the ottoman in front of his chair. She regarded him with a frown.

  "Duncan, is everything all right? With you, I mean."

  He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. "I thought it was. I figured I had handled the situation with my wife—I mean my ex-wife—pretty well. I was over it. But now I get this birth announcement from her and I feel like going and burying my head in the sand. Explain that." His face, usually so handsome, suddenly seemed to have developed lines where none were before.

  Jane felt at a loss for words. Behind her the fire crackled and spat glowing sparks up the chimney, and outside the wind had picked up. She felt as though she'd like to melt into a small invisible blur rather than talk about this. She'd had so little experience with events that normally occurred in people's lives that she had no store of wisdom from which to draw at the moment. Yet she suspected that she was the only person in Duncan's life with whom he could discuss the things closest to his heart.

  "I can't explain why you feel the way you do, Duncan," Jane said after she had groped within herself to find the right words. "I can only tell you that it seems to me that you're fortunate to have been married once. It must be wonderful to find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, and even if it doesn't work out, at least you have something. For a while."

  "You're right, Jane. It was a good marriage, a strong marriage, for a time. And when it failed..."

  "When it failed, it couldn't have been entirely your fault," she pointed out.

  He focused his eyes on her. "Once I thought it was. I've tempered that judgment, because I see now that we both were at fault. I wasn't sensitive enough to her emotions, or at least I could find no way to let her know that I was, and she was wrong, because she didn't try hard enough to make me understand how important it was for her to know that I cared. And I cared, Jane. I really did."

  "I know you did, Duncan," she said softly.

  "This birth announcement underlines the truth that Sigrid and I can't do it over again. It's too late for that."

  Jane rested her hand on top of his. "Sigrid thinks enough of you to share her news about the baby. You should both congratulate yourselves on managing to split without hard feelings."

  "In a way I wish she hadn't sent the announcement. It makes me see that she's been going forward with her life while mine stood still. She has a husband and child, and I have—well, I have a herd of llamas and a ranch foreman. Oh, and don't forget Mary Kate." He gave a snort, which was probably meant to be a laugh but fell short of the mark.

  Jane was relieved that Duncan was trying to make light of his situation.

  "You've forgotten Amos and me. We're here," she said before she thought.

  His eyes suddenly went bleak. "But only until spring," he said.

  Duncan continued to look at her, and all at once the room seemed too hot, the fire too bright, his expression too needy.

  Overhead the mantel clock's tinny gong struck the hour, and Amos stirred.

  Elaborately casual, Jane stood up. "I guess I'll turn in," she said.

  "It's early," Duncan pointed out.

  Jane faked a yawn. "That walk to the mailbox must have tired me out," she said. It was a lame excuse, but at this point anything would be. Duncan looked as though he was ready to pour out his soul to her, and she wanted to avoid that at any cost. Suddenly she knew that any kind of intimacy was more than she could handle.

  He said nothing, only watched her as she fled, and never had the staircase seemed as long as it did on this night. When she reached her room, she discovered that her heart was pounding out of all proportion to the physical effort involved in running up one flight of stairs.

  Almost immediately she heard Duncan's footsteps mounting the stairs, and she went to her door and listened for the sound of his door latch. She didn't hear it, and presently he walked past her room on his way out of the house. That wasn't so unusual, since he often went over to Rooney's place in the evening.

  It took all her willpower not to open her bedroom door and speak to him as he passed, although she realized with a start after she heard the front door slam that she had no idea what she would have said.

  Chapter 8

  The next day Duncan woke up, looked at himself in the mirror, and said to his reflection, "You fool." After that he cut himself shaving and had to look all over for his styptic pencil, which he never found.

  He was a fool for pouring his feelings out to Jane last night when it obviously made her so uncomfortable. And he was twice a fool because he'd been entertaining the thought that Jane would stay past spring. That particular season, which he had long considered a time for beginnings and renewal, would this year be a time of ending. He found that he didn't relish the idea of her leaving.

  He had grown accustomed to Jane at breakfast, to Jane humming as she dusted the furniture, to Jane folding the clothes fresh from the dryer and looking over her shoulder to greet him when he came in during the day. He had grown accustomed to Jane. Or whoever she was. That her name wasn't really Jane did not matter to him. What mattered was that he had grown to care about her. Her story touched him; he couldn't imagine not having a past.

  His past was with him constantly. He had grown up here on the ranch, helping his father and Rooney with what was essentially a cattle operation in those days. His mother had been a delicate, gentle woman not unlike Jane. They sometimes visited his maternal grandparents in Moscow, Idaho, where his grandfather was a professor at the University of Idaho. His grandparents and his mother always seemed slightly startled that she had married a rancher who was many years her senior and that she now lived on an isolated ranch in Wyoming.

  Duncan was an only child, and there was never any doubt that he was going to take over the ranch when he grew up. His mother, fragile until the end, had died of complications from the flu when he was thirteen. Duncan had vivid memories of the events leading to her death, which was why he was so insistent that Jane take care of herself.

  Then ten years ago, when he was only twenty-two, his father had died. From then on, Duncan had relied on Rooney's help and advice in running the ranch, and when Duncan decided after much thought and study to convert from cattle to a llama-breeding operation, Rooney had encouraged him to ease into this new livestock management program. They both needed a challenge, and llamas could provide it.

  Their venturesome endeavor proved worthwhile. No longer regarded as novelties for zoos and animal parks, llamas had recently come into their own in the United States as pack animals and wool producers. Last year he and Rooney had sold their best breeding female at auction for major money. The sale was a triumph for Placid Valley Ranch, and it validated Duncan's decision to become a llama breeder.

  He couldn't imagine what it was like for Jane, who faced the monumental task of recreating herself after losin
g her memory. What would it be like to have no memory of your heritage and no guidance from the past? How would you know who you were, much less what you wanted to do with your life?

  It was good, he supposed, that Jane had set goals for herself. But why California? Why so far away? Why couldn't she stay here?

  Silly questions. After all, there was no work for her here. There were no apartments such as the one Jane would like to have, and as for friends, well, he and Rooney and Mary Kate were just about it. In town she might meet people, but Durkee, Wyoming, was thirty miles away and consisted of little more than a post office, a gas station and a convenience store where, in a shed out back, the owner sold junk as a sideline. Duncan hardly thought that the town of Durkee was enough to keep Jane here.

  After giving up the search for the styptic pencil, he went downstairs, surprised at how late it was. Jane sat at the kitchen table leafing through his mother's cookbook. She had been learning to cook with mixed results.

  "Good morning," she said brightly. Her hair held the color of the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window; the fine strands shimmered like gold.

  "Good morning," he replied. The place where he had cut himself shaving still smarted.

  They heard footsteps on the back stairs that were followed by Mary Kate's entrance. "Hi, you two. I've brought the Sunday paper."

  This was a weekend ritual in which Duncan had long participated with Mary Kate. She walked to the road and retrieved the Sunday newspaper from the box beside the mailbox, and in return, Duncan read her the comics. This ritual persisted, even though at the age of ten Mary Kate was able to read the funnies to herself. Now she peered through one of the windowpanes in the back door, and he hastened to let her in.

  "Are you ready for me to read the comics to you, Mary Kate?" Duncan asked.

  "As soon as I pet Amos," Mary Kate said, dropping her coat onto the kitchen floor and darting into the living room in pursuit of the cat.

  "Come back and pick up this coat," Duncan ordered. "And hang it in the closet."