“Laurel, you look lovely,” commented another woman, standing a few feet behind Abigail’s mother. “Did you know Thad’s home from Harvard this week? He’s been wondering whether to give you a call. Should I tell him you’re free?”
Laurel’s mouth was already sore from forcing a smile by the time she reached the punch bowl. Gratefully she accepted a crystal glass from a waiter. She stood at the edge of the lawn, watching the others, counting the seconds until she could escape to her bedroom—and her book.
It quickly became clear she wouldn’t be getting off as easily as she’d hoped. Her mother had spotted her. She was heading across the lawn in her direction with a friend in tow.
“William insisted on saying hello,” Catherine Adams cooed, taking her daughter’s hand. “He was just commenting on what a lovely young lady you’ve turned into.”
“Still chasing lizards?” William Turner, the husband of one of her mother’s close friends, greeted Laurel with a warm smile. He’d always stood out from the rest, more interested in what she was doing than any of the others.
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
“I’m not surprised. Rumor has it you’re now a biology major at Mountainville.”
‘That’s right.”
“I also hear you’re doing a crackerjack job.”
She was about to tell Mr. Turner about Dr. Ames’s research project and what an honor it was to have been chosen to work on it. But her mother caught her eye and gave her a warning glance. Laurel knew what she was thinking: that Mr. Turner was simply being polite and that she’d be much better off talking less about herself—especially her passion for science—and more about some topic of general interest.
“I’m doing my best,” she said simply.
“Laurel,” her mother said, “Elena North is right over there. This might be a good time to firm up your plans for working in her shop again this summer—”
William Turner raised his eyebrows. “Working in a store? Is that what you’ve got lined up for summer?”
Laurel took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment before focusing her attention on Mr. Turner. “Actually,” she said boldly, “I’m spending the summer in Alaska.”
“Alaska!” His eyes lit up. “How exciting!”
Laurel glanced over at her mother. Just as she’d expected, her mouth was drawn into a straight line. “What on earth are you talking about, Laurel? Such silliness!”
“It’s true, Mother. Everything’s all set.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“It sounds to me as if your daughter’s dead serious,” William Turner commented. He nodded at Laurel encouragingly. “What’s going on up there? Some research project?”
“Exactly.” She made a point of keeping her eyes fixed on him as she went on, avoiding her mother’s cold stare. “There’s a professor at Mountainville named Ethan Wells. I talked to him a few weeks ago after I found out he was looking for some students to take with him over the summer. He’s doing what’s called a biological inventory of a lake, finding out what plants and animals live in and around it—”
“Laurel,” her mother interrupted impatiently, “this whole thing is completely ridic—
“That’s what happens, Catherine,” Mr. Turner interrupted, his tone jovial. “These kids of ours grow up. One minute we’re forcing strained bananas down their throats, and the next thing we know they’re off on their own, making their own decisions, planning their own lives....”
Laurel cast him a grateful look. Yet her mother didn’t appear to be convinced.
“Laurel, this is certainly something your father and I are going to discuss. Your plans for this summer are anything but definite. Why, up until this moment, I simply assumed you’d be living at home, socializing with your friends, and going back to Elena’s shop.”
“Mother, everything’s already in place. I’ve arranged it all with Dr. Wells—”
“That’s enough for now, Laurel.” Her mother’s tone made it clear the subject was closed. “Come along with me. The Prestons have been asking about you for weeks. They’re anxious to hear all about your first year of college.”
“Good luck, kid,” Mr. Turner whispered with a wink.
Laurel didn’t have a chance to reply before her mother dragged her away.
* * * *
“How
could
you?” Mrs. Adams cried. She turned her back on Laurel, gazing out at the back lawn through the huge bay window that nearly covered an entire wall of the study. “Embarrassing me like that in front of my friends!”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you, Mother,” Laurel insisted, struggling to remain calm. “I was simply telling you and Mr. Turner my plans for the summer.”
“I think what your mother means,” Laurel’s father, Carter, interjected, “is that she would have preferred that you clear your summer plans with her first.”
“It’s more than that.” Catherine turned around, her arms folded firmly across her chest. Behind her, Laurel could see the caterer’s crew cleaning up, folding tablecloths, and carrying huge floral centerpieces back to their trucks. “I can’t believe you actually thought your father and I would give you permission to go traipsing off to ... to
Alaska,
of
all places....”
She let her voice trail off, meanwhile staring at her daughter coldly. “What were you thinking? Or maybe you weren’t thinking at all. Maybe this is simply some act of teenage rebelliousness.”
Laurel stood very still, resisting the urge to yell or beg or run from the room. Instead, she looked her mother squarely in the eye. “Surely you must understand how important this is to me.”
For the first time, her mother’s gaze wavered. As Catherine Adams glanced at her husband, Laurel felt a surge of strength rise up inside.
“I’ve wanted to be a biologist ever since I was a little girl,” she went on, sounding more and more sure of herself. “You know how much I’ve always loved being outdoors, collecting things, studying nature. But I’ve always done it on my own. Everything I know, I’ve taught myself or learned from books. I’ve never had a chance to do any fieldwork, to get out there and really do what research biologists do. You said yourself you couldn’t understand how I could bear to spend so much time cooped up in a lab.”
“What your mother meant,” Carter Adams said, “is that a girl your age should be out having fun. Going to parties, meeting people—”
“That may be fine for other girls my age, but it’s not what I want.” Laurel looked at her father pleadingly. “Don’t you know me well enough to see that?”
“But Alaska!” her mother cried. “It’s so far away. So wild. So ... so cold.”
“It’s not cold in the summer, Mother. Dr. Wells told me all about it. The area we’re going to, the Kenai Peninsula, is southwest of Anchorage, in the lower part of the state. The only snow I’m likely to encounter is at high elevations, up near the tops of mountains. The lake where we’ll be doing our research is moderate, not too hot and certainly not
cold—”
“You’re talking about this as if you’ve already decided you’re going,” Carter commented.
“I am,” Laurel said, her voice soft but firm. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I can’t pass it up. No one, not even you, can ask me to.”
This time the look her parents exchanged was one of resignation.
“It sounds as if her mind’s made up, Catherine.”
“I suppose Will Turner was right. Children reach a certain age and suddenly you can’t control them anymore.” Pointedly she added, “Even when you see they’re making rash decisions, there’s nothing you can do but stand by and watch, hoping they learn from their mistakes.”
Ordinarily, words like those would have hit Laurel like a blow. But inwardly she was rejoicing. Her parents were going to let her go! Maybe they weren’t being as supportive as she would have liked, but at least they weren’t standing in her way. And that meant that the fantasy she’d harbored for so long was about to become reality.
Chapter Two
“Guess what, Cassie! I’m going! I’m really going!”
Laurel’s squeal was so enthusiastic and so loud that Cassie Davis held the receiver away from her ear.
“Going
where?”
she finally asked.
“Alaska, that’s where!”
Cassie kicked off her sneakers and stretched across the brown leather couch that lined one wall of the den. She’d made a point of taking Laurel’s long-distance call in this room, the most comfortable in the Davis’s tumbledown Victorian house on the edge of Mountainville, Vermont. It had originally been a sun room. Now, the French doors that opened onto the garden were the only reminder that this had at one time been a place of leisure.
The walls were covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stacked with the thick volumes her father used to teach anthropology at the university. He graded his students’ work at the huge mahogany desk in the center of the room—a desk piled so high with books and notes and papers that the haphazard stacks threatened to slide off at any moment. The dark red Persian rug with its intricate design and thick pile gave the room a hushed, somber feeling, as if this were a place for thinking deep thoughts.
“I gather you’re talking about that nature trip with Dr. what’s-his-name,” said Cassie.
“Dr. Wells,” Laurel corrected her. “Dr. Ethan Wells. And not only am I still thinking about it, my bags are practically packed!”
“So good old Mom and Dad finally agreed.”
Laurel laughed. “They nearly had a fit. You should have seen the look on my mother’s face when I told her I intended to spend the summer in
Alaska,
of all places. I get the feeling my parents haven’t figured out yet that it’s part of the United States.”
Cassie was barely listening as Laurel chattered away about her adventurous summer ahead. She was too busy studying the print hanging on the wall of her father’s study. Distractedly she twirled a strand of short, curly red hair around one finger. She’d seen that etching a thousand times before but had never given it much thought. Now, her mind began to wander as she dissected the techniques used by the artist who’d created it: the composition, the colors, the way dark and light were used in contrast....
She’d only been on spring break for two days, yet she’d already put all thoughts of her academic subjects on a back burner. Friday afternoon, right after her last class, she headed across campus, toward home. Without even stopping for a snack, she’d gone up to her room, taken out her tubes of acrylics, and begun a new painting.
What bliss it was, knowing she had a full nine days to devote to her one true love: her artwork. Almost immediately she forgot about catching up on the reading for her English Literature class. She’d also forgotten all her intentions of boning up on calculus, trying to make sense of symbols that since September had seemed like little more than squiggles to her. There would be time for that—later. For now, she was going to indulge herself. Every morning, after breakfast, she would open her paints and lose herself in the exhilarating act of
creating.
She’d wanted to take an art course or two, just as she had all through high school, But months earlier, when she was putting together her schedule for her freshman year at Mountainville University, her parents stood firm.
“It’s time for you to get serious, Cassie,” her father, Professor Lawrence Davis, had insisted. She’d cringed when he waved his hand through the air dismissively, acting as if the paints spread out on the dining-room table were nothing more than toys. “I expect you to take a full academic load this year. You’re in college now. You’ve got to start thinking about your future, deciding what field you want to go into. I recommend you take courses in as many different areas as you can manage. Math, science, the
humanities....”
“Your father’s right.” As usual, her mother, also a professor at the university, had been in complete agreement with him. “You’re turning out to be a bit of a late bloomer, Cassie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that you have yet to find yourself. If you’d like, I can ask around and find out which classes would be the most worthwhile for you to take....”
Her freshman year wasn’t even over yet, and Cassie had already considered half a dozen majors. Her first-semester archaeology course had gotten her fired up for a good two weeks. When that faded, she got excited about economics ... for the better part of a week. Art history had her eating, sleeping, and breathing French Impressionists and German Expressionists for close to a month.
Yet in the end, none of them stuck. She always retreated home or to the university’s art studio to paint. For her, art was more than a hobby. It was a passion.
In a way, she envied her best friend. Laurel was only a freshman, but already she had no doubts about what direction she wanted her studies and her life to follow. In fact, Cassie’s parents had mentioned her best friend more than once, citing her as an example of a “young woman who had her head screwed on straight.”
Cassie suspected they understood Laurel Adams better than they understood their own daughter. After all, Laurel, like them, was passionate about her work. For that matter, even Cassie’s fifteen-year-old brother, Mark, was a source of that same kind of irritation. He’d been a math whiz his entire life, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he’d stick with what he excelled at.
It had been Cassie’s idea to live at home during her college years, earning her degree right here in her hometown. Growing up, she’d found being part of a college community fascinating. She’d always been proud that her parents worked at the university that was the center of the small New England town.
Yet having two parents who were professors at the same school where she was a student was turning out to be confining. They had something to say about everything she did: not only which courses she took and which professors she chose, but even which gym classes she signed up for. At night, around the dinner table, Lawrence and Virginia Davis engaged in endless discussion of the goings-on at Mountainville.
“Cassie?” Laurel was suddenly saying, her voice impatient. “Are you listening?”
“Sorry, Laurel. I guess I let my mind wander.” Cassie made a point of focusing on the telephone conversation. “Well, spending the summer in Alaska may not be my cup of tea, but I’m glad you’re going. Just make sure the bears don’t get you!”