Leslie heard the longing in Sarah's voice. "You wish she was here, don't you?"
Sarah's eyes shimmered in the firelight. "She'd have known just what to say, or told me a story about heartbreak leading to triumph, one of her it'll-all-turn-out-in-the-end stories."
They sat in silence for a long while, watching the fire. Leslie found herself nodding off. "I'm going to turn in. I have a feeling morning comes early here."
"It's spectacular," Sarah said with a sigh. "Pleasant dreams."
Leslie glanced back when she reached the door to her room. Sarah was wiping something from her cheek. "Pleasant dreams to you too," she whispered.
11
Bring me my bow of burning god
Bring me my arrows of desire…
(William Blake)
Leslie rolled over and sighed deeply into her soft pillow. Her third morning at the farm was starting off just like the first two. The warm bed, utter quiet and gray light urged her to go back to sleep. The electric blanket was humming a lullaby.
The first day it had been after ten before she'd finally managed to stir, but today was Christmas, and she could hear Sarah in the kitchen.
She took a quick shower and rummaged in her suitcase for the comfortable leggings and sweater she'd brought with her. She slipped the gift she'd brought for Sarah into her pocket.
Sarah was dropping spoonfuls of dough onto a cookie sheet. She looked up and said, "You missed the sunrise again."
"Merry Christmas to you too."
Sarah's lips curved into the smile Leslie had come to love. "Merry Christmas, sleepyhead."
"It must be the mountain air." Leslie poured herself a cup of coffee and then leaned inquisitively over the bowl of dough. "Scones?"
"Cinnamon scones," Sarah said. "I hope they turn out."
"I'm sure they won't suck."
Sarah shot her a grin. "You're so supportive."
"I try. What can I make?"
"Nothing at all — I've got it covered."
She wandered back to the living room window to see if the landscape had changed. It was highly satisfactory that it had not.
She found every view from every window of the cabin captivating. Snow draped every surface outside, even the rental car. Sarah had obviously been out for a walk — her footprints were the only break in the smooth white powder in front of the house. The footprints disappeared into the trees in the direction of a ridge Sarah said provided the most spectacular view in the area.
The trees were a mix of fir and aspen. The old green firs were flocked with snow. White powder drifted slowly to the ground with each puff of wind. She caught her breath — the sun was coming out for a few moments. Brilliant gold light streamed across the landscape catching the ice-covered limbs of aspen in a radiant display of rainbow colors. Then the sun was gone and the gray light returned, but even that was tinted with the lavender hues of the aspen brushing against the sky.
"Isn't it amazing when it does that?"
Leslie couldn't believe she hadn't heard or felt Sarah coming up behind her, not when it seemed her entire body was attuned to Sarah's every move. "It still takes my breath away." She reached into her pocket and turned. "Merry Christmas."
"What's this?" Sarah took the small box. "You are — so sweet. I didn't get you anything."
"This is something I already had and I think of you every time I see it — so I think you should have it."
Sarah opened the box and Leslie was pleased to see a smile flicker across her face. "I couldn't... could I?"
"You can. It's you."
Sarah lifted the enameled pendant out of the box. "Where did you get it?"
"It was a gift from Alan. He said that was how he saw me, but I never thought it was me. But it is you. She even looks like you."
Sarah went to the mirror over the curio cabinet, and held the pendant against her sweater. Leslie compared the lithe figure of Diana drawing her bow to her mental image of Sarah drawing a bow while clad only in a skimpy Roman toga. She was still blushing when she realized Sarah was staring at her in the mirror.
"What can I say? Thank you."
"You don't think it's tacky that I gave you something my ex-husband gave me?"
"Not at all — it's lovely. Wasn't Diana pure of heart?"
"She was. Chaste, beautiful and deadly to any who offended her."
Sarah slipped the thin black cord over her neck and let the pendant settle onto her chest. "Am I deadly?" Only to my composure, Leslie thought. Before she could answer, Sarah went on, "Of course I'm chaste now, and I probably will be forever."
Leslie rolled her eyes before she could stop herself, but to her relief Sarah laughed. "I'm wallowing, I know," she said.
"I wasn't going to say anything." Leslie glanced out the window, eager to get Sarah's gaze off her red cheeks.
The oven timer buzzed and Sarah hurried into the kitchen. "Scones are done," she called after a moment. "Time for breakfast."
The scones were delectable with butter and jam, and eggs with Tabasco and cheese gave Leslie the energy to suggest a foray into the garden to fix the gate. She plodded after Sarah, who bounded up the slope like a snow gazelle.
"How come you're not breathing hard?" Leslie helped knock snow off the gate, which hung from one hinge.
"It's not because I'm in great shape or anything." Sarah examined the fence post, then pulled a hammer out of her pocket. "The nails have just pulled out. Probably need a new post — this one's looking pretty rickety." She hammered the hinge back into place while Leslie held the gate in position.
"You really love it here, don't you?"
"Every inch. I'm glad I came — thank you for coming with me. I might not have, left to my own devices." She stepped back to examine her handiwork. "This may not hold, but there's not much to be done about it until spring."
"Hey, I'm just avoiding Grateful Dead memory week."
Sarah gave her a look that stopped Leslie's heart. It said, "Don't give me that, you're here for other reasons."
Leslie wondered in a panic just how much Sarah suspected. Then she told herself to calm down. "Okay, I'm here because I wanted to get away from my life for a while, and help you get away from yours."
"That's better." Sarah's smile was wry. "Let's at least be honest with each other, okay?"
"Deal." Leslie mimed spitting on her glove and held out her hand. Sarah giggled, copied the motion and they shook on it.
Sarah popped the lid on the sparkling cider and filled both mugs. "Sorry about the lack of crystal — and champagne."
Leslie clinked her mug to Sarah's. "Happy new year."
"To auld lang syne." Sarah noticed Leslie drank as thirstily as she did. The snow shoveling earlier in the day had left them both exhausted and drained. Even steak and potatoes hadn't refilled Sarah's tank. The cider tasted like nectar.
"I don't think I'm going to make it to midnight." Leslie stretched out on the sofa. "I'm not used to all this activity."
"Last New Year's Eve I went to bed at nine," Sarah said. She had thought this year would be so very different. "I'm going to do better this year. But I don't know by how much."
Leslie yawned. "Sorry. I'm kinda glad we don't have champagne — the air here is rarefied enough."
"It's a good vintage." Sarah inhaled deeply. She could almost feel the air scrubbing her lungs free of urban grime. "Fruity, mellow, with a buttery under-taste."
Leslie mumbled a response and then was silent. Leslie's breathing deepened as Sarah gently spread an afghan over her. She stood looking down at Leslie for a few minutes, realizing she had never studied her face.
For instance, she had never noticed that Leslie's nose had a small bump at the top, and her eyebrows were not as black as her hair. She knew the eyes behind the peach-tinted lids were deep brown, ringed with yellow, but hadn't realized that her lower lip was slightly more red than the upper — at least it looked that way in the firelight. How had she ever thought Leslie cold?
She retired to th
e big, soft chair closer to the fire and reached for Pride and Prejudice. She was approaching the final chapters, with the happy ending just in the offing. She opened to her bookmark, but didn't begin reading. Instead, she wondered what Melissa was doing.
Pressing the flesh with anybody who's anybody and telling them about her novels and screenplays and grants, no doubt. Would Melissa tell anyone she had a broken heart? Maybe, and she'd believe it was true, even if it wasn't.
She asked the fire if her heart was broken, but received only a soothing crackling in response. Something was broken—if not her heart, then something near enough to make the distinction moot.
New Year's Resolution: No more Romance. She wrote it on her mental notepad in big letters. Resolution number two: No more thinking about Melissa.
She resolutely turned her attention to her book and finished with a pleased sigh. As she set it aside, Leslie turned on her side and said, "Dorfing snees."
It was two minutes to midnight, and Sarah decided Leslie shouldn't miss the coming of the New Year. She gently shook her. "Hey, it's almost midnight."
"Umm, goody."
"Wake up — it's almost midnight."
Leslie's eyes opened and Sarah was caught off-guard by the softness of her smile as she focused. "Couldn't let me miss it, huh?"
"Nope."
Just as Leslie sat up the mantel clock began to chime the hour. "Happy New Year again," she said. Her hair was tousled even more wildly than usual.
Sarah was seized by an overwhelming need. She sat down on the sofa next to Leslie. "Can I ask you a favor?"
"You can always ask," Leslie said. She flicked her gaze to the fire.
"Would you hold me? I feel lonely all of a sudden."
Leslie's answer was to tuck the afghan around Sarah's shoulders, then pull Sarah gently against her. "That better?"
"Much." She watched the flames leap behind the isinglass for a few minutes, then stirred. "I'm sorry to be so needy all the time."
"We all have our moments," Leslie said, in a low voice.
"Will you let me know when you have yours? I owe you."
Leslie cleared her throat. "You'll be the first to know."
When Sarah woke she couldn't move her neck. She groaned and struggled to sit up, only to discover she was using Leslie's thigh as a pillow.
Leslie made a sound similar to Sarah's groan. "My leg is asleep."
"I think my neck is broken."
"God, it's hard getting old."
"We're not old. We're middle-aged."
"Know what the definition of middle age is? When you think you'll feel better tomorrow."
Sarah laughed and her neck began to loosen up. Leslie gritted her teeth when Sarah brushed against her leg. "Does that tickle?"
"Don't you dare," Leslie said. "I'm letting it wake up slowly."
"It's better if you get it over fast." She reached for Leslie's thigh.
"Oh, you bitch," Leslie gasped as she tried to knock away Sarah's hands. Sarah knew perfectly well that every motion was making Leslie's leg tingle even more.
"I'm only trying to help."
"Liar!" Leslie managed to drag herself to the end of the sofa. "You're so cruel."
"Let me make it up to you." Sarah leaned toward Leslie with her most innocent expression. Then she seized Leslie's thigh and shook it as hard as she could.
Leslie responded with a shriek. Sarah laughed helplessly as Leslie pummeled her with a pillow.
"Truce," she finally yelled.
Leslie delivered a few more blows, then subsided. "You're a sadist," she said with a pout.
"I try." Sarah stood up. "Three a.m. on New Year's Day. I think I'll get some more shut eye."
"That sounds like an excellent idea."
Sarah paused at her bedroom door. "Les?"
Leslie turned.
Sarah took the two steps necessary to press her lips briefly to Leslie's. "First kiss of the new year. Thank you."
Leslie returned the light kiss with one of her own. "You're welcome."
"If Matt weren't coming home, I don't think I could leave," Leslie told Sarah. She rinsed the last dish and set it in the drainer.
Sarah whacked the stove flue one last time and a cloud of black soot burst from the front of the stove. "I know what you mean. I've made a promise to myself to come here at least twice a year. I can only leave so much up to other people."
"Will you be back during blackberry season?"
"That's a good time of the year to be here. Zucchini comes in right around then — lasagna, zucchini bread, blackberry cobbler."
"Yum," Leslie said. "You have soot all over your forehead."
Sarah's voice was muffled from inside the oven. "If it's only on my forehead I'm doing great. I don't think this has been cleaned since my grandmother died."
"I'm going to finish packing." Leslie started to leave the kitchen, but something made her pause. Sarah looked pretty damned adorable with her head in the oven, and... well, there was just nothing else to be done. She slipped over to the back door and scooped a handful of snow off the porch rail.
Who would have thought that the oven would amplify a screech like that, Leslie thought as she bolted out the front door. She took the path toward the garden and wished she'd had the foresight to put her coat on before she plopped the handful of snow into the waistband of Sarah's jeans.
Her headlong flight ended when a large, wet snowball hit her on the back, instantly soaking through her sweater. If flight wouldn't work, then she had no choice but to defend herself.
She quickly discovered that Sarah's aim was better than hers. "I give, I give—you win." She put her hands in the air like a captured desperado.
Sarah advanced slowly, a snowball in one reddened hand. "I do believe that I would like to see your belly button."
"You wouldn't," Leslie said, appalled. Under other circumstances she'd happily show Sarah her belly button.
"Take your punishment now, or spend the rest of your life wondering when it'll come." Sarah packed a little more dripping snow onto the snowball. "Belly button, please."
Leslie reluctantly raised the hem of her sweater, then pulled the front of her jeans down just enough. She gritted her teeth. "Do your worst, you fiend."
The freezing snowball on her warm belly knocked the breath out of her. Sarah pulled the sweater down over the snowball and patted it. Already, water was running down into Leslie's slacks.
"We're going to miss our plane if you keep fooling around," Sarah said. She turned and walked toward the cabin.
Leslie dug the snow out from under her sweater and formed a nice, compact snowball with it. She looked at Sarah's back.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Sarah said, without even looking back.
She's asking for it, Leslie thought. She held back for as long as she could but couldn't stop the impulse.
Sarah glanced over her shoulder just in time, then ducked. The snowball flew through the open front door.
"Shit," Leslie said. She hurried inside to see if she'd broken anything. There was a wet splotch on the glass-doored knick-knack cabinet just inside the door, but fortunately nothing was broken. "I'll get some paper towels," she told Sarah. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Sarah laughed and went back to scraping ash out of the oven. Leslie mopped the floor then dried the glass doors. What she had thought was frosting on the glass turned out to be ordinary dust, and she ended up wiping down the entire front.
She had just finished the job to her satisfaction when she realized what she was looking at through the glass. A picture of Sarah and several other people standing next to Ronald Reagan, at the White House. She blinked, then opened the door to examine everything more closely. Then she realized the cupboard was devoted to Sarah's archery career. There were pictures of her with trophies, numerous certificates and plaques, and several arrows with tags. She picked one up — it was heavier than it looked. The tag read, "Seoul, 1988."
As she put the arrow
back in its place, she dislodged a jeweler's box and it fell to the floor, spilling its contents on the soft rug.
Leslie's heart stopped for a moment. My God, was that what she thought it was? Three medals, one bronze, two gold. The bronze was engraved "XX Olympiad, Los Angeles." The front was the Olympic seal. The back was the classic figure of a Greek archer. The two gold medals were from Seoul, one with a single archer, and the second with three archers.
"Are you going to spend all day — oh."
Leslie looked up. "You really know how to hide your light under a bushel, don't you?"
Sarah was blushing. "I — did you ever see Catch-22?"
"Yeah, it was required viewing for aspiring flower children. So?"
"Yossarian says that Olympic medals and tennis trophies just signified that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone at all more capably than everyone else at that moment in time. I had a girlfriend who always introduced me as the Olympic gold medalist, and sometimes she omitted my name altogether." She knelt next to Leslie and took one of the gold medals. "They helped me get into law school, and I know I got my interview at CompuSoft because I was still putting it on my resume — and the interviewer asked about my experiences. I needed to ... get some distance."
"So you just leave them here on a shelf?" Leslie thought that she would have had the medals in a safe deposit box and the photos on her wall for the world to see.
"Actually, I'm going to take the medals back with me. I think I've finally outgrown the shadow they cast." Sarah ran a fingertip lightly over the engraving. "And a little self-esteem boost wouldn't hurt right now." She tucked the medals back in the jeweler's box and got to her feet. "And we're going to miss our plane if we're not out of here by two."
Leslie closed the cabinet doors and peered at the picture of Sarah at the White House. She looked so young, and so happy. She must have been amazing to know, Leslie thought.
She laughed to herself when she remembered blaming Richard for her crush on Sarah. She had behaved very badly from the outset and, in a way, didn't deserve the deepening love she felt. It was an hourly torture to be so close to her every day, but an exquisite torture she would miss. She would miss Sarah's laughter and wit even more. Seeing her just at work wouldn't be enough.
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