Winter Woods

by ID Johnson

  “No, because you do.” The answer came from Gramps, who was no longer laughing. “Come on now, Memphis. It’s been obvious to all of us since the first day you met her that you’re interested in this girl. Why don’t you just admit it?”

  It was a good question. Maybe because admitting it meant he’d need to do something about it, and he wasn’t ready to move across the country based on a small possibility that she might also be interested in him, not when he’d already found out the hard way true love isn’t always what it seems. “Gramps,” he said, running his hand through his hair, “Olivia is a great girl. Not just beautiful, but smart, funny, all the things I’ve been looking for in a woman. But… she lives here. And I don’t.”

  “You could…” Nash began, but Memphis cut him off.

  “I know I could move out here, work for dad, give things a try with Olivia. But I’m not sure I’m ready for that right now, okay?”

  “Listen brother, I know it’s been hard since Ellen left,” Nash said, scooting forward on the couch. “What she did to you…”

  “Sucked!” Gramps supplied the word, and they both looked at him surprised, but he only nodded.

  “Yeah, it did,” Nash agreed. “But it’s been six months. You can’t keep yourself hidden away from the world in a hotel room or an oil rig forever. You’ve got to get back out there.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” Memphis said, steeling himself against his own emotions, “but I really don’t think it’s wise to get involved with someone who lives worlds away.”

  “Who said anything about being wise?” Gramps asked, the smile back. “Matters of the heart and matters of the mind are seldom similar.”

  “That’s true. If I hadn’t taken a chance and asked Laney out when I met her on a trip, I never would’ve known the love of my life. I wouldn’t have a perfect wife and a beautiful baby on the way. Sometimes you’ve just got to put yourself out there and take a chance,” Nash agreed.

  Memphis shook his head and moved one of his checkers without giving it another thought. For some reason, beating Gramps no longer seemed important. “I hear what you’re saying, but it’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be.”

  “Seems pretty simple to me,” Gramps said, jumping both of Memphis’s remaining pieces. “Seems like she’s got you so you can’t even think straight.” He didn’t gloat—winning was old hat to Gramps.

  Leaning back in the chair, Memphis said, “I’ll think about it, okay?”

  “And pray about it,” Gramps added.

  “Now you sound like Mom.”

  “Well, she’s a wise woman,” Gramps concluded. “Now, Nash, I believe it is your turn. Are you ready to take on your old grandpa in a game of checkers?”

  “Where’s Dad? Isn’t it his turn?”

  “No, he’s still upstairs crying over losing to me this morning.”

  “I think he’s actually reading a book,” Memphis corrected, a crooked smile forming on his lips at the thought of his grandpa making his dad cry over a game. He wouldn’t mind seeing it.

  “Either way, Nash, you’re up.”

  With a groan, the older brother stood, waiting for Memphis to vacate the chair, which he did. Now that Gramps had another victim, Memphis decided to go back upstairs and read some more of the book he’d downloaded the night before when they still had full power and WiFi. He didn’t normally like romance novels, but this one intrigued him, and he needed to see how it turned out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Once again, Olivia woke up in the chair with an aching neck and shoulder, but this time something was a little different. She realized almost immediately that the power was on. “Thank goodness!” she exclaimed to no one, tossing the blanket on the floor and stretching. While having electricity only in a few rooms had been better than nothing, being able to plug in her laptop next to the chair would make life easier.

  The snow had stopped sometime the afternoon before, and the sun had come out in all its glory. The drastic change was a bit hard to grasp, but Olivia had been happy to see the sun. She hadn’t gone outside at all the day before, deciding there was really no reason to. Instead, she’d spent most of the day in the chair writing. As a result, she was well ahead of where she intended to be and could actually see herself finishing her first draft in the next couple of days. Since the next day was New Year’s Eve, she thought there was a good chance she might be able to spend New Year’s Day with her family after all.

  She downed a fresh cup of coffee before heading up the ladder to take a shower. Now that the sun was out and the snow was beginning to melt, she wanted to take another trip through the woods, just in case she didn’t get another chance before she decided to head home. As soon as she finished the chapter she was working on, she’d head out.

  Standing in the shower with the warm water cascading over her, she thought about how she’d considered asking Memphis to go to the church with her. She thought he might appreciate the little chapel as much as she did. Now, she didn’t think she’d even see him again. It was hard to imagine one little offhanded comment could do so much damage, but then, it was just as well if he was that afraid of getting involved with someone. Maybe she’d done herself a favor in cutting short whatever was going on between them.

  Olivia stepped out of the shower and went about getting ready for her day. Her attempts at pushing thoughts of Memphis aside and concentrating on the ending of her book were much more successful than they had been the day before, and once she was snuggled back into her chair with her laptop open, she was ready to focus on Margot’s choice, not the cowboy in the cabin down the lane.

  A few paragraphs into her writing, there was a familiar knock on the door. At first Olivia considered maybe Nash had just altered his technique, but she knew in her heart it was Memphis. While part of her was happy she’d get to see him again after all, she was also a bit leery of opening the door. Was she just setting herself up for heartache all over again?

  Tempting as it was to put on her best scary voice once more and tell him to go away, she decided to see what he wanted. Bracing herself, she crossed the room and opened the door. A bright stream of sunlight met her eyes, and there in the center of it, a caramel-haired cowboy smiled, his brown eyes nothing but warm and friendly.

  “Good morning, Olivia. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Good morning,” she replied, brushing her hair over her shoulders. “No, I’ve been up for a while.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t make it by yesterday. Gramps is almost impossible to beat at checkers, and I really thought I had him that time.”

  At least his story was the same as Nash’s. “I take it you didn’t quite pull it off then?” She smiled, but she knew it didn’t meet her eyes.

  “Nah, I fell a bit short.” He looked slightly disappointed, and Olivia wondered if Gramps was really just that good. “Anyway, I hope Nash didn’t give you a hard time.’

  “No, he was very nice,” Olivia shrugged. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would trouble a woman he didn’t know, but then, she had only talked to him briefly.

  “Good. Everything okay this morning? Sounds like the generator’s still running.”

  “Yes. The power came back on, but I haven’t gone and turned off the generator. I guess I need to do that.” It hadn’t even crossed her mind to do so, but it made sense that it would be necessary.

  “I’ll get it,” he offered. It was still a bit chilly out, though the scarf he’d wound around his face the other night was now hanging fairly loosely around his neck.

  “Are you sure?” While she thought she could handle it, there was a chance she’d have no idea how to turn it off. It would probably only take him a few seconds. Her dad usually took care of things like that. Even though he tried to teach his daughters to be self-sufficient, and she could start a fire, Olivia wasn’t sure she actually knew how to change her own tire or replace a blown fuse.

  “It’s no problem,” Memphis assured her, taking a step backwa
rd. “I did want to ask you something else though.”

  Olivia caught her breath, wondering what that might be. “Yes?”

  “Would you like to go for a walk? That is… if you have time. I hear there’s a little chapel out in the woods somewhere. I thought we might see if we can find it. It’s supposed to be pretty old.”

  She tried not to put too much thought into the fact that they’d both planned the same expedition. “I’ve been there a few times,” she nodded. “I know exactly where it is. It’s beautiful. I love to go in there and sit in the peace and quiet.”

  “You’ve been there? That’s cool. Do you have time this morning to show me where it’s at?”

  “I do,” Olivia replied. “In fact, I was hoping you’d come by so that we could go for a walk together anyway.” She hoped she wasn’t being too forward again, but taking a walk and proclaiming her love were not on the same level. Surely admitting to Memphis that she’d been thinking about the same thing he was now proposing wouldn’t do any harm.

  Memphis smiled, and Olivia’s concerns were put at ease. “That’s good to hear,” he said. “Let me just go turn off the generator while you put on your boots, and I’ll be right back.”

  “Okay.” She gave him another smile and then closed the door, thinking that watching him walk around the porch to the side of the yard might be a little odd, even though she had trouble pulling her eyes away from him.

  Olivia grabbed her warmest boots and shoved her feet in them. She tugged on her coat, zipped it, pulled on her gloves, and wound her own scarf around her neck. Remembering how cold the chapel had been, and thinking it might still be full of snow, she grabbed a throw blanket off of a pile in the corner and tossed it over her arm.

  She met Memphis in the yard over near where her car had been parked when the tree branch fell on it. “Everything all right with the generator?” she asked.

  “I think so.” He smiled at her, and she wondered if it was at anything in particular or just general friendliness. “What’s the blanket for?”

  “Well, it’s a little chillier in the chapel, since the sun only makes it through a few holes in the roof and what used to be windows. I thought, if we can get in, we might need it.”

  He took the blanket from her and said, “All right then. Lead the way.”

  Olivia smiled and headed off into the winter woods, careful to watch her step. A lot of the snow seemed to have melted off yesterday afternoon and into this morning. It had gotten below freezing the night before, causing some icy patches where puddles had begun to form in the sun, so she chose her foot placement carefully. Once they got deeper into the woods where the sun had more trouble penetrating the treetops, the snow wouldn’t have melted and frozen again, so it wouldn’t be so icy.

  The noise of birds chirping and animals playing in the distance greeted them as they began to wind their way through the evergreens. The smell of fresh snow on cedar filled Olivia’s lungs, and she breathed it in deeply. Everything felt crisp and alive. Some people may have associated winter with death and a long sleep, but in Olivia’s mind, it was when the world renewed itself, a time for new beginnings and second chances.

  “What do you think of the snow?” Olivia asked walking close enough to Memphis to stay together but not so close as to invade his personal space.

  “I love it,” he replied. “When I was a kid, I’d beg Mom to take us to her parents’ house for Christmas break so we could play in the snow. Of course, they didn’t always have it in Tennessee either, but there was a much better chance of snow there than in south Texas.”

  “Do you ever get any snow around Houston?”

  “A couple of times when I was in high school we got an inch or so, but that’s nothing compared to this, and it melted away almost immediately.”

  “Wow—no, that’s not really anything compared to what we get in the winter.” She could hear the stream in the distance and headed that direction.

  “When I was at college, in Missouri, we’d get quite a bit a few times a year. That’s how I learned to drive in it. In Texas, if it even rains heavy in the winter, some folks aren’t sure how to drive on it.”

  “Doesn’t it rain a lot in Houston?” she asked. She’d never been there, but she thought it had a more tropical climate.

  “It rains a little bit almost every day most months of the year, but not usually a cold rain. That’s when we really get into trouble. Even as far north as Dallas, people have difficulty driving in freezing rain, sleet, that sort of thing. I was surprised when I went farther north just how unaffected people were by winter weather.”

  Olivia laughed. “Yeah, we get used to it really quickly or else we spend a lot of time indoors.” They stepped into the clearing, and she could see the stream ahead. It didn’t seem to be flowing as quickly today, and she assumed that was because of all of the ice that must have formed upstream.

  “Is that the same creek that flows past our cabin?” Memphis asked, stopping several feet short of the water.

  “It is. Part of it, anyway. I think it joins up with several other streams before it makes its way to the cabin. We used to have so much fun jumping across it when I was younger.” She took a few steps closer and he grabbed her arm. “What?” Olivia asked, wondering if he was afraid of water. Surely not since he had come here to fish.

  “It’s just hard to tell where the shoreline actually is,” Memphis explained. “There’s snow over ice here, and while it looks narrow, it might not be. Especially since there’s got to be run off from snow melting further upstream.”

  Olivia raised her eyebrows, thinking he was being overly cautious. “I’ve never seen this part of the stream more than two feet wide,” she assured him. Rather than make him feel uncomfortable, she decided to take an alternate approach. “There’s a bridge up here a little way.”

  “Good,” Memphis nodded, letting go of her arm. He followed as Olivia led him around the bend where they could both clearly see the rickety old footbridge.

  “Part of my training to go out on the rig as a supervisor involved water rescue, including cold water rescue. Have you ever been in freezing cold water before?” he asked from behind her as she made her way to the familiar landmark.

  “I can’t say that I have,” she admitted, stopping short of the bridge. “It doesn’t sound pleasant, though.”

  “It isn’t. We had to submerge in water just above freezing and try to swim in it. They carefully monitored us to make sure we didn’t get hypothermia, but there were a few guys who took days to recover.”

  “Why did you need cold water rescue training for the Gulf?” Olivia asked, resting one hand on the bridge and turning to face him.

  “So far, I’ve only been contracted to rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but there are other places they may need to send me, and some of them might be in harsher environments.”

  She nodded. That made perfect sense. “Well, luckily, we have this state of the art feat of mechanical engineering to cross over on.”

  Memphis chuckled. “It looks like it’ll hold, but I’m afraid this bridge has seen better days.”

  Olivia turned and started across, noticing he was waiting for her to reach the other side before he crossed. She and her siblings had run across this bridge, even jumped up and down on it, dozens of times. She knew it didn’t look sound, but she was certain it was safe. Once she reached the far side, Memphis took the few steps over and joined her on the opposite bank. She looked at him amusedly but didn’t say anything.

  “I know. I’m overly cautious. But that’s just because I know how structures like this are made. And I know how little it can take to break them.”

  “You’re the engineer,” she replied with a shrug and a smile. She turned in the direction of the church, and at the sight of the white building peeking through the trees, her heart warmed a bit.

  “Where did you go to school?” Memphis asked, walking beside her now.

  “West Virginia State in Morgantown,” Olivia replied, putting her
hands in her coat pockets. “There were other larger schools I could’ve gone to, but I knew I wanted to study creative writing, and that’s not really the sort of degree that looks best on resumes from a particular school. So I chose one that gave me a small academic scholarship.”

  “Have you ever had a job other than writing?” he asked.

  “I have done a few odd jobs in order to pay the bills while I was figuring out how to write a best-seller. But nothing that lasted more than a few months. I’m just not the type of person who excels under the direction of others,” she explained. The snow wasn’t as deep here but it was still a little difficult to walk through so she took her time.

  “Does that mean you don’t like to be bossed around?” Memphis asked. She turned to look at him and could see he was fighting a smile.

  “Something like that, I guess,” Olivia shrugged. “My mind works differently than most people’s. I have my own way of doing things. Most of the time it involves getting lost in a daydream for a long period of time and then rushing to finish whatever I was asked to do.”

  “So you’re one of those creative thinkers?” he asked.

  “I guess I’d have to be.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Memphis replied.

  “What about you? Do you create anything?”

  “I pick at the guitar some, but no, I don’t really write my own music or anything like that. I guess I’ve always been more logical, more focused on fixing other people’s problems.”

  “What about design? That takes creativity. Don’t engineers do a lot of that?”

  “Some do,” he admitted. “I mean… yes, I suppose in that way I’m creative. I can design a new product to replace an old one, or figure out a way to make it better. But it’s not the same sort of art you’re talking about.”

  “I guess it just depends on how you look at it,” Olivia replied. She stepped through the tree line, Memphis following, and the chapel sat before them. Snow had drifted up to the sides, nearly reaching the windows in some places, ice clung to the panes of glass that were left, and the roofline was crowned in icicles. Olivia caught her breath. It looked so beautiful glistening in the sunlight.