by Susan Wiggs
From this vantage point, she could make out two cottages in the distance, both of them all but buried in snow. The Wilson house was the one with the river-stone walls and gabled roof. Beyond that was Willow Lake, as vast and magnificent in winter as it was in summer. It was completely frozen over.
Warm air from the furnace blew gently through a vent in the floor. She felt like standing here all day long, just gazing out at the white world and imagining her future here. Then a movement caught her eye as a group of people came into the front yard. A family, she thought, and then with an odd jolt she recognized Noah Shepherd. He was walking beside a woman in a blue ski jacket and they were towing three small children on a sled.
Oh, she thought. And then, of course. Of course he was married. Of course he was a family man. He was simply too appealing not to be taken. She must have been too confused by her eventful night to realize that.
As she watched, he scooped up the largest of the children, a boy of perhaps six. He swung the kid in the air, eliciting laughter. The two younger ones laughed and clapped their mittened hands. A grown dog and the yellow puppy cavorted together, completing the picture. They made an idyllic-looking family, Sophie observed, the kind depicted on sentimental Christmas cards. As he played with the kids, Noah seemed to be a man completely in his element, the kind of guy who was born to be a dad. He just had that energy about him.
Something didn’t fit, though, Sophie thought as she took her coat from the hall tree and slipped it on. It was the way Noah had looked at her when she’d come down to the kitchen in her negligee. That, and the fact that no woman ever born would have a living room like the one across the hall, with its garage-band setup, neon beer clock on the wall and a display of old license tags and hubcaps on the chair rail.
Stepping out onto the front porch, she paused while the cold air shocked her lungs. Then she waved to get their attention.
Noah spied her and waved back. “Sophie, this is Gayle,” he said. “And these are Henry, Mandy, and the little one’s name is George, but everyone calls him Bear.”
Sophie greeted them, mustering all her best skills of diplomacy. “It’s nice to meet you. It was so good of Noah to help me out last night.”
“Noah’s good to everyone,” Gayle assured her.
Meaning, you’re not so special, thought Sophie.
Then Gayle said, “Well, we’d better get on home. I’ve got something in the oven. See you around, Noah. Nice to meet you, Sophie.”
Each of the children insisted on a big hug from Noah. Then Gayle walked away, towing the sled behind her. Noah stomped the snow from his boots and held open the front door. Sophie went inside, the yellow puppy trotting at her heels. The larger dog went racing up into the woods.
She was feeling…she didn’t know what she was feeling. Mostly a sense of relief that they weren’t his family, after all.
“Gayle lives next door,” Noah was saying, as if she’d asked the question aloud. “She and her kids have cabin fever so they went out for a walk.”
The neighbor, thought Sophie. Not the wife. She shouldn’t feel so relieved, but she did. She wanted Noah to be a good guy, and it turned out he was. So far.
She followed him back to the bright country kitchen.
“Coffee?” Noah offered.
“Yes, please. I’ll help myself.” She didn’t want to feel like a guest here, but he seemed completely at ease with the situation.
Looking around the kitchen, she said, “This is a lot of house for one guy.” Then she realized how that sounded. “I mean, assuming you live alone.”
“I do. This is my family’s house,” he said. “Used to be a dairy farm on the property. My folks closed it down and retired to Florida. When I finished vet school, I decided to set up the practice right here.”
She looked around the old-fashioned kitchen. In contrast to the scrubbed pine table, barn glass cabinets and farm sink, there was an iPod connected to a set of speakers, playing some kind of ska or hip-hop music she didn’t recognize. It was the sort of thing Daisy might like.
“That’s so nice, living in the place you grew up,” Sophie said.
“I guess. Where are you from?” he asked.
“Seattle, but we moved a lot.” Every few years, it seemed, her parents decided to upgrade their lifestyle. Each successive house was more luxurious, each neighborhood more exclusive as her parents’ shared practice became more lucrative. The outward appearance of success and prosperity was important in the Lindstrom family, far more important than Sophie’s attachment to a particular neighborhood or school.
“I used to envy kids like you,” she told him. “Kids who called one place home.”
“Good thing I didn’t hate it here or I would have been shit out of luck.” His smile was edged with mischief.
Sophie turned her thick china coffee mug between her hands. It was imprinted with a picture of a cow at the end of a rainbow and the logo “The Shepherd Dairy, Avalon, New York.”
“This is authentic,” she remarked. “Not one of those faux-vintage things you find in gift shops.”
“It’s the real thing.” He topped off her cup. “So you’ve been living overseas?”
All right, he was curious. She didn’t blame him. The question was, how much should she tell him? “I’ve been living in The Hague. In Holland.” She didn’t know whether or not he’d be familiar with it. “I was an assistant deputy counsel for the International Criminal Court. In the last case I worked on, we prosecuted a warlord who was aligned with a corrupt diamond syndicate.”
“I didn’t realize an American could work there, since the U.S. isn’t a member of that particular court.”
She blinked in surprise. “How did you know?”
“Let’s see, it was in the paper? I do read something besides Large Animal Digest.”
“Sorry. And you’re right, the U.S. is not a member. Neither are China, Iraq or North Korea but we keep hoping…” She let her voice trail off, deciding to keep her politics to herself. “Anyway, yes, there are Americans at the ICC. Besides, my mother is Canadian, so I have dual citizenship.”
He got up and placed a jug of milk and a large white cardboard box on the table. “I stopped by the bakery yesterday before the storm,” he said. “Help yourself.”
Inside she found four perfect, glistening cinnamon rolls. They were from the Sky River Bakery, an institution in Avalon. “Maybe just a half,” she said.
“Come on, live dangerously. Have a whole one.”
“If I stick with my anti-jet-lag diet, I’m supposed to be eating protein this morning—ham and eggs, that sort of thing.”
“I can fix you some eggs but no ham,” he said. “I don’t eat meat. I spent four years learning to heal animals, not cook them and eat them. Meat doesn’t look too appetizing to someone who makes a living keeping animals alive and healthy. Some stuff, I’ll eat,” he added. “Like seafood. I’ve never had a patient who was a shrimp or a trout.”
“I understand,” Sophie said. “That’s…commendable.”
“But weird. Go ahead and say it, you think it’s weird.”
“I don’t think that.” Sophie had sampled everything from steak tartare to whole-roasted cabrito. She’d eaten sheep’s eye in Asia and consumed a traditional Masai concoction of cow’s blood mixed with milk. “My diet’s been adventurous at times,” she said.
“Are you here on vacation, or…?”
She felt the strangest urge to tell him about The Incident, the night she had been dismantled and turned into a different person. But she didn’t, of course. This man was a stranger. A friendly, uncommonly appealing stranger, yes, but she wasn’t about to bare her soul to him.
“I decided to make some changes. I loved my job, but…”
“But now you’re here.”
“Working in The Hague took me away from the things that are most important in life.” So much for not baring her soul. He was just so easy to talk to. “Namely, my family. I realized I couldn’t do both the
job and the family. Something had to give. Working at the ICC is a big deal, but any lawyer with the right training and background can do it.”
Her colleagues told her she was crazy, that what she did was worth any sacrifice, but she didn’t believe that anymore. And she wasn’t sure why, but she suspected Noah Shepherd would understand. “I wanted to live close to my kids. And to my grandson.”
He stopped chewing, stared at her. Then he slugged back a gulp of milk. “I’m sorry. Did you say grandson?”
Sophie smiled. “His name’s Emile Charles Bellamy—Charlie. He’s almost six months old.”
He didn’t bother, as some did, to cover his astonishment. “You sure as hell don’t look old enough to have a grandchild.”
“I get that a lot.” She looked down at her plate and was surprised to see that she’d devoured the entire cinnamon roll.
“Well,” he said, “he’s going to be glad you’re here. My grandmother practically raised me, since my parents were so busy with the dairy. We’re still close. We have lunch together every Sunday. She and her husband live over in Indian Wells.”
Sophie said, “I barely knew any of my grandparents, growing up,” she said. “My mother’s parents lived on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, my father’s in Palm Springs. Sometimes when I see pictures of them, I have the sensation that I’m looking at strangers. Makes me wish I’d known them better. My Canadian grandmother spoke with a slight English accent, and I never had a chance to ask her about herself—her girlhood and how she ended up in Canada.”
“Then it’s cool that you’re here for little…”
“Charlie.” And to be honest, Sophie didn’t know if her being there was cool or not, given the way things were between her and Daisy.
“Did I say something wrong?” Noah asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“You’re looking at me as if I said something wrong. I have sisters. I know what a girl’s face does when a guy says something wrong.”
“And what’s that?”
He reached across the table and gently skimmed his thumb across her brow, eliciting an unexpected shiver of feeling. “It’s the frown, mainly.”
His touch had unsettled her, but in a good way. “You didn’t say anything wrong. I just haven’t had someone actually tell me coming here was a good idea. You didn’t point out the important work I left behind. I got a lot of that from my colleagues at the court.”
“Then you don’t need to hear it from me. Besides, choosing between a job and family is a no-brainer.”
A curious warmth rushed through her. She was amazed to find her throat thick with emotion. She had an uncanny urge to grab his hand, ask him to touch her again. Her wild attraction to this man came as a complete surprise, out of the blue. She found herself studying his lips, his eyes, everything about him. Yet despite the physical attraction, he touched her in a way that was more unexpected—with the way he looked at her and the things he said.
“Okay, now what’s the matter?”
She smiled despite an overwhelming feeling of sadness. “I was just thinking, if someone had said that to me a long time ago, my life would’ve been completely different.”
“And that bums you out.”
“I suppose it does.”
“Then don’t look back. It’s pointless.”
The remark was possibly more therapeutic than hours with her shrink, but Sophie had no idea how to keep misgivings at bay. She had worked so hard to stop herself from drowning in regrets. She couldn’t regret the injustices that had been addressed, thanks to her work. But the harsh reality was, she couldn’t be in two places at one time. She’d made a choice, and her most frequent pastime lately seemed to be tallying up the price her family had paid for that choice. “It’s not that simple.”
He shrugged, got up from the table and put their dishes in the sink. “I figure it’s about as complicated as you make it.”
“Spoken like someone who’s never had children,” she snapped, angered by a feeling of utter vulnerability.
His back was turned, but somehow she knew the verbal barb had hurt him. There was something in his posture, a tightening of his shoulders, perhaps. A defense mechanism? Dear heaven, maybe he did have kids somewhere. Or maybe she was just imagining his reaction. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You struck a nerve, and I struck back.”
He turned to face her. “No prob. What size shoe do you wear?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your shoe size. I was going to find you a better pair of boots.”
“I’m a seven.”
He went to the mudroom and returned with some thick-soled boots, setting them by a furnace register. “My younger sister used to wear these snowmobiling. You can borrow them until you get better equipped for this weather.”
The boots were far from fashionable, but they looked perfectly suited for the snow. “Thanks,” Sophie said. “And thank you for breakfast. It was delicious.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll hike down to the Wilsons’ house,” she suggested. “At least I can get settled.”
“You’re not going anywhere in this by yourself.”
“I’ve survived worse,” she murmured.
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like being taken hostage at gunpoint and plunging off a bridge in a speeding van.”
He laughed heartily at that. “I’ll have to start calling you Xena.”
Good. She wanted him to think she was pulling his leg. Here in this homey farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, it did sound preposterous.
“Tell you what,” he said, “I’ve got some chores to take care of, and then we’ll go down together.”
“I feel as though I should pay you,” she said. “I’ve been a lot of trouble. It seems I’ve taken ‘high maintenance’ to a new level.”
“You know I’m not going to take your money,” he said.
This came as no surprise to her. “Then I’ll find some other way to repay you.”
“Deal,” he said. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”
He went out to do his chores. Sophie had never lived in a place where people did chores. Or visited their neighbors before eight in the morning. Or bottle-fed puppies. Or gave beds to complete strangers.
And she was a stranger. A stranger in a strange land. A stranger to herself. She didn’t recognize her own life anymore. The urban, apartment-dwelling, career-focused Sophie had changed overnight to an unemployed, snowed-in woman in borrowed boots, being looked after by Dr. Doolittle. Her colleagues in The Hague would never believe their eyes if they could see her now.
Nine
Daisy Bellamy worked out her day like a battle commander planning a siege. With the weather so bad and a baby to keep safe, she had to consider each and every detail. She went to the front window and looked out. The snow was still coming down, but lightly now, turning the wide, tree-lined street of wooden houses into a picture postcard. Empty of traffic, it could have been a place from a far-distant time, when people lived their lives at an unhurried pace, and when having a baby at eighteen was considered perfectly normal.
Of course, in the “good old days,” she reminded herself, you had to marry the baby’s father. You didn’t have a choice.
She was totally glad she had a choice.
She stood for a few minutes, watching the scene outside. Clearly she wasn’t the only one in the neighborhood with cabin fever. People were out—guys shoveling their walks, kids in snowsuits building forts or pulling sleds, whip-thin cross-country skiers gliding along, couples heading toward the lake with ice skates slung over their shoulders, others simply out walking, because, despite the cold, the snow was incredibly beautiful.
Daisy planned to go out today, too, although she had a purpose. She and Charlie were meeting with a prospective babysitter. Irma’s house was only a few blocks away, and the walk would do her good. She was starting to feel cooped up in the small, cluttered and overheated house. It would have been perfectl
y reasonable to call Irma and cancel due to weather, but Daisy really wanted Charlie to spend some time there before he had to go to a sitter regularly. As soon as winter classes started at the state college, Charlie was going to stay with Irma for four hours a day, three days a week.
On paper, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Now that she was going to actually do it, the hours seemed cruelly long.
Chin up, Daisy told herself. This wasn’t supposed to be easy. She’d done things that were much harder.
Preparing for her trek down the road, she bundled Charlie into his snowsuit and then painstakingly threaded his legs through the carrier, following each step as she strapped it to herself. At six months of age, Charlie was usually up for anything, and the carrier was no exception. Now they were face-to-face and Daisy’s hands were free. She adjusted the straps and put on her oversize down parka, zipping it over the carrier.
“I refuse to go near a mirror,” she said, pulling on her hat and gloves. “I know I look ginormous.”
Finally ready, she stepped out onto the front porch. The cold sweet air tasted like freedom. Before she started walking, she went through a mental checklist, which was part of the routine. Wallet, check. Keys, check. Diaper bag with enough supplies to outfit a day care center, check. Cell phone…oops. It was still stuck in its charger on the kitchen counter. The small oversight created a major dilemma. Her keys were in a pocket that was only accessible if she unzipped, exposing Charlie to the cold. Not only was that bad for him, he’d probably start crying, and she didn’t want to arrive at Irma’s with a crying baby.
Okay, forget the phone. People got along fine before such things. And she didn’t need it going off, anyway. Half the time, she couldn’t find it in all her pockets, and besides, Irma lived right down the street. Still, as she set out along a just-cleared sidewalk, a knot of guilt formed in her stomach. She hoped that lump she felt in the unreachable pocket really was a wad of keys. Locking herself out had been last month’s screwup. She seemed to make every mistake in the book, but at least each mistake came around only once.