“Maybe not.” He took one of her hands, pressing it between both of his, partly to warm the faint chill of her skin and partly for emphasis. “I think I know where you’re coming from, Jenny, and I need you not to worry. So I’d like to tell you about Lily and me, so you’ll understand.”
“I’m not sure—”
He squeezed her hands. “Please.”
She subsided. Nodded. “Okay. Go ahead.”
He hesitated, searching for the right words. “Lily and I went through the Twenty-Thirty Project’s version of boot camp together and hit it off. We were posted to different rotations, but kept in touch now and then. A few years later, and who walks into camp, but Lily. I found out later she had requested the transfer. Anyway, we got involved, got serious, got engaged. It was . . .” heady, amazing, simpatico, “easy when we were traveling together. We worked together, played together, explored together.”
“In Africa.” Jenny sighed. “It sounds like heaven.”
“It was, in a way.” In lots of ways. “We weren’t in any hurry to get married, but after a couple of years it felt right. We planned to have a simple ceremony before the end of our rotation, with our teammates and village friends as guests.” He paused. “Then I got the call.”
Now he saw a hint of sympathy. “That your mother was sick, you mean.”
“That she was dying.” The ache had mellowed some, but the scars still tugged, as did the memory of his frantic race home and that first sight of his mom, wan and shrunken, eyes dark and hollow with pain. “Lily and I decided to postpone the wedding. She visited a few times, and things were good when she was in town, but . . .” He shifted, trying to get comfortable on a truck seat that usually didn’t bother him one bit. “I wasn’t the same person anymore.”
Instead of giving him the “yeah, I know how that is” that he halfway expected from her, Jenny frowned. “Well of course not. You had to prioritize your family for a few months. Surely she understood that.”
It was hard now to remember back to those days, not because they were painful, but because they could’ve happened to someone else, another guy who had wanted to escape but got cut off at the pass. “Yes, she got that part. She stood by me, even flew back for the funeral with her project in a really tricky spot. But a few days later, when she started talking about us getting back out in the field, I couldn’t see it.”
“Your father needed you.”
“At first. Then, I don’t know. I got used to being home. Before, I wanted to get away from the small-town thing. Now, I dig it.”
She looked bemused. “More than Africa?”
“Yes and no. I miss it. The country, the animals, the people . . . they’re amazing. But so is Wyoming, and I can’t have both.”
“Or Lily.” Her expression had gone shuttered.
“Right. What we had worked while we were out in the field together, living the same lives. I asked her to move here, but . . .” He shook his head. “We tried the long-distance thing, but finally broke up a few months later. And, well, that’s the end of the Lily-and-me story.” He lifted her hand and kissed Jenny’s knuckles, adding, “But this isn’t even close to the end of the you-and-me story, I hope.”
She straightened. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
But he kept going. “You need to know that I’m not hung up on Lily—it’s over, truly. We still email every now and then, but like old friends. Nothing more.”
“I wasn’t worried about that.” Her voice sounded funny, though, like that might not be the whole story.
“Okay, then, how about this? You also don’t have to worry that I’m looking to get married, settle down, start a family, any of that stuff. Yeah, I was engaged, but that experience taught me just how tough it is for two people—especially two people who are driven by their careers—to make a life together. It also taught me not to ever expect someone else to change who they are for me—and that it’s not fair for me to even ask.”
Her shoulders dropped, but she didn’t say anything.
Relieved that she was relieved, he continued. “So you don’t have to worry. Yes, things have gotten pretty intense between us, but I’m not asking for anything here. When it’s time for you to go, we’ll say good-bye. No hard feelings. Just good memories.”
She swallowed, then nodded. “Okay. I . . . Okay. That helps put things in perspective.”
“Like I said, I figured you needed to hear that before you made any decisions to, you know, cut things off early.” He wanted to keep touching her, but let go of her hand instead, giving her room. “I hope you won’t. We’ve got twelve days left, nearly down to eleven now, and I don’t want to miss out on any of them.”
“Eleven days.” She repeated the number with faint surprise, like she hadn’t been doing the countdown.
“Almost. So . . . what do you say? Can I see you tomorrow? Or—and I’m probably pushing it—do you want to follow me back to the clinic?”
“Yeah, that’s pushing it.” But there was a flash of humor in her eyes, like she didn’t mind that he had tried.
“Tomorrow, then. I’ll think of something fun. Pick you up at seven?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you then. And, Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for telling me about Lily. I’d say I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but that would be a lie.” She leaned in and cupped his jaw in her cool, soft hand. “I wouldn’t trade the past few weeks for anything.”
He touched his lips to hers. “Me, either.” And—thank God—it didn’t feel like a good-bye kiss, after all. It felt like a see you tomorrow.
• • •
Okay. You’re okay. Safely inside, Jenny leaned against the door and concentrated on breathing as the sound of Nick’s footsteps faded on the path. You can handle this.
She hadn’t thrown herself at him and clung, and she hadn’t busted out with a chorus of “Why don’t we stay in touch after I leave?” the moment they hit the driveway, which had more or less been her plan. In fact, she should be grateful that he insisted on going first in the explanation department, because his side of things had negated most of what she had come up with. All of it, really.
“Did you have a nice time?” The question came from the living room.
She looked over to find her mom sitting next to the fire with Rex at her feet, a book in her hands, and an empty wineglass at her elbow. Rose was still dressed for the day, in gray pants and a dusty pink sweater, with her hair up in a French twist that was only a little wispy around the edges. “Hey,” Jenny said. “Is everything okay?” Was it bad that she was hoping for a problem? Ranch stuff would be a welcome diversion right now.
“Everything is fine. Can’t I wait up for my girl?”
Roused from his fire-warmed nap, Rex padded over to Jenny, gave her a perfunctory sniff, and then did a doggy double take when he caught Molly’s scent. Jenny patted him while he wriggled around her, his ridiculousness easing the tight knot in her chest.
Setting the book aside, her mom rose and headed for the stairs, beckoning with a sudden air of suppressed excitement. “Come on. I’ve got something to show you.”
“Now?” A glance at the grandfather clock in the dining room clued her in that it wasn’t nearly as late as it felt, closer to ten o’clock than midnight. “Okay, sure.” Please, no more painting. She needed some time to herself, not another project.
The treads gave their familiar creaks beneath them both, seeming unusually loud, and Rex’s toenails clicked a little on the wood, making Jenny think they were about due for a trim. Because it was easier to think about stuff like that than things like “I’m not asking for anything” and “When it’s time for you to go, we’ll say good-bye.”
“Well?” her mom said. “Are you ready to see it?”
Jenny blinked, surprised to find them standing outside her bedroom door. “Ready to see . . . You mean it’s finished?”
“An hour ago. Isn’t it exciting?”
“We can do that tomorrow. I want this first time to be just the two of us. So go on . . . close your eyes.”
“But—”
“Close ’em, or I’ll do it for you. And keep your voice down. Your father is asleep.”
Trying to get into the mood—her mom had put in a ton of work, after all, and deserved the ta-daa moment—Jenny put her hands over her eyes and nodded. “Okay. They’re closed. Bring it on.” Be happy. Be grateful. It wasn’t her mom’s fault that she and Nick had hit a fork and gone in completely different directions.
She heard the door swing open, and then her mom grabbed her arm and tugged, saying, “Come in, come in!” much as Nick’s father had done when they arrived at the cabin.
They stepped inside the bedroom, which smelled like paint, fabric, and eau de day-old glue gun fumes, more like a craft store than the place where Jenny had spent countless hours hunched over her laptop, doing equal amounts of homework and instant messaging, or sitting cross-legged on the bed with Krista, deep in discussions of boys, music, and horses. Even the floor felt different, with thick padding beneath their feet, so the creaks stopped once they were past the threshold.
The door thunked closed, and then her mother said in a hushed voice, “Ready? On three. One . . . two . . . three!”
Jenny dropped her hands, opened her eyes, and blinked around in relief. Hey, what do you know? This isn’t half bad. Despite her fears of tie-dye and shag, she had gotten a thick beige area rug and a padded brown-and-blue ottoman that worked really nicely with the pale cream walls and white trim. The pictures were gone from the mirror, but her photos of the storm had been mounted in shadowboxes and hung on the wall, and a small album on the desk was open to the crazy blueness of her prom dress.
The bed wore the pretty yellow spread and the yellow-and-blue pillows she had picked out, and the curtains were printed with yellow-centered daisies with curling green leaves. And standing there on the dresser was the crazy-ass ceramic horse from her mom’s first design, only in mustard yellow rather than fire-engine red.
Darned if it didn’t look kind of cool, the way she had it.
“Well? What do you think? Do you love it?”
“I . . .” Tears threatened out of nowhere, closing her throat and robbing her lungs of air.
The light trickled out of her mom’s eyes. “Jenny?”
“It’s . . .” She couldn’t put the words together. The pretty room threatened to spin, making things worse because she knew she was blowing it. She could see the hurt she was causing, the confusion.
“You hate it.”
“No! No, I don’t. I love it. It’s just . . . Give me a second here, okay?” She couldn’t even wrap her head around enough of her thoughts to understand why she was stuck between wanting to dive onto that big bed and burrow into the pillows, and backing out, closing the door, and jumping on the first plane headed anywhere but here.
“It’s the horse, isn’t it?” Rose’s voice sharpened. “You said you hated the horse and I didn’t listen. I thought if you saw it like this . . . Well, never mind. We can fix it.” Whisking to the dresser, she swept up the ceramic beast and jammed it under her arm, so its bared teeth looked poised to take a chomp out of her breast. “There! Is that better?”
Jenny’s blood heated. “Would you just listen to me for a second? I love the room. I even dig the horse. You were right about it, and I was totally wrong.”
That got her a narrow-eyed glare. “You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not. Put it back.”
Rex followed the back-and-forth with worried eyes.
Rose turned away, shielding the statue with her body, so it looked like the creature was peering around her to leer at Jenny with a ceramic nyah-nyah. “He’ll look lovely on the mantel downstairs.”
“Gran will have a cow.” Jenny reached past her, grabbed the outstretched foreleg, and tugged. “Give him here.”
“Stop it!” Her mom swatted at her, eyes firing. “You only want him because I’m taking him away from you.”
Jenny pulled. “I want him because he’s yellow and he looks awesome in here. And because you picked him out for me.” There. That had almost come out the way she wanted it to.
Her mom wasn’t listening, though. Eyes wild enough to make Jenny want to take a step back, she leaned in and hissed, “Let. Go.”
“Jeez, take a breath, will you?” Jenny yanked on the horse. “You’re acting crazy.”
Rex scratched at the door.
“You’re scaring the dog.” Rose pulled back, nearly breaking Jenny’s grip. “Knock it off.”
“You knock it off. I’m trying to apologize, but you’re not listening to me!”
“Let go!”
“I’m sorry that I jammed up. I should’ve told you right away that this room rocks. Which it does. Now give me the horse.” With that, Jenny gave the kind of jerk she would’ve used to get a full-size horse moving when it wanted to stick all fours in place.
“No!” Her mom yanked back, teeth bared.
Crack! The horse’s foreleg snapped off in Jenny’s hand, sending her reeling. She backpedaled, bounced off the corner of the mattress, and plopped down on the edge of the bed, staring.
Rose’s eyes filled with tears as she cradled the statue like a baby. After a second, the wetness spilled over and tracked down her cheeks.
“Mom, stop.” It wasn’t an order this time, more of a plea. Jenny dropped the broken piece in her pocket, rose, and crossed the room. It felt strange to reach out to her mother, even stranger to take her hand and find it soft, with none of the calluses she remembered.
“I can’t . . . I don’t . . .” Wet eyes met hers, confused and hopeless. “I can’t do this anymore, Jenny. I just can’t.”
“Let’s go downstairs.” She took the broken horse from her mother’s unresisting grip, realizing that this wasn’t about her, or at least not entirely. “We’ll have some coffee or something, and talk.” When was the last time she had said something like that to her mother? That was usually Krista’s line, her sphere of comfort. Only Krista wasn’t here, and Jenny was the one left with a sense of what the heck? and the feeling that this went way deeper than she had guessed.
Looking so much older than Jenny had ever seen her—older, even, than Gran—Rose simply nodded, turned for the door, and walked away from her latest project without a backward glance.
Jenny wedged the yellow horse under her arm and followed, wishing she could turn back the clock by twenty minutes or so and give herself a big kick in the ass just as she walked through the front door.
Downstairs, she hit the lights in the kitchen and set the broken horse on the butcher-block counter. Then she pulled out a stool and pointed to it. “Sit.”
Rex, who had followed them down, plopped down instantly, then cocked his head. Cookie?
Rose, on the other hand, took her place at the counter, stared at the horse for a moment, and then put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, finishing it off with a groan. “This is so embarrassing. I can’t believe I just did that. What is wrong with me?”
“Well, if it helps, you didn’t do it alone. I seem to have reverted to being fifteen for a few minutes there.”
“When you were fifteen, I could’ve coped.”
Jenny didn’t know how to ask what happened without it sounding like an accusation. “Would you like some wine?” She could sure use some. First the thing with Nick, and now she was teetering on a familypocalypse. But, hey, wine, she thought, pulling a decent pinot grigio out of the cabinet and trying not to notice that its color came very close to matching the horse.
“I’ve already had two glasses” came from behind her mom’s hands.
Which would explain some of what was going on. Not all of it, though. “Have another.” Jen
ny poured generous glasses for each of them, and plonked them down at the table. “You want to cook something?” Which could start a kitchen doomsday of its own, but right now she’d do pretty much anything to get that bleak, crushed look out of her mom’s eyes.
Rose uncovered her face, looking like she was considering it, but then she shook her head and reached for her wine. “Nah. Let’s eat tomorrow’s coffee cake instead.”
Gran would be steamed over having her breakfast plans usurped, but Jenny headed for the fridge and pulled out the perfectly frosted ring cake, along with a bowl of whipped cream and a pint of sliced strawberries. “I’m not sure this goes together.”
“Throw some Grand Marnier on top and it’ll work.” Her mom reached across to select a huge knife that said “butcher”—or maybe “slasher film”—far more than it did coffee cake. “How big of a piece do you want?”
“Let me.” Jenny snagged the knife, whacked off a few slices, and set the knife out of reach when she went to get the liqueur. She poured a couple of hefty slugs over the cake, slapped on some berries and cream, and pushed one of the plates over as she took the stool beside her mother. “Dig in.”
Her mom picked up her fork, but then just sat there, staring at a dessert that should’ve delighted her, not because it was a foodie’s dream, but because the theft would annoy the bejeebers out of Gran in the morning. And if that wasn’t enough to spark her interest, then this was serious.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked softly after a long moment of silence. “What’s going on with you these days? It’s not just me, is it?”
More silence, lasting longer than a moment. More like a mini-eternity in which Jenny tried to think of something better to say, and her mom just sat and stared.
But then Rose moved, forking up a bite of the cake and eating it with a grudging expression of not bad. After chewing and swallowing, she said, “I’ve got a great life.”
When nothing more seemed to be forthcoming, Jenny said, “Okay.”
Way to rock the interview.
It seemed to do the trick, though, because her mom continued. “Most women my age would kill to have the opportunities I’ve had. I’ve traveled across the continent and back in both directions, taken classes, been to amazing workshops, seen things I never would’ve thought I’d see in person.”
Winter at Mustang Ridge Page 23