Changes of Heart

by Paige Lee Elliston

  Danny was forced out of the game by two disastrous landings on Tessa’s holdings. Maggie soon followed him. Sarah was cash-rich but held few property cards, and those she did own were piddling things—a railroad, Baltic Avenue, and a couple of others. Tessa whittled her mother into the poorhouse in a matter of a half dozen rolls.

  “See?” The girl grinned. “I told you.”

  The hilarity of the game dwindled away. The weather had worsened; the wind was a painful shriek and the house shuddered under its assault. Sarah wandered off to the kitchen, and Maggie followed her. The light from the two candles cast a deceivingly warm glow to the room, which was cold, just like every other room of the house but the living room.

  “We should probably put these candles out,” Sarah said. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be without light. We have most of a case of them... but still...”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said. “Maybe so. Do you have enough matches?”

  Maggie could see Sarah’s smile from across the room. “I completely forgot about matches, but Tessa bought a half dozen boxes of those strike-anywhere kind. So, yes, I’m sure we have enough.”

  “Good.” Maggie looked toward the living room, heard voices, and turned back to Sarah. “I’m scared. I really am. My stomach is trembly, and every time a gust hits I jump.”

  “We’re all a bit scared, I think—even the guys. But we’ll get out of this OK. I know we will. Danny’s like a mountain man—he knows what to do in emergencies, and Ian’s one of the brightest men I’ve ever met. Before this is over, I think his sense of humor is going to be as important as firewood. And you, Maggie—you’re tougher than you think you are. You’re a gutsy lady.”

  “I wish.”

  “No, I mean it. You’ve been through a whole lot of trouble, and you’ve picked yourself up after you were knocked down. That takes strength.”

  Maggie leaned against a counter and picked a pretzel out of a bowl. As she nibbled at it, Sarah moved a step closer to her. “I think your strength is a large part of what Danny and Ian see in you.”

  “That’s another problem,” Maggie said. “I can’t control their feelings, but at times I want to scream at them that it’s too soon for me to become involved in a relationship again. And, even if I wanted to, which one of them would I choose? They’re both great guys, and if something does happen, one of them’s going to get hurt.”

  “People get over hurt,” Sarah said softly.

  “That’s what I’ve been told.” Maggie sighed. “Let’s go out by the fire. It’s like an igloo in here.”

  “In a second. Just let me say one more thing. Follow your heart, Maggie. Keep your faith and follow your heart. I know it’s a cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true or valid.”

  Maggie’s small smile was genuine. “You make everything sound easy.”

  “Not easy, but worthwhile. C’mon, let’s see what the peanut gallery is up to.”

  In the living room Tessa had on the radio, and she and Danny and Ian were staring at it, as if their eyesight could help them hear through the static more effectively.

  “... no letup in sight. In fact, the storm actually seems to be intensifying. The temperature is nineteen degrees below zero, but that figure is meaningless because the windchill can approach fifty below in open places. Power is gone throughout the storm area, and crews can’t get on the road to begin repairs. The cell telephone transmission tower went down yesterday, so it’s not your phone that’s dead, it’s the system. Please, folks—don’t even think about attempting to go anywhere in any type of vehicle, including snowmobiles. This storm is a killer such as Montana hasn’t seen in many decades. Again, stay where you are. Do not attempt to—”

  “Better turn it off, Tess,” Danny said. “We don’t want to run down the batteries.”

  Maggie picked up the blanket she’d been using on the couch and dragged it to the wall adjacent to the fireplace. “What time is it?” she said. “It feels like we’ve been here forever.”

  Ian tilted his wrist toward the fire and read his watch. “Twenty to eleven. I guess we all ought to think about getting some sleep. Maybe tomorrow...”

  Maggie knew that the words of the radio announcer were too fresh in all their minds to even begin convincing themselves that the next day would be any different.

  “We have a couple of air mattresses and more blankets upstairs on the beds. We’ll need more wood and we’ll need to melt snow for water.”

  “We won’t run short on snow,” Ian said. He stood. “Want to haul some more firewood into the basement, Danny?”

  “Sure. We might as well stock up for the night up here too, and then the two of us can take turns feeding the fire.”

  Maggie pushed herself up from the floor. “I’ll carry wood with you guys—and I want to be in on tending the fire overnight.”

  “I’ll help too,” Sarah said. “Danny’s right—we need to bring lots of wood in.”

  “Sarah,” Ian said, “your hands are too important to bang them up hefting logs. When this is over you’re going to be needed very badly, and if your hands are stiff or bruised or if you happen to catch some fingers between logs, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  “I can carry wood! Let’s not be ridiculous. There’s no reason I can’t do my share of the work, and I won’t have—”

  “Sarah,” Danny said sharply, “Ian’s exactly right. We can’t have you risking hurting yourself.”

  “What about your hands, then?” Sarah snapped. “Don’t your patients count?”

  “Hey, ladies and gentlemen,” Ian said, stepping between the physician and the veterinarian. “Come on, this is silly. Danny wrestles with horses and cows and dogs and all sorts of potentially dangerous critters every day, Sarah. He’s not going to get hurt, and he’s a lot stronger than you are.”

  “Not when she’s angry, I’m not.” Danny grinned.

  “You keep that in mind, Dr. Pulver,” Sarah said, also smiling.

  “It was the Monopoly game,” Tessa said. “You’re all testy because I whipped you so badly.”

  “That must be it,” Maggie added.

  She was about to say something else when the tree limb exploded through the living room window, spraying the area with shards of glass. The wind struck the fire like a gigantic fist, and spewed embers and bits of burning log onto the couch, the carpet, everywhere. Maggie screamed and spun away from the fireplace, slapping at the back of her head, her palm stinging as it crushed the ember lodged in her hair. Tessa screamed too and beat at her face and chest with her hand. Sarah moved to help Tessa, pulling the girl to the floor and whacking at her with both hands. Danny grabbed the edge of the coffee table and flipped it in front of the fireplace, trying to block the wind to the now-roaring fireplace. “Get the embers out!” he shouted. “We gotta get all...” The last of his words were lost to the wind.

  Ian ran for the two buckets of melted snow in the bathroom upstairs. He stumbled on the first stair and went down hard but was up and scrambling in a heartbeat.

  Maggie stomped on the embers on the rug, smashing them out, the bottoms of her feet screaming in pain. She wasn’t sure where her boots were, and there was no time to look for them. Panic formed images of the Morrison home burning, driving them out into the storm, where they wouldn’t last more than a couple of hours.

  Ian bolted into the living room with a bucket in each hand.

  “Here, Ian!” Danny shouted. “The couch—put the couch out!”

  Ian dumped the first bucket at the end of the sofa, where the fabric and stuffing were engulfed in flames. Danny yanked a burning cushion and, staggering against the force of the wind, stumbled to the gaping window and hurled it out into the storm.

  Tessa and Sarah pounded and stomped at burning spots on the carpet, using their feet and their hands.

  “Danny,” Ian shouted over the wind, “we gotta block that window.”

  “A table,” Danny answered. “We need another table to nail over it. We g
otta do that from outside or the wind will blow it off. Sarah, do you have a hammer and some nails? Another table larger than the window?”

  Sarah smashed out another burning spot and yelled, “Hammer and stuff is in the basement. There’s an old dining room table down there with magazines and papers piled on it. Take that.”

  Danny looked around the living room while Ian grabbed the flashlight from the kitchen. “It looks like we got all the embers,” he shouted into Maggie’s ear. “Keep looking for new ones and make sure the old ones are out. Ian and I will—”

  “Come on, Danny!” Ian called from the kitchen.

  Ian was ahead on the basement stairs with the flashlight. He swept the beam around the frigid cellar. Snow was banked against the far wall, carried in through the gaping hole left when the wind had ripped the door off hours earlier. Basic hand tools were arranged neatly on a pegboard above a small workbench. Danny tugged a hammer loose and snatched a handful of nails from an open box on the bench. The nails were sizable; the groundskeeper had been using them to repair a storage shed.

  Ian’s light found the table, which was covered with magazines, newspapers, advertising circulars, and various junk mail. He swept the surface bare with a swing of his arm. Danny wrenched the table over onto the pile of paper. “We gotta get the legs off—this thing will weigh a ton, and it’ll be hard enough to carry in the wind, even without the legs.”

  The table was old and of the thick, stable, post-WWII design. Danny stood back a step and kicked out at the table with the bottom of his foot. The leg creaked and tilted. The next kick sent it skidding across the floor. Ian attacked the leg closest to him.

  “Maggie eased down the basement stairs in the semidarkness, clutching an armful of coats and boots. “Everything’s out upstairs,” she said. “Let’s get dressed and get outside. The living room’s like a hurricane.”

  Ian covered the pile of clothing with the light, and the three of them grabbed at coats, boots, and gloves. In moments, they were dressed.

  “Hey,” Ian said. “Maggie, you don’t need to—”

  “Stop. Just stop. It’s going to take three of us to control this thing outside.”

  Danny and Ian’s eyes met. “She’s right,” Danny said.

  They hefted at the tabletop—now legless—and grunted at its weight as they rested it on an edge and then picked it up. Danny led the way to the door and the few cement stairs to the outside, Maggie at the middle of the table and Ian at the end.

  “Keep it as close to the house as you can,” Ian hollered. “We’ll have better control.”

  The storm struck them like a knockout punch, and the broad table acted almost as a sail, seeking to wrench itself out of their hands. Visibility was perhaps a foot, and often less than that. The crystalline snow lashed their faces and swirled in crazed patterns around them. They dragged and carried the tabletop along the foundation of the house, following the shape of the home to the battered-in window.

  Danny put a handful of nails into his mouth, with the ends jutting out from between his lips. Ian and Maggie crouched, got firm holds on the end of the table, and slid it up the wall, covering the shattered window and its frame. Danny swung the hammer hard, but the wind kept upsetting his aim so that at times he would hit the nails off center and splay them sideways, and at other times miss them completely. After an eternity, they managed to secure the table.

  “Ian, can you give me a boost? I gotta get the top of this thing nailed in.”

  Ian formed a U with his hands, and Danny put a boot in his friend’s hands and hefted himself upward. Ten nails later the job was done. The trio linked hands and followed the line of the house back to the basement. The flashlight, after being exposed to the power-sapping cold, was dim, its cone of light ineffectual.

  Sarah and Tessa had candles going once again and had moved the coffee table away from the front of the fireplace. The fire was regenerating, licking at the fresh wood the women had added. Danny, Maggie, and Ian clumped in and stood soaking up the heat. Tessa stepped toward them, a broad smile on her face. She stopped suddenly and raised her hand to her mouth. “Danny!” she gasped.

  “What?” he asked.

  Maggie then noticed that his lower jaw was covered with frozen blood, with an inch-long string of frozen blood suspended from the right side of his mouth like a red fang. He raised his hand to his face. “Ouch! What’s... Oh. I had the nails in my mouth. There was nowhere else to put them. I guess my lips froze to the metal.”

  “Don’t rub or scratch at your lips,” Sarah said. “I’ll get you a damp washcloth. We want that blood to melt off—not be torn off.”

  “I did the same kind of thing when I was a kid,” Maggie said. “My friend and I decided to kiss our mailbox. Another girl dared us to.”

  “Marcia Mott and I licked a jungle gym in the second grade. Our teacher had to get us loose,” Tessa recalled.

  “Mine was the chain of a swing in a playground,” Sarah offered.

  “I’ve never done anything foolish or potentially harmful in my life,” Ian said. He waited a moment. “Although I did eat a tablespoon of Alpo once. So did my friend Julian Goldstein.”

  “Ewwwww!” Tessa squealed.

  Maggie wrinkled her nose. “Why in the world would anyone... ?”

  “Had to,” Ian answered the unfinished question. “It was the initiation ritual for membership in our Secret Wolf Justice Association.”

  “How many members?” Maggie asked.

  “Well... just the two of us, actually. None of the other kids would eat the Alpo.”

  They settled around the fireplace, sipping at mugs of hot chocolate from the pan at the edge of the fire. The adrenaline rush that had accompanied the tree limb episode had receded, and conversation had dwindled along with it. The storm continued to harass the old house, but the temperature in the living room had risen to a comfortable point. The limb, shoved off against the wall and forgotten, breathed the scent of fresh pine into the room as it thawed.

  Sound sleep was hard to find that night. Montana nights were generally profoundly quiet, and the creaking of the Morrison house and the incessant, spirit-chilling assault of the storm were like spikes of pain that brought those who were dozing to rude consciousness. Maggie, wrapped in a luxuriously thick blanket on the floor with a throw cushion from the couch for a pillow, drifted behind her thoughts, touching sleep at times but not really losing herself to it.

  When Danny or Ian loaded logs into the fireplace, the hissing and crunching was like a circus rambling through the room. At one point Danny’s voice said, “Ouch, darn it!” when a flame licked his hand.

  Maggie smiled. A big, outdoorsy, muscular guy who spends lots of his time working on the horses and cattle of foul-mouthed cowboys says “Darn it” when he gets burned? What a great man. He cried when Dancer was born. My mom once said that sometimes it takes a very strong man to allow himself to cry.

  Maggie drifted to sleep again. A snork that could only be someone battling tears brought her back to the living room. She waited until she heard it again.

  “Tessa? What’s the matter, honey? We’re all going to be OK. There’s no reason to cry.”

  “I’m not crying! I just have... a nasal infection or something.”

  Maggie’s heart hurt for a moment. “Yeah. I’ve had lots of those nasal infections at night lately. For almost a year now.” She let a half minute pass. “What’s the matter, Tess?”

  Tessa tried to control her voice, but it cracked as she spoke. “My Turnip—and Dakota and Happy and Dancer and Dusty—and Sunday, locked in Danny’s mudroom. They’re waiting for us, and we can’t get to them.”

  Before Maggie could respond, Danny’s voice—even though lowered—seemed to fill the room. “There’s very little my GMC can’t get through, ladies. That’s why I bought it. It’ll go anywhere through anything. I’ll get to my dog tomorrow, and I’ll get to the horses.”

  “But the radio...”

  “I heard it, Tessa. The same
guy who tells me the stuff he advertises can grow hair on a watermelon told me there’s a storm. I’ll get through.”

  “Not alone, you won’t,” Ian’s voice added. “I’m going with you.”

  Maggie heard a sigh from across the room. “Sure is a lot of testosterone in this old house tonight,” Sarah said. “Hush, everyone, and go to sleep. We’ll see how things look tomorrow.”

  There was a long silence. Then Ian growled. In a heartbeat, Danny joined him, slavering and snarling like a bear pulling down prey.

  Tessa giggled—and then Maggie and Sarah joined her. Before too long, all of them slept.

  Maggie’s eyes opened. The light had a graininess to it—the sort of half-light that seems to struggle with the darkness. It was cooler in the room; perhaps the fire needed tending. Outside, the banshee wind howled unabated.

  A log collapsed in the fireplace, and the sound caused Tessa to move in her sleep and move a bit under her blanket. After a moment the girl’s quiet breathing resumed.

  One of the men was snoring lightly, in a slow, somehow comforting rhythm. She thought of the growling, macho posturing of Ian and Danny a few hours before and smiled.

  They’re both important to me. They’re different men—very much separate in their personalities and their approaches to life. Logically, Ian should be the more serious of the two, the one more inside himself, and yet he isn’t. And there’s a quiet power to Danny and an encompassing love for the creatures he treats and the people with whom he comes in contact.

  I care about both of them, Maggie admitted to herself. I care deeply.

  She recalled one of the few conversations she and Rich had had about the dangers of his work as a test pilot. It was before they were married, when her engagement ring was still a new fixture on her finger.

  “I need to say this, honey,” he’d said. “If something happens to me, I don’t want two lives to end. I don’t want to be morbid, but before we marry, I want you to promise me that if I should go down, you’ll go on and find a life with someone else. That’s the way life is supposed to be.”