A Little Learning

by Margot Early

  “Dad, play me!” Caleb said.

  Seamus smiled and came to sit on the floor. “Well, first let me see what your sister can do.”

  As they played, he continued to observe Rory’s changing mood. Pleasure at being with him was suddenly eclipsed by shadows he couldn’t penetrate. As Seamus helped Belle, and Rory defended her goal with deliberate inattention, allowing the four-year-old to score, the boys chattered in the background, looking through the snake encyclopedia.

  Beau said, “Now Seuss can come over, right? Because Lola’s in Florida.”

  “Right,” Rory agreed. “And it was never part of Lola’s rules that she be allowed to wander all over the house. She had just escaped that time. Good job, Belle! You’re winning.”

  “I’m glad she’s gone,” Beau said.

  *

  Me too, THOUGHT RORY.

  The five of them lingered in the basement, Seamus playing a round first with Caleb and then with Beau. Finally, the kids trooped upstairs in search of gloves and mittens for the walk home, but their father lingered behind.

  Rory couldn’t forget any part of the conversation she’d had with her father. His reiteration of school policy. And his certainty that Seamus’s designs on her were short-term.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” Seamus said, “that it seems you were right about Silas. Lauren has confessed that he’s out of school.”

  “Out of high school?” Rory said, a little shocked in spite of herself. But things like that did happen—if parents let them.

  “Yes. Lauren doesn’t seem to fully grasp the picture. I’m not sure how to explain it to her.”

  You’re not going to push this conversation off on me, Rory thought indignantly. But the feeling was laced with hurt connected to her father’s assessment of Seamus’s intentions. If Seamus just wanted to, well, use her as a girlfriend and a buffer between himself and his children… No. Just no.

  She said, “I’m sure the right words will come to you.”

  Then she turned and climbed the stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IN THE MIDDLE of March came the first of the Sultan Mountain School tests for Seamus and his family, so that all of them could earn certificates saying they’d completed their course work. Rory would have liked to make the one-day expedition of skiing and orienteering a family activity, but it wasn’t possible. Seamus, as an adult, would need to be challenged more than his family.

  As luck would have it, Rory was assigned as his companion for the day’s skiing, which would take them up onto Cone Mountain and through the ghost town of Gypsum over a twelve-mile course, provided they didn’t get lost.

  The morning of the nineteenth, Rory and Seamus set out in her car for Jackson Gulch. From there they would ascend Cone Mountain with climbing skins on, then ski over to Gypsum and in a loop over a mountain pass and back down to the vehicle. Rory hoped.

  As she drove, she mentally double-checked everything she’d brought. She always kept a list in her pack so that she’d forget nothing when she set out on a ski trip, but it didn’t stop her from trying to imagine possible emergencies of every sort and then thinking of all the things that would be needed to return them home safely.

  When they reached their parking space near the foot of Jackson Gulch and began unloading the car, preparing to don skis and packs, Rory said, “This isn’t a test, per se. It’s just a requirement for getting your certificate.”

  “I understand.”

  It wasn’t the day Rory would have chosen for the expedition. Snow was already falling, two feet expected with the storm. But it was Sultan Mountain School policy to pick a date and make do with the weather. She watched as Seamus briefly consulted the topography, then showed her the route he’d planned the night before. “This is how we’ll go if avalanche conditions allow,” he told her.

  “Fine.”

  She let him lead off, but he seemed reluctant to plunge ahead, so for a while they skied side-by-side. Then they took turns breaking trail.

  Breaking trail on skis going uphill was exhausting work, but Rory knew that they must keep moving to achieve their goal in daylight. Though it was only beginning to lighten as they skied away from her car, they had a long way to go. Also, she had one of her unsettled feelings about this trip; an unspoken fear that they might run into trouble before its end.

  They skied for two hours and made good time. When they paused at their first landmark—a ski hut owned by the Sultan Mountain School—and stopped inside for a quick bite to eat, Seamus finally said, “Rory, how would you feel about seeing me once the course is over?”

  Seeing me. Yes, somehow it did sound temporary. But they’d never dated. Dating meant trying things out, seeing how people got along. Dating didn’t mean that Seamus Lee wanted a casual fling with her. It didn’t mean he wanted even that much. A date was a date.

  “I’d go out with you,” she said, “but let’s not talk about it until the course is over, all right? Let’s conclude this relationship first.” She changed the subject, her father’s warnings about Seamus’s intentions still ringing in her ears. “At least we’ll have some nice powder for all the downhill.”

  They put their packs and skis back on, and Seamus checked their bearings again before they set out, still heading uphill. “This is a great adventure,” Seamus exclaimed. “I bet it clears up later, too. Beacon on?” he asked her.

  Rory checked, though she’d never turned it off. “Yes.”

  The day did clear, slowly, and before they started their descent down the other side of Cone Mountain, Seamus dug an avalanche pit and evaluated the findings. He made a grim face as both he and Rory watched a slab separate in the layers he’d dug. “Well,” he said, “we could go back the way we came. Or we could go on. On either side, the conditions won’t be good, but we can avoid more paths if we go back the way we came.”

  Rory said nothing, waiting for him to make the call and hoping she wouldn’t have to overrule it.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he said. “Back to the car. We’ll have to do this another day.”

  But as far as Rory was concerned, Seamus had just earned his certificate.

  She smiled. “Let’s go.”

  “After you.”

  She went ahead of him, gliding down the slope they’d climbed, following the fall line, gracefully carving her first telemark turn and coming out of it even as she heard the whisper.

  It was sometimes possible to ski out of an avalanche by pressing the heels down. She knew this anecdotally and now she attempted it as she headed for the side, away from the path of the slide. It caught her, and she could not keep her heels down, so she swam, focusing on everything she knew. Swim for the top, swim for the top, make a path around your face, swim for the top. And before the snow stopped, in those last moments, she must make a strong thrust and kick hard. Through white, not water. She wasn’t sure what was happening, except that she and Seamus were far enough from help that she was in trouble.

  *

  HE WATCHED HER and kept his eyes fixed on the last place he’d seen her even as the snow settled, which seemed to take forever. He skied down along beside the chute thinking, No, no, no. He stopped further up slope than he’d last seen her and set his beacon to Receive.

  He found her signal much sooner and more easily than he’d anticipated and made his way slowly and carefully toward it, across the avalanche path.

  He saw a glove. Moving.

  “Yes, Rory!” he called. She had kept a hand above the surface. He reached her, got out of his skis, and began shoveling with his small avalanche shovel. He carefully followed her arm, then saw the bright yellow of her helmet and cleared the snow from her face. She spit out snow, saying, “I’m pretty sure I broke my other wrist—I felt the crack. I think I heard it, but I couldn’t have.”

  The injured arm was her left, and he was thankful for that small favor as he continued digging her out.

  She helped as much as she was able, saying, “I’m fine, I’m alive. This
is good. Thank you, Seamus. Thank you, Seamus,” as if by continuing to talk she would minimize her own peril. Then, a groan, as they discovered that she’d lost a ski.

  “It’s worth a little time digging for it right where we are,” Rory said, “but we’re probably out of luck.” She was out of luck and out a pair of Sultan custom telemark skis, which started at seven hundred dollars. Also, it was going to be a long trek back, even as far as the hut, on the one small pair of snowshoes they had between them. But at least they had those.

  Seamus set to work with his shovel, and Rory poked around with hers, using only her right arm.

  But half an hour later, she still had just one ski and no poles. “I can snowshoe,” she said. In telemark boots, which would be a unique form of torture. “You ski, and I’ll go as fast as I can, but don’t go out of sight of me.”

  “Why don’t you ski and I’ll snowshoe?”

  “No. I’m lighter—the shoes will work better for me.”

  Seamus helped her strap the lone ski, which she said they should take with them—they weren’t home yet, and it might prove useful—to her pack.

  As she trudged back down toward the hut, following Seamus, who skied for a hundred yards, then waited at a tree, she regretted not having dug a snow pit earlier to check the avalanche conditions. She wouldn’t have suggested it overtly, not at first. She would have just done something to make Seamus think of the idea for himself. But neither of them had thought of it.

  At least it was spring, rather than early winter or fall before the winter solstice. As it was, she decided optimistically, unwilling to acknowledge the blisters she was definitely going to have from wearing boots not made for snowshoeing, they might make it to the car by dark.

  But they were behind the mountain, and it quickly grew cold in the shade. Rory made herself keep walking, pretending the heat from her blisters was spreading through her limbs. Pretending the cold felt good on her injured forearm. The arm didn’t hurt, except at the wrist; she couldn’t turn it.

  Repeatedly, Seamus asked how she was, until she snapped, “Why don’t you ask that just once every half hour?”

  It was late afternoon. They had not yet reached the hut, but at least they could see their old tracks. Rory worried they’d gone past it, but Seamus pointed out a ponderosa pine he’d noticed on the way up and said that the tree was above the hut.

  I do not want to spend the night in that hut.

  It wasn’t exactly a cozy retreat. There was no firewood or coal for the stove, no food. It was shelter and not much more, and Rory knew the insulation was practically nonexistent. Not to mention that it was tucked beneath the trees and received little natural heat from the sun.

  But she’d had the miles trudging down, sinking a foot with every step, to remember that there was no moon. They couldn’t walk without moonlight, and she wouldn’t send him on without her for many reasons. No, she and Seamus Lee were doomed to spend the night in that hut, while his children worried about him, and she would have the chance to analyze everything about herself that defined her as a complete screwup. To be caught in an avalanche!

  When they finally reached the hut, it was almost dark, and Seamus was as cold as she was.

  “So,” he said, “I think we have a cold night ahead.”

  “Yes. But I have a stove so we can melt water and make hot drinks. And I have a sleeping bag.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “I didn’t think…”

  “I know. It wasn’t on your list. You have an emergency blanket, right, and so do I. We’ll share and make do.” It was just survival, not romantic, not any of the things outlawed by the policies of the Sultan Mountain School. She carried her compressed lightweight sleeping bag routinely on day-long excursions, because she’d never been able to get past the image of staying out all night, perhaps, with only an emergency blanket. Seamus, she realized now, should really have been carrying a sleeping bag, too, but the school didn’t suggest it for such a short trip.

  Well, now they would make do, as she’d said. “What about your kids?”

  He was frowning. “I’ve been thinking of that ever since I realized how late it is. I think Lauren will check with SMS. She’ll go to the school and tell them we haven’t returned.”

  “Well, I’m supposed to check in there, too,” Rory said. “They’ll realize we’re missing. I just hope someone thinks of the kids.”

  “They will.”

  She would gratefully have climbed into her sleeping bag and remained there alone, cinching the hood around her head. Instead, she and Seamus rummaged in the cupboards and did find the hut’s supply of emergency blankets, which would certainly make the night a little more comfortable. Needless to say, the other thing that would help was body heat. Snuggling up together.

  They peeled out of their outer clothes, and hung them up to dry on the ends of the bunk beds.

  “Lower bunk?” Seamus said.

  “Thank you. Then, maybe I can manage not to break anything else.”

  She’d no doubt she’d need his help getting back into her ski pants and jacket the next morning. Now she felt dirty in her wool-and-silk long underwear. Her wrist and forearm had swelled noticeably.

  “Should we make a splint?” Seamus asked.

  “I have an Ace bandage in my first-aid kit,” she said. “That would probably help.”

  In the light of his headlamp, he dug in her pack until he found her first-aid kit. He had brought a stove, too. And they would certainly have enough fuel to keep them supplied with water and hot drinks through the night.

  There were awkward moments as Seamus, also in long johns, climbed onto the hard mattress of the lower bunk with her. Rory attempted to cover him with part of the sleeping bag. “We’ll wrap all the blankets around us tonight,” she said.

  “My dream come true.”

  “Not mine,” she muttered. “Don’t take it personally. Just… Getting hit by a slide is not my idea of a great adventure.”

  But she had to admit that being this close to Seamus… His firm thigh brushed her leg and, even though they were both clothed, blood rushed through her, hot and tingling.

  She noted the cragginess of his face as he found the bandage, unrolled it, gently pulled up the sleeve of her long undershirt and began to wrap her forearm, wrist and hand. Without looking at her, he said, “You’re so different from Janine.”

  “How so?” She let him take her arm, watched his strong long fingers with the bandage. Thought about how close they were to each other.

  Seamus carefully turned her arm, saying, “Tell me if it hurts.”

  “That does. I don’t want to turn my wrist that way.”

  “Okay. I can do it in this direction.” He began wrapping the injury with a skill that suggested he’d done similar things before.

  Carryover from the first-aid course he’d taken with the school? Rory wondered.

  “Janine was caught in an avalanche once. I wasn’t with her. She actually broke her femur. But she was proud of the incident. As far as she was concerned, it was a war story to be told and retold.”

  “Only where I’m unknown,” Rory said. “I find it humiliating.”

  “I’m glad you kept that hand up.”

  “I was trying to do everything I could to get to the surface. I thought I could ski out of it, but no way.” He had started to talk about his wife, Rory reminded herself. And she wanted to know about Janine Jensen. “When was Janine’s avalanche experience?” she asked.

  “Five or six years before she died. I think Lauren was in kindergarten.” His expression was both grim and sad.

  Rory watched his profile, waiting for him to say more. There was nothing she could think to say to encourage him. Not Boy, it really sounds as though you didn’t like your wife very much. Or, I bet she wasn’t easy to live with.

  “Have I told you,” she asked at last, “that Samantha worked for her?”

  “Samantha herself reminded me of the connection. I don’t know if I was ever introduce
d to her back then, but I definitely remembered her face.” He shook his head. “The women at the resource center thought Janine should have been canonized.”

  Rory lifted her eyebrows.

  “I mean, they didn’t think she was saintly in all her relationships, just that what she did for the resource center was saintly.”

  “And were you the bad guy?” Rory asked.

  He considered, then shook his head. “Probably to Janine sometimes. But no one would ever have suspected me of hurting her. I think they knew she’d never put up with that.”

  “Or that you’re the kind of person who wouldn’t behave that way.”

  He gave a rueful smile. “You know the worst part?”

  She shook her head.

  “That there were times—it wasn’t as straightforward as me wishing she was dead. But sometimes, just for a minute or two, I wished she would cease to be a problem to me. That she’d fall in love with someone else and a divorce would be her idea.”

  “Did you ever talk about divorce?”

  He shook his head. “No. Well, maybe obliquely. About the gun, for instance. She’d say things like, You’re not telling me what to do. That won’t fly.”

  “And you? What did you say?”

  “That I didn’t want my children living in the same house with a gun.” He finished wrapping Rory’s arm, fastened it with clips and lifted it gently to his lips. Then glanced at her impishly. “Just part of the medical treatment. Belle says wounds don’t heal if they aren’t kissed.”

  “Then how did she get over her scrapes before she came to Sultan?” Rory realized too late that this was one of her instances of speaking without thinking. And there was no taking it back, making it better.

  “Fiona,” Seamus said, not looking pleased with himself. He moved away. “Let’s see if I can get my stove going, and we can have something hot to drink.” He reached for his ski pants and dragged them on over his long underwear, since they’d dried out.

  She tried to think of something besides how much she liked being close to him, but could only reflect on the fact that she’d practically come out and said that when he came to Sultan he’d been a virtual stranger to his own children. Think first, Rory.