by Wind, Ruth
“As long as we’re together, I don’t care where we live.”
“Good.” He touched her nose lightly. “I think we should go tell Giselle.”
Jessie laughed. “Oh, yes.”
They found her and Daniel sitting on the swing set just beyond the door to the kitchen. Jessie glanced inside the door as they passed and saw Mary, who waved at her, smiling broadly when she saw Luke and Jessie hand in hand.
Luke let Jessie’s hand go and went to stand before the little girl on the swing. Very seriously, he sank to a squat and took her hands. Giselle looked suddenly wary.
“Since I have no parents and no one to give me a blessing,” Luke said quietly, “I want to ask you if you will give me permission to marry your mother.”
Giselle’s mouth dropped open. She looked from Luke to her mother, standing a few feet back, then to Daniel and back to Luke. “You mean we’ll all live together in one house?”
“Yeah,” Luke said.
Giselle stood up and whooped, a wild animal cry of joy, then leapt into Luke’s arms. “Yes!” she cried.
Jessie blinked back tears. Daniel waited, standing quietly to one side. She smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back. He looked weary, a little lonely, outcast from the picture he’d helped create, but also misplaced now from the place he’d once held. When Luke turned, Giselle on his hip, to take her inside, Jessie said, “Go ahead. We’ll be there in a minute.”
Luke touched her arm and nodded, then ducked inside with his child, leaving Jessie and Daniel in the stillness of the dying day. Jessie just looked at him for a long moment, seeing a kaleidoscopic whirl of images overlaying the present view of him—Daniel taking her to the hospital, Daniel bullying her into one project or another, Daniel earnestly learning computers at UNM at thirty-two years old…
She took a deep breath at the loneliness in his eyes now. “Daniel, my friend,” she said in Navajo, holding out her hands—and couldn’t go on.
Slowly a smile dawned on his face, one of pride and gentleness. He stepped forward and hugged her. “Ah, Jessie. I’m going to miss you.”
All these years and she had never guessed, not even for a moment, that he’d ever had anything but friendly intentions. She hugged him back, fiercely. “It won’t be the same anymore, will it?”
She pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “Daniel—I—” She broke off, then continued, “Thank you. I can never repay you.”
“No, my friend,” he said quietly and let her go, holding just her arms. “It’s I who can never repay you.” He twitched his lips. “Go on, now. He’s waiting. I’ve worked hard for this. Don’t cheat me of the payoff.”
She tiptoed up to kiss his cheek, a quiet and simple mark on the end of the friendship that had meant so much to her over the years. She knew she wouldn’t lose him, that he would always be a part of their lives, but from this moment forward, there were always going to be differences.
Then she turned quickly and headed back into the kitchen, where the women were beginning to serve the evening meal.
Chapter Sixteen
On Christmas Eve, Jessie waited on the bridge over Helen Hunt Falls. Around her, fat snowflakes drifted down from a pearlescent bank of clouds. The pines and spruce held a vast silence, a silence echoed by the gathering people below. It was a small number. Giselle, Marcia and Daniel.
And Luke. He stood at the edge of Helen Hunt Falls, his face turned toward her. He wore a suit made of soft gray flannel, and a crisp white shirt with a silver bolo tie. His black hair shone with the fiery gloss of recent washing, and snowflakes stuck in starry clusters in the heavy strands.
Next to him, Giselle for once stood utterly still, dressed in a soft white dress covered with lace, tied in back with a big blue sash. Blue ribbons were laced into her braid. In her hands she held a spray of white carnations.
Jessie looked at Marcia, who smiled and lifted her violin. As she began to play, Jessie shifted her shawl on her shoulders and clasped her own white carnations more tightly, then turned and began the slow descent to the foot of the stairs. The long fringes of the shawl Marcia had given her as a wedding present brushed her thighs and swung in a seductive rhythm around her hips.
She took Luke’s outstretched hand, feeling a jolt at the almost overwhelming beauty of him standing there, love shining from his liquid eyes. With a sudden sense of mischief, Jessie leaned forward and so low no one else could hear, she murmured, “Alessandro, I presume?”
He laughed outright, squeezing her fingers tightly before he tucked them under his arm and turned them to face the minister.
Jessie tried to concentrate, she really did. The ceremony and setting were beautiful. It should have been sacred, solemn, holy. And it was, but she was also so blindingly happy, she couldn’t stop grinning. And Luke seemed to be having the same problem. He nudged her at one point and pretended to eat the flower on his lapel, a glitter in his eyes. Jessie playfully lifted her bouquet for his perusal, and he opened his mouth—
“Do you, Jessie, take this man…” the minister said in a slightly reproving voice.
She looked up and struggled with straightening her mouth into a semblance of sobriety. “Yes,” she said, and a bubble of laughter burst from her chest when she looked at him.
“Do you, Luke, take this woman…”
He turned and the same wild giddiness was in his eyes, on his mouth, but Jessie saw tears of emotion in his eyes, too. And unaccountably, she realized there were tears streaming down her face, no doubt smearing and streaking her careful makeup.
“Yes,” he declared.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the minister said. “You may—”
But he was too late because Luke had already drawn Jessie into his arms and he was kissing her, their tears mingling on their lips, with the cool taste of snowflakes. Giselle and Marcia cheered, and even Daniel made whooping noises.
Luke lifted his head. “At last.”
Jessie smiled up at him, holding still her secret close to her heart. “Oh, yes. At last.”
* * *
They waited, at Mary Yazzie’s insistence, to hold a reception until they returned to the land. There, in the same hall in Shiprock where the meetings had been held, they had a celebration, with drums and dancing.
As Jessie sat there listening to the heartbeat of the drum, watching Luke and Giselle dance, she smiled over the subjects she had to paint now—all the weavers and the grandmothers, the young dancing girls. But also the great stretches of desert with their jagged, shadowed arroyos and the yucca washed with fingers of sunsets. Oh, yes. There were many things she wanted to paint.
The dance ended and Luke came over, one of the grandmothers in tow. He was grinning with that mischievous expression in his eyes, and Jessie cocked her head. “What do you have up your sleeve?” she asked.
Playfully, he lifted his wrists and looked down. “Nothing.” He laughed. “Grandmother has something for you.”
The old woman smiled and gave Jessie a weaving. Surprised and touched, she shot Luke a quizzical glance. He lifted his eyebrows, but anticipation shone in his face.
Jessie unfolded the soft weaving and saw stylized blue jays woven into the pattern. Stunned, she glanced up to the old woman, who spoke in Navajo. “You’re a blue jay,” she said, and laughed.
Luke explained, “I asked her to weave it before we went back to the Springs. She thought I was crazy, but told me she was happy with it when she finished.” He grinned. “She started to like them after she watched them for a while.”
Jessie touched the brilliant blue of the birds in the weaving and thought with joy that blue jays were the right symbol for all of them—for Luke and Jessie and even the weavers, who all began outside and had come inside a circle of warmth and love, where they had all grown sassy and strong.
Jessie lifted her head. “Thank you,” she said in her still terrible Diné. The old woman patted her shoulder.
“Come on and dance,” Luke urged, grabbing her hand.
“Wait a minute,” she said, tugging his fingers. “I have a present for you, too.”
“Yeah? What?” He looked around for some package or something.
She chuckled and turned his hand to press his palm against her belly.
“A baby?” he whispered.
Jessie nodded.
He laughed and kissed her, then pulled back and made a whooping sound. “Come on and dance with me, both of you.”
And Jessie followed, to dance with him to a new song, a lasting song of love.
~~###~~
With love to Aggie, Robert, David, Tex, Jimmy 1 and Jimmy 2, Ed, Bill, Cheyenne, Danny and all the others.
And for Luke, with many thanks. Bon voyage, my friend.
BARBARA SAMUEL O'NEAL
Barbara Samuel (also known as Barbara O’Neal) is the bestselling author of more than 40 books, and has won Romance Writers of America’s RITA award an astounding six times, and she has been a finalist 13 times. Her books have been published around the world, including France, Germany, Italy, and Australia/New Zealand, among others. One of her recent women’s fiction titles, The Lost Recipe for Happiness (written as Barbara O’Neal) went back to print eight times, and her book How to Bake a Perfect Life was a Target Club pick in 2011.
Whether set in the turbulent past or the even more challenging present, Barbara’s books feature strong women, families, dogs, food, and adventure—whether on the road or toward the heart.
Now living in her hometown of Colorado Springs, Barbara lives with her partner, Christopher Robin, an endurance athlete, along with her dog and cats. She is an avid gardner, hiker, photographer and traveler who loves to take off at dawn to hike a 14er or head to a faraway land. She loves to connect with readers and is very involved with them on the Internet.
You may read more about Barbara’s books at her main website, find her at her A Writer Afoot blog and on Facebook. She also blogs regularly at The Lipstick Chronicles.
Visit Barbara on the Web!
www.BarbaraSamuel.com
www.AWriterAfoot.com
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~~~
BONUS MATERIAL
Please enjoy excerpts of three of Barbara's other books: How to Bake a Perfect Life, Rainsinger and Dancing Moon. Additional books are listed at the end of the excerpts or click HERE to jump there.
Barbara is very active writing new books and converting her backlist into eBooks. To find the most up to date information, please visit her website.
HOW TO
BAKE A
PERFECT
LIFE
(Excerpt)
by
Barbara O'Neal
Published by Bantam Books (Jan 2011)
Excerpted from How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal. Copyright © 2011 by Barbara Samuel. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Step One
STARTER
Sourdough starter, or mother dough as it is known, is made from wild yeast living invisibly in the air. Each sponge is different, according to the location it is born, the weather, the time of its inception, and the ingredients used to create it. A mother dough can live for generations if properly tended, and will shift and grow and transform with time, ingredients, the habits of the tender.
The Boudin mother dough, used to create the famously sour San Francisco bread was already fifty years old when it was saved from the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 by Louise Boudin, who carried the mother dough to Golden Gate Park in a wooden bucket. There it was packed in ice and used to make bread daily until a new bakery could be built at its current location. The mother dough, now more than 150 years old, is stored in a vault, "like a wild beast," and bread is made from it every day.
CHAPTER ONE
When the phone call that we have been dreading comes, my daughter and I are gathered around the center island of the Bread of Life kitchen. Sofia is leafing though a magazine, the slippery pages floating down languidly, one after the next.
I am experimenting with a new sourdough starter in an attempt to reproduce a black bread I tasted at a bakery in Denver a couple of weeks ago. This is not my own, treasured starter, handed down from my grandmother Adelaide's line, rumored to be over a hundred years old. That "mother dough", as it is called, has won my breads some fame and I guard it jealously.
This new starter has been brewing for nearly ten days. I began with boiled potatoes mashed in their water, then set aside in a warm spot. Once it began to brew and grow, I fed it daily with rye flour, a little whole wheat and malt sugar, and let it ferment.
On this languid May afternoon, I hold the jar up to examine it. The sponge is alive and sturdy, bubbling with cultures. A thick layer of dark brown hooch, the liquid alcohol generated by the dough, stands on top. When I pull loose wrap off the top of the bottle and stick my nose in, it is agreeably, deeply sour. I shake the starter, stick my little finger in, taste it. "Mmm. Perfect."
Sofia doesn't get as worked up over bread as I do, though she is a passable baker. She smiles, and her hand moves over her belly in a slow, warm way. Welcoming. It's her left hand, the one with the wedding set—diamond engagement ring, gold band. The baby is due in less than eight weeks. Her husband is in Afghanistan.
We have not heard from him in four days.
I remember when her small body was curled up beneath my ribs, when I thought I was going to give her away, when the feeling of her moving inside of me was both a terror and a wonder. If only I could keep her that safe now.
The bakery is closed for the day. Late afternoon sunshine slants in through the windows and boomerangs off the stainless steel so intensely that I have to keep moving around the big center island to keep it out of my eyes. The kneading machines are still as I stir together starter and molasses, water and oil and flour, until it's a thick mass I can turn out on to the table with a heavy splat. Plunging my hands into the dark sticky blob, I scatter the barest possible amounts of rye flour over it, kneading it in a little at a time. The rhythm is steady, smooth. It has given me enviable muscles in my arms.
"What do you want for your birthday?" Sofia asks, flipping a page.
"It's ages away!"
"Only a couple of months."
"Well, I guess as long as there are no black balloons, I'm good." Last year, my enormous family—at least those members who are still speaking to me — felt bound to present me with graveyard cakes and make jokes about crow's feet, which thanks to my grandmother Adelaide's cheekbones, I do not have.
"A person only has to suffer through one 40th birthday in a lifetime." Sofia turns a page. "How about this?" She holds up an ad for a lavish emerald necklace. "Good for your eyes."
"Tiffany. Perfect." At the moment, I'm so broke a bubble gum ring would be expensive, though of course Sofia doesn't know that the bakery is in trouble. "You can buy it for me when you're rich and famous."
"When I am that superstar kindergarten teacher?
"Right."
"Deal."
I push the heel of my palm into the dough and it squeezes upward, cool and clammy. An earthy bouquet rises from it, and I'm anticipating how the caramelizing molasses will smell as it bakes.
A miller darts between us, flapping dusty wings in sudden terror. Sofia waves it away, frowning. "I hope we're not going to have a crazy miller season this year."
"'The first moths of summer suicidal came,'" I sing, a line from a Jethro Tull song, and for a minute, I'm lost in another part of my life, another summer. Shaking it off, I fold the dough. "It's been a wet year." "Ugh. I hate them." She shudders to give emphasis. Then she closes her magazine and squares her shoulders. "Mom, there's something I've been meaning to talk to you about."
Finally. "I'm listening."
She spills it, fast. "I told you Oscar's ex-wife has been arrested in El Paso
and Katie has been living with her best friend's family, but Oscar really wants her to come and live with me. Us. She's got some problems, I won't lie, but she just needs somebody to really be there for her." Sofia has eyes like a plastic Kewpie doll, all blink and blueness with a fringe of blackest lashes. "She can sleep upstairs, in the back room. Close to me. She lived with us before Oscar went to Afghanistan. It was fine."
"Hmmm. I seem to remember she more or less hated you."
"Okay, it wasn't fine. Exactly." Sofia bows her head. Light arcs over her glossy, glossy dark hair. "She was pretty angry then."
"And she's happy now?" I scatter flour over the dough and table where it is beginning to stick. "Because her mother is in jail and her father is at war?"
"No. I mean—"
The phone rings. I glance at it, then back to my daughter. Obviously there is no possible way I can say no. The child has nowhere to go, but—
To give myself a little time, I tug my hands out of the dough, wipe them off with one of the thin white cotton towels I love for covering the loaves when they rise. "How old is she?"
A second ring.
"Thirteen. Going into eighth grade."
"Middle school." Not the most delightful age for girls. Even Sofia was a pain at that age—all huffy sighs and hair-flinging drama. And tears. Tears over everything.
The phone rings again, and I hold up a finger to Sofia. "Hold that thought. Hello?"
"Good morning, ma'am," says a deep, formal voice on the other end. "May I please speak with Mrs. Oscar Wilson?"
Every atom in my body freezes for the space of two seconds. Here it is, the moment I've been half-dreading since Sofia came home four years ago, her eyes shining. Mama, he's the most wonderful man! He wants to marry me.
A soldier. An infantryman who'd already done two tours of Iraq during the bloodiest days of the war, and would likely do more. Oscar is older than Sofia by more than a decade, divorced, and father to this brand-new adolescent who has a very troubled mother.