by Jane Toombs
Sunday dawned fair and warm, but, by the time the four of them were ready to set off on their excursion, a thin haze dulled the blue of the sky and the day grew hot. The high desert made it a dry heat, but hot was hot. When they reached the Carson Sink area, they’d finished all the bottled water despite the truck’s air-conditioning.
“There’s hardly even any sagebrush out here,” Betty commented.
Amy, looking at the bleak, arid landscape, thought she’d never seen such a desolate spot.
“Why doesn’t the Carson River keep going instead of sinking into the sand out here?” Sarah asked.
“All the rivers in the area do the same thing,” David said. “They run out of enough water to keep flowing. What’s left eventually sinks into the sand.”
“Is this where the rocks move all by themselves?” Sarah said after they parked and got out.
“They get some help from the winds,” David said.
The hot wind hit Amy like a blast from a steel mill furnace. “How big are these so-called walking rocks?” she asked.
He pointed to the flat ahead of them where rocks resembling partially squashed melons were scattered. Underfoot the sand felt dry, though out farther it looked somewhat darker, as though it might be damp. When they neared the first rock, Amy saw what she thought was a snake track.
“See the trail this one left when the wind blew it?” David asked.
“Do we get to see them move?” Sarah asked.
“No, we’d have to stand here for hours, maybe days to do that. But you can see where they started from and where they are now.”
Amy discarded the notion of snake tracks when she saw that all the rocks in their immediate vicinity had left similar squiggly trails. “How hard does the wind have to blow—like a hurricane?”
He shook his head. “The sun dries the topmost sand, but underneath is mud from the water continually sinking in. This dampness allows the wind, constant out here, to move the rocks millimeter by millimeter—” he held up his thumb and forefinger to show the tiny distance “—night and day until they finally leave a trail we can see.”
“It’d be more fun it we got to watch it,” Betty said.
Amy had to admit she was right. Not only was the area desolate, but the vision of the river ending like this depressed her. Water should flow grandly into the sea, a lake or a larger river, not just give up and sink into the ground.
“I can’t argue with that,” David said. “Let’s go. I guarantee the air show’ll be more fun.”
He was right, even though they had to walk what seemed like miles from where the parking area was to where a lot of planes were parked on the tarmac. Amy had thought it hot before, but once she stepped onto the tarmac, the heat overwhelmed her.
“It’s 105,” a man passing told his companion.
“Is that degrees?” she asked David.
“Feels about that, yeah.”
“I’m thirsty, Daddy, and so is Betty,” Sarah said plaintively.
They detoured to the vendor stand for soft drinks.
“People are climbing inside that great big plane,” Sarah said when they finished the drinks. “Can we go?”
Consulting the flyer he’d gotten at the gate, David said, “That’s a C5-A, a military transport plane.”
Whatever it was, the plane was huge. As she climbed the steps, Amy felt she was entering the belly of a whale. Once they were inside, though, she was bathed in blessed coolness. Sighing, she sat down on a long bench that ran along one side of the plane’s belly.
“Let’s imagine we’re sailors who’ve been swallowed by a whale,” she said to Sarah and Betty.
“Awesome,” Betty said.
“Except it’d have to be a whale made out of—” Sarah hesitated, obviously stuck for the right word.
“A robot whale,” David said.
Sarah nodded. “So if we had the controls we could get out.”
Amy was constantly amazed at how much children knew at an early age. Had she understood what a robot was when she was seven? She couldn’t remember. She was listening to the girls jabbering back and forth, making up a story about the robot whale, when her gaze met David’s over their heads.
If she read that look correctly, he was wishing the two of them were alone together elsewhere. What, she wondered, did he see in her eyes? Was he remembering the night in Emerald Bay? She’d gone over that night so many times in her mind, reliving every word, every kiss, every caress.
She couldn’t be sure what she felt for David. Was it only moon love? Or was it more, an emotion she was afraid to recognize?
A roar from the crowd outside brought her back to the belly of the C5-A. A louder jet roar drowned out the noise from the crowd.
“Show’s starting,” David said. “Up and out.”
“Is that like over and out?” Betty asked. “They say that a lot on TV.”
“He means it’s time to go out and watch what’s happening in the air,” Amy said.
Finding it cool in the shade of the transport’s huge wings, at least as compared to being in the sun, Amy refused to move on. “We can see fine from here.”
The amazing feats of the newest navy fighters as they zoomed through the sky, sometimes flying straight up at what seemed like an impossible speed, held her in thrall.
“A tad faster than a sailplane,” David said into Amy’s ear, his breath tickling her, sending tingling squiggles along her nerve endings. “Noisier, too.”
Halfway through the precision performance of the Blue Angels, Sarah tugged at Amy’s hand. Unable to hear her over the noise, Amy crouched down to her level.
“Can we go?” Sarah asked. “I told Daddy I was tired, but he didn’t hear me.”
“Right away.” Amy looked at David, his rapt gaze on the navy jets. He didn’t seem to hear her when she called his name, so she reached up and tugged at his earlobe.
He started, then turned to her.
“The girls are worn-out,” she half shouted.
He nodded. Then, without a word of protest, he took each girl by the hand and headed for the car.
A good guy, Amy told herself as she brought up the rear. A good father. And a fantastic lover. Like most men, he was into control, but, admit it, not unbearably so. She couldn’t imagine him behaving the way Vince had. David was different. He was, like his eyes, matchless. What made her so afraid of admitting what she really felt? Saying past experience was a cop-out. Everyone had to grow and change or stagnate.
Okay, so love had crept up on her, taking her by surprise. She certainly hadn’t meant for it to happen. She wondered what David would do if she all of a sudden blurted out that she loved him. After his experience with Iris, run, probably. In any case, she didn’t intend to so much as give him a clue about how she felt.
By the time they reached Tourmaline, both girls were asleep in the back seat of the cab. Betty woke when David unfastened her seat belt and she stumbled sleepily along beside him to her mother’s door.
“Cary says she’s feeling better,” he reported when he returned to the truck. “Plans to go to work tomorrow.”
“I’m glad,” Amy said.
At the apartment complex, he couldn’t rouse Sarah enough to walk so he tossed his keys to Amy so she could unlock the door, then carried his daughter inside and laid her on her bed. Amy took off Sarah’s shoes, but since it wasn’t even dark yet, left her dressed, pulling a light quilt over her.
“I think she’ll wake up before long,” she told David. “Probably hungry.”
Back in the kitchen, he said, “I’ll call in a pizza order so you and I can eat and there’ll be leftovers for Sarah.”
By the time the pizza arrived, the kittens had discovered they were home and Amy had two of them climbing all over her.
“They must think I’m a tree,” she said as one of the black-and-white ones, on her shoulder, started licking her ear.
She returned both kittens to the floor, washed her hands and got out plates, glasses and
napkins while David cut the pizza. A tranquil domestic scene, she thought. A family scene. Though she’d never pictured herself as particularly domestic, somehow it seemed so right.
“Have you heard from Cal?” she asked as they sat down to eat.
David nodded. “He told me Dodie Thomas came through for him. She went down to the sheriff’s office and gave a statement about the accident that lets Cal off the hook and puts the blame where it belongs.”
“Will you have to go to court?”
“Depends on whether those dipsticks cop a plea.”
Which meant he would if Cal needed him to. “I suppose this is pro bono work,” she said.
“Cal offered to pay me. I told him if he got a good insurance settlement, okay, otherwise I wouldn’t charge him.”
Chances were the van was insured and so Cal ought to be granted a decent-size settlement, considering the charges against the driver. Which meant David was back to being a lawyer with a paying client. A giant step in the right direction.
Elated, Amy spoke before she thought. “Bye-bye denial and good riddance. You’re cured.”
David blinked at her for a moment before his expression turned stony. “I thought you’d promised to stop analyzing me. I see I was wrong.”
“I—I—” she stammered, realizing she’d made a mistake.
He set down his glass of root beer. “Get this straight. I do not intend to enter the practice of law again. I’ll maintain my Nevada licensure strictly for emergencies. Cal’s problem was in that category, just like filing for sole custody of Sarah was.” His voice was colder than his chill gaze.
Amy searched for words to explain but could find none. While she hadn’t actually promised David anything, she knew very well she’d led him to believe she’d stopped analyzing him.
“I. Am. Not. Your. Patient.” David’s clipped words left no doubt about his state of mind. “We’d agreed on that. You went back on your word. Betrayed me.”
“I—I have to go,” Amy muttered, sliding off the stool.
“Even if I had been in denial,” he added as she headed for the door, “you’re wrong, you know.”
Those last words of his stayed with her as she fled from his apartment. Wrong. Yes, she’d been wrong, in the same way she’d been wrong in the Giesau case, one that still haunted her. Her mentor had excused her because she’d just started to work with patients, but she’d never been able to excuse herself, just like she couldn’t now. Had she learned nothing since that time?
She’d harmed Olivia Giesau in the past by not understanding her. Because of this, the young woman had tried to commit suicide and almost succeeded. Though it was true she hadn’t harmed David here and now, she’d destroyed his trust in her and, along with it, any chance of a relationship between them. What must he think of her?
Tears trickled down her cheeks as she closed herself into her own place and locked the door. A vision of the Carson Sink flashed into her mind, making her realize her heart felt as barren as that desolate place. How could she have been so careless? Or, worse, how could she have gone on trying to push him out of denial after agreeing not to? She’d been wrong, and it served her right to be stuck with a love forever unrequited. At this thought, she burst into sobs.
Later, tears dried and face washed, Amy made up her mind not to continue feeling sorry for herself, since that was negative and nonproductive. She couldn’t go back and undo the damage, but she could and would go on from here. Since living in the same apartment complex meant she’d run into David from time to time, she decided a cool but not totally unfriendly attitude was what she’d employ. She’d tuck her love for him away in the attic of her mind, and in time, she’d forget. Wouldn’t she?
But what was she to do about Sarah?
David’s anger, completely justified, he assured himself, had cooled to a simmer by the time Sarah woke up. But it didn’t help that her first words as she straggled into the kitchen were “Where’s Amy?”
“She had to go home.”
Something in his voice must have given him away because Sarah gave him an odd look, though all she said was “Oh.”
He served Sarah some pizza and milk, wondering how he was going to explain why they wouldn’t be seeing much of Amy anymore.
Sarah polished off one slice of pizza and was working on another, when she stopped eating to say, “Are you mad at Amy?”
Since “no” would be an outright lie, he said, “Not exactly.”
Sarah eyed him for a moment, then said, “I like Amy. She’s my friend.”
He heard the thread of defiance in his daughter’s voice and realized avoiding Amy wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d imagined. Sarah wouldn’t understand if he cut Amy out of her life as well as his.
Instead of tackling the problem head-on, he decided he’d be better off easing Sarah out of the relationship she had with Amy. He changed the subject.
“I’m going to start building that gazebo Gert wanted in her backyard. Tomorrow you can help me pick out the lumber and then you can be my regular helper as we build it. Okay?”
“Okay, but don’t forget I have to start school next week. You said you were going to register me tomorrow.”
Touched as always by her careful pronunciation of the new word she’d learned, David said, “We can pick up the lumber afterward.” The truth was he’d completely forgotten about the registration.
“It’s the same school Betty goes to, so I already have a friend there,” Sarah said. “Isn’t that lucky? Do you think that’s because of the talisman Grandfather gave me?”
“It never hurts to have a good-luck piece, but you knew Betty and you were at the same school before he gave you that gift.”
“Yeah.” She finished the second slice of pizza, took a long swallow of milk, then said, “If you want to borrow my talisman, you can.”
“Do you think I need good luck?”
She nodded. “Amy said everybody wishes for good luck. So I’ll put the hawks in your bedroom so you can see them every day.”
Sarah meant well, so he forced himself to thank her, though the last thing he wanted to see when he went to bed at night was those two damn hawks.
He sat sipping coffee while she finished up her milk with two cookies, trying to tell himself he wasn’t brooding. Why was he attracted to women who betrayed him in one way or another? Iris’s betrayal was far more gross than Amy’s, but it angered and hurt him to think Amy might have been thinking of him as a patient all along.
“Betty says the doctor told her mother she had to have an operation,” Sarah said. “That’s when you go to the hospital and get cut open, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But Mrs. McBride told me last night that she felt better.”
“Betty’s scared.”
“Well, even if her mother does have the operation, Betty’s father will be there to see to things, so she’ll be okay.”
“Betty says he hasn’t been home for a really long time.”
Preoccupied with his own problem, David wasn’t really concentrating on what Sarah said. “Don’t worry, punkin,” he told her. “If push comes to shove, I’m sure Betty’s father will be there.”
Sarah stared at him. “What’s ‘push comes to shove’ mean?”
He tried to explain, realizing he was making a botch of it when Sarah only looked more puzzled. The truth was, he wasn’t running on all cylinders because of Amy. “Never mind,” he said. “I’m sure Betty will be well taken care of no matter what.”
“Amy said she’d shoot marbles with us when she comes home tomorrow. Why do you call it shoot?”
Rather than try to explain, he opened the pumpkin, took out a handful of marbles and gave Sarah her first lesson on the kitchen floor. Naturally the kittens thought the rolling marbles were playthings, making Sarah giggle rather than learn.
He let her take Sheba to bed with her, knowing once Sarah fell asleep, the kitten would make her way back to the box where the other kittens slept with their mother.
&n
bsp; As he retired for the night he saw that his daughter had already transferred the hawks talisman to his dresser. He scowled at it, knowing he’d be lucky to get any sleep at all tonight.
On Monday, Gert stopped Amy as she was leaving the office for the day. “If you’re not feeling well,” she said, “take the day off tomorrow.”
Amy sighed inwardly. It was difficult to fool Gert.
“It’s just that I didn’t sleep well last night,” she said.
Gert’s assessing gaze told her as clearly as words that she knew there was more to it than that, but all she said was “Take care of yourself.”
When Amy drove into her carport, she spotted Sarah at the edge of the playground with David. Since Sarah was looking her way, she waved, then started for the stairs to her apartment. Before she reached them, Sarah ran up to her.
“You promised to shoot marbles with us,” she said.
“I’m not dressed for it,” Amy parried.
“We’ll wait while you change.”
What was she supposed to do now? Well, she’d known it wouldn’t be easy. “I’m not sure I—”
“Please?” Sarah asked.
Unable to disappoint the girl, Amy gave in. “Just for a few minutes, though.”
When she came back out, Sarah was once again with her father, both crouched in the dirt. Amy’s pace lagged as she headed toward them. She plain wasn’t ready to see David yet. She’d thrown on the first clothes that were handy and now belatedly realized she had on the beige shorts that she used for cleaning because they were really too short to wear outside. Blast it.
Dawdle as she might, she finally came up to them. “Hi,” she said to David, not quite looking at him.
He nodded to her. “Got to get down and dirty here if you’re serious,” he said. “Here’s your shooter and ten glassies.” He handed her ten marbles, one slightly larger than the rest of the glassies.
She stared down at the ring drawn in the dirt with a stick.
“You have to put five of your marbles in the ring,” Sarah said.
Amy dropped to her knees since, as she knew, there was no other way to play. She tried to conjure up some memory of what she’d learned about the game from her brother, but her brain wasn’t functioning too well with David so close beside her.