A Little Learning (13 page)

He checked his coat pockets and found a ten-dollar bill. “Bring me back a cappuccino?” he asked. “And yours is on me.”

She made a face. “I want to hang out there.”

“So, bring my coffee back first.” That would take up some time, Seamus reasoned. Time she might otherwise use less wisely.

Lauren sighed dramatically. “All right.”

Jay glanced at her as she went out the door, his expression thoughtful.

Seamus said, “Yes?” with the sense that he was about to learn more about how his oldest daughter spent her free time.

Jay glanced at Belle, the only other person in the room, and then stood up. Seamus could well imagine that even if the other man knew something, he would be reluctant to speak—most of all, to Seamus. Seamus tried to think of some way to make it possible for Jay to reveal what, if anything, he knew about Lauren’s hours away from the rest of her family.

Jay said, “How old is she?”

“Fourteen, going on twenty-five,” Seamus said.

Jay nodded thoughtfully. He didn’t answer.

“Why?” Seamus asked.

“Some kids I know—from the ski area—are under the impression she’s sixteen.”

Seamus’s eyes widened. So he’d never needed to explain to Lauren why she shouldn’t be interesting to a twenty-year-old male. Lauren, perhaps, already knew. And she’d told the male—or males—that she was already sixteen. The age of legal consent.

“Thank you,” Seamus said. “Can I count on you to circulate the real facts?”

The young man grinned. “Definitely.”

* * *

R
ORY
SELDOM
WENT
out for coffee. When she drank coffee, it was black coffee brewed at home. But her more than satisfactory meeting with her father called for a celebration, so she walked to Sultan’s one real coffeehouse, Grounds for Action, to order a two-shot caffe latte.

When she walked inside, the first person she saw was Lauren, sitting near the woodstove with two backcountry skiers and another girl. Rory knew none of them, but she could tell at a glance that they were all several years older than Lauren.

This is not my responsibility.

Yet Lauren was Seamus’s daughter. And Rory cared about Lauren in her own right. “What are you doing? Are you off work today, then?” Lauren asked, when Rory walked up to her.

Rory nodded. “I’m getting a latte.”

“Will you take my dad’s to him? I ordered him one and they’re making it.”

“Actually, I can’t,” Rory improvised. It would be unwise for her to return to Seamus’s house right now. Jay was the Lees’ program coordinator and he needed to be supported as such.

But the door swung open behind her, and in came Seamus, with Belle. Rory knew that Caleb and Beau must be skiing, demonstrating technique as part of their fieldwork.

“I thought I’d come after that cup of coffee myself.”

“She’s making it,” Lauren told him. She remained near Rory and Seamus, and Rory suspected this was so that she wouldn’t have to introduce the people with whom she’d been sitting.

Seamus swept the coffeehouse as if looking for someone. “I don’t see your friend, the barista.”

“It’s her day off,” Lauren said.

Seamus seemed alert to everyone present in the long, narrow shop. He’d spotted the group near the woodstove, noticed them glancing at Lauren and had undoubtedly picked up that they were her friends.

“So,” Seamus said, “I hear that you’re sixteen.”

Color flooded Lauren’s face and Rory moved away, doing her best to pretend she hadn’t heard this. She crouched to speak with Belle.

Belle said, “I want hot chocolate. Dad said.”

Dad. Good job, Seamus.
He was regaining his children’s trust—at least with
one
of his children.

“Do you want me to order it for you?” Rory asked. “I’ll ask them to make sure it’s not too hot.”

“I can order,” Belle said. “Fiona lets me.”

“Okay!” Rory responded. She wanted to touch Seamus and be touched by him, but they both knew that any public sign they were more to each other than friends was a bad idea. Until the course was over. And then, how long could he remain in Sultan? His children needed to get back to school....

Behind her, she heard Lauren say, “Would you
please
just leave me alone? There’s no one like me here who is my age. These are my friends.”

“Friends to whom you’ve lied about something pretty basic.”

With the espresso machine running, Rory doubted the group by the stove could hear them. She had to strain to do so.

“You’re the one who’s talking about moving here,” Lauren accused. “And I like it, but you’re picking on me. Why did you follow me?”

Rory stood to place her own coffee order and with her one good arm she managed to lift Belle to a stool at the counter so she could place hers.

“Because you’re being untrustworthy. You’re lying to other people right and left, which makes me think you’ve lied to me, as well.”

“About what?”

“Why don’t you collect your coffee and mine and we can return to the house to discuss it?”

“You never noticed a single thing I did until we came here.”

“Let’s talk about this at home.”

Rory was fairly sure she knew what would happen—either on the way back to Empire Street or when they reached the house. Lauren would distract her father from her own behavior by raising the subject of her mother.

She had the same feeling she’d experienced during the avalanche; of being affected by forces beyond her control. She was seeing Seamus and she suspected that she was going to continue to become closer to him. But in doing so, she was entering into a complicated situation. He had four children and a different relationship with each child. When the SMS course ended, who would Rory be to those children? Their father’s girlfriend? What would he expect of her in that role? What would they expect? And what could she expect of them?

Her father had thought Seamus wanted only a casual relationship with her. She knew already that he wanted something quite different. Her father had been wrong, wrong, wrong. What Seamus wanted was more challenging and also more important. Rory wondered if her father would think her competent to deal with
that
role—in essence, stepmother to four children whose mother had died suddenly and violently.

Wait,
she told herself.
Let it play out. That’s all you can do now.

Rory sat at the counter with Belle and asked her what she’d done that day. They discussed Belle’s stuffed animals, one of whom, Belle said, had caught a cold. Not Mouse, but Elsie Cow, who was now in bed and covered up.

Rory felt a hand on her shoulder—Seamus’s.

Beside her, Lauren was paying for her own and her father’s coffee. “I got mine for
here,
” she said. “Yours is
to go.
”

Leave, Dad. Leave.

“Want to go for a walk with Belle and me?” Seamus asked, as Rory paid for her coffee and stuffed a dollar in the tip jar.

I’m no longer working with him.
Had her father shifted her to office work so that would be the case? Why would he facilitate her being with Seamus, if he believed Seamus would lead her on and then leave Sultan?

She shrugged. “I guess so. I’m struggling a little with how it looks. Because I work for the school.”

Seamus smiled. “We have only a matter of a few days left at the school. I think you should stop worrying about that.”

They stepped out into the spring day. Sultan was still a long way from summer, when there would be crowds of tourists, but a couple of the more vital stores had reopened.

Belle stopped often to sip her hot chocolate, and Rory and Seamus waited for her. Finally, they sat down on a bench outside the town toy store.

Belle exclaimed, “Stuffies!” and Seamus caught her hot chocolate cup as she dashed to the window to examine the array of stuffed animals. She spun around. “Daddy, can I get a new stuffy?”

Seamus looked thoughtfully at his youngest. He realized he couldn’t remember buying her a single stuffed animal in her life. He couldn’t remember what he’d ever bought for her birthday or Christmas. He
had
bought presents—he’d asked Fiona what he should get. Now he said, “Yes.”

“Can Rory get one, too, so we can play?”

“I have some, Belle,” Rory said quickly. “They’re at my grandmother’s house.”

“At Miss Sondra’s?”

Rory laughed at this name for her grandmother. “Yes.”

“I bet you could use another one,” Seamus said. Then, more softly, “I want to give you something. Many things.”

“You really don’t have to.”

“Which one do you like?” Belle asked. “Can we go in?”

“After you finish your hot chocolate,” Seamus told her. He turned to Rory. “You know, I think I should get something for each of them. A souvenir of being here and completing the course.”

Souvenirs were not something you collected from the place where you lived. A memento of being somewhere, Rory thought, had to do with leaving.

With his returning to Telluride.

She had assumed too much. Far too much. His gift for her might be farewell.

No.

She forced her mind back to what Seamus had said. “I think that’s a really good idea.”

“I’d like to buy Beau a pair of skis from that shop where he works. Surely they’ll give me a discount, with all the work he’s done there.”

“A big discount,” Rory agreed. “Look into it.”

“I don’t want this to be a long-distance relationship,” he said.

Rory blinked at the non sequitur. Either he was a mind reader or the thing foremost in her mind was also first in his. “You’re going back to Telluride,” she said, as lightly as possible.

“I’d like you to come, too.”

CHAPTER TEN

H
E
’
D
BEEN
AT
THE
HOUSE
for an hour, waiting for Lauren, while Rory and Belle played with stuffed animals in Belle’s room. The warthog that Seamus had bought Rory was bossing around Mouse, Elsie Cow and Belle’s new squid, Squish.

Finally, Lauren came home.

Seamus nodded toward Belle’s room, so that Lauren would know they weren’t alone. “Shall we go upstairs to talk?”

Lauren gave him a wary look, and he thought how pretty she was and how much she looked like Janine. A spark went through him as he remembered Janine’s laughter, her silly streak, vibrancy in the midst of her usual anger and fear. “Yesss,” Lauren said with effort, drawing out the word.

Still wearing her parka, she followed him up the stairs and down the hall to an unoccupied bedroom with its single bed, its vanity table and two chairs by the filmy curtains. Seamus walked to one of the chairs and sat down.

Lauren sat on the bed, beside the door, ready to flee.

He’d done little in the past hour but think—about Rory and the possibility of her living with them in Telluride, but mostly about what he had to say to Lauren and the rules and restrictions he needed to impose. He worried that rules would make her wilder; that if he restricted her, she would make foolish choices just to thwart him.

“Here are the rules,” he said. “You’ve made friends in Sultan. I think your friends are too old for you and that the males may want more than friendship from you. You’re fourteen years old and you need someone to talk intelligently to you about boys, but I’m not sure it can be me.”

“It’s never been you. For anything. You didn’t even know when I got my first period.” Her voice accused. “Fiona’s the only one who has ever told me anything. At least she’s open-minded for someone her age. But I guess she’s not coming back.”

“She won’t be with us as often as she used to be. Her family needs her, which wasn’t the case earlier.” He refocused. “The first rule: You can see your friends at the coffeehouse, the ski area or here. When you’re going out, you tell me where you’re going and when you’ll be back. I don’t want you going to their houses.”

“Things are
different
here. Kids of all ages hang out together. They just like to ski. They’re not druggies or anything.”

“Did you hear me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes. I don’t care. We’ll only be here a few more days.”

“The next rule: Don’t lie to me. Period. If you lie to me, you will be grounded.”

She looked away, toward the doorway, already gone.

“Those are the rules for right now. Please follow them.”

“Mom used to make rules,” she said.

A cloud lifted and Seamus suddenly saw Janine before him, gazing straight into the eyes of Lauren—or Beau—saying, “Hear this: Don’t lie to me. Ever.”

Like him.

Peace came softly, briefly.

“She made good rules,” Seamus said.

Lauren stole a look at him. Her wide mouth turned down as she faced the floor.

“Lauren.”

She looked up.

“How would you feel about Rory coming to Telluride with us?”

Lauren shrugged. “I figured you’d do that.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant. And right now he was afraid to ask.

* * *

R
ORY
LAY
IN
her double bed in the pink house, where she’d lived for so many years. She counted. Five... Six, at least...

What was she going to do?

Seamus had asked her to go to Telluride, where she had no employment. And that would mean yet
another
job change on her résumé. She was supposed to choose between working with her father—and perhaps moving into a position of more responsibility at the Sultan Mountain School—or being with Seamus.

Logic told her what to do. Intuition seconded it. Sultan was her home. And she could not abandon another job after just a few months at it. But could she make Seamus understand?

She hugged the warthog that Belle had insisted she get. Rory had named it Mrs. Turpin and explained to Belle and Seamus that it came from a story she’d read in which one of the characters had been called a warthog.

Finally, she reached for the cordless phone beside her bed and dialed the Empire Street house. Seamus answered.

“It’s Rory.”

“Hi. I was just thinking about you—again.”

“I can’t...go with you. I can still see you when I have free time. I can come to Telluride for a day or two sometimes—I’d like that. But my work is here. I need to honor the commitment I’ve made.”

“For your father.”

“For
me.
My résumé shows me hopping from one job to another. I’m actually perfect for the work I’m doing now, and I want to keep doing it. I would feel...flaky...if I went with you.”

A pause. “I understand. I’m disappointed, but that’s the way it is.”

Sultan and Telluride were little more than an hour apart. An hour and fifteen or twenty minutes, say.

“And evenings,” Rory said. “It’s not that far.”

“On the other hand, you’re going to be out of a place to live soon.”

“Yes, I know. But I’m always welcome at my grandmother’s. I won’t be homeless.”

“You could live in Telluride and commute,” Seamus suggested.

“The weather is too unpredictable. The passes close in bad weather, and then I wouldn’t be able to get to work. Seamus, I
want
to be closer to you. I just know it’s wrong not to fulfill my duty here. I need to be here, and I’m
sorry.
I know you can’t just pick up and move your business...”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it.” Standing in the living room of the Victorian where he and his children had been living for the past several months, he considered it again.

The plan had seemed perfect. Settle in Sultan. Move his employees to Sultan or let them commute. Even have two studios—one in Telluride, one in Sultan. And it was time for him to get his mind on Ki-Rin, the dragon boy who was his creation and his family’s means of support. He wanted Rory to see his life in Telluride, to be part of that life. He wanted to be tied to her.

And that was the answer.

Standing in the living room, holding the phone, watching Caleb play with a tilting maze that had been his choice as a souvenir, he knew simply that he must find a way to join his life to Rory’s, and she must join hers to his.

Lauren and Beau were upstairs watching a movie and Belle was asleep.

He said, “Can I come over?”

“Yes.”

* * *

T
HEY
LAY
TOGETHER
,
dressed, on her Victorian four-poster, Mrs. Turpin sitting on the pillows against the headboard.

Seamus kissed her as he’d wanted to since they parted that morning. He wrapped his fingers in her hair and brushed his lips to her lush eyebrows and across the freckles on her nose. He found her mouth and touched his lips to hers, each kiss falling upon the one before. He said, “Will you marry me?”

Rory grew perfectly still. The room around her seemed cavernous, dark, magical.
Will you marry me?

She had been asked once before, by a boy she’d thought of as selfish and immature.

This was entirely different.

He was so sure. But was she sure, as well?

“I still couldn’t live in Telluride,” she said at last.

“Yes, but we’d be united. I want that with you—I want you to be part of my family.”

The prospect terrified her, and she couldn’t have said why. At the same time, it seemed like her destiny, as if Seamus and his kin were made for her and she for them.

“I will,” she said. “But maybe not right away? I think I’m a little afraid.”

He kissed her again. “Thank you.” Another kiss. “Thank you.”

* * *

“T
OMORROW
’
S
YOUR
DAY
OFF
,” her father said to Rory on the Lees’ last day in Sultan. “What are you going to do?”

She and Seamus had told no one of their engagement. Seamus planned to tell his children today, and Rory had not offered to be there. If the children objected to her, she wanted them to have the freedom to say so to Seamus privately.

Rory did, however, want to tell her father, her grandmother and Samantha, and she would do that today.

The first person was the hardest one to inform....

“I’m going to drive to Telluride, just for the day.”

Her father gazed at her, his eyes direct, unyielding. “You remember what I said.”

“Actually,” she interrupted, “we’re going to spend the day finding an engagement ring.”

Kurt Gorenzi sat down. He touched the arms of his chair. He looked up and smiled. “Well, good. I like that. That’s actually great.”

Rory could see that he meant it.

“But I’ll hate to lose you,” he said. “Here, I mean.”

Yes, Rory thought, no use pretending you hate to give me away like a traditional father, you hate for your daughter to leave the home where she was raised, all your protection, everything you never gave me. She dismissed the bitter thoughts.

“You won’t be losing me. I’m going to continue living in Sultan, maybe with Grandma. I told Seamus that I need to honor my commitment to this job. I’m proud of what I’m doing here, and I don’t want to leave. So...we’re going to be together sometimes and apart sometimes.”

Her father nodded, thinking it over. Again, he smiled his crusty smile. “You’ve turned out fine, Rory,” he said.

* * *

S
ONDRA
SAID
, “Y
ES
,
I’m happy for you, Rory. Just don’t rush. You don’t know what marriage is. It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done, no matter how much you love him.”

Her grandmother had been a widow for decades and had never remarried, although she certainly could have, Rory reflected. Sondra Nichols was beautiful still.

“You have freedom now,” the older woman continued. “That’s something you can’t buy. When you marry, it’s gone. I’m not saying there aren’t positive aspects to marriage. I’m just telling you to be sure.”

“I’m sure,” Rory said. “And I’ve told him I want to hold off on the ceremony for a little while. To be absolutely sure.”

Her grandmother embraced her. They stood beside the bed in the room that had been Rory’s growing up. Her grandmother was pleased to have her back.

Sondra said, “So many changes for you, Rory. Desert’s moving away. Her house being sold. Working for your father. But you do seem happy.”

“I am.”

“And I think it’s better,” Sondra said, “easier for you, that is, that the mother of those poor children is dead, rather than simply divorced from their father. Well, easier in some ways and harder in others.”

“She’ll always be their mother,” Rory said.

“I’m not being callous, dear, and I understand that their grief will never completely heal. I just mean that the last thing you need, in taking on a husband and four children, is some kind of rival for the affection of those children. Or for his, for that matter.”

Rory nodded, not wanting to hear any more of this advice. Janine was dead, and absolutely Rory would not have had her dead. If Janine had lived and remained married to Seamus, Rory doubted that Seamus would ever have fallen in love with her or she with him.

“I’ve been insensitive to say these things,” Sondra told her. “I just know that everything that happened when your mother died had been set in motion from the time she met your father.”

Rory sat on her bed. She lifted her face to see the older woman’s. The death of her daughter had been the most painful loss in Sondra Nichols’s life, and Rory knew that.

“I think the way your father was with her,” Sondra said, “is something like he has been with you. Distant, uninvolved. He’s a man’s man.”

“He can talk just fine,” Rory said. She knew she hadn’t expressed what she wanted Sondra to know. “I mean, he knows how to say what he thinks and feels. He has talked to me a few times now, since I’ve been working for SMS, and he’s told me some truly nice things.”

“Yes, you’ve shared that with me,” her grandmother replied. “And I’m glad, Rory. I don’t believe that he’s a bad man at all. I simply think he was emotionally inaccessible, where your mother was concerned. She needed to talk about her feelings, and he couldn’t do that. He came from a different culture; the mining culture, if the truth be told.”

Her father, too, Rory remembered, had mentioned that his background was quite different from her mother’s. That had been an element of his warning about becoming involved with Seamus.

Remembering that, she shivered. What if she couldn’t give Seamus what he needed in a mate? What if he needed someone better educated or more worldly? He might not realize that immediately. He might not see it until it was too late.

We won’t marry right away. We’ll have a long engagement,
she reminded herself.

“Well, Seamus isn’t emotionally inaccessible,” she said at last. “Not with me, at any rate. And he’s doing the best he can with the kids.”

Her grandmother touched her cheek. “I love you, Rory darling,” she said.

* * *

S
EAMUS
HAD
DECIDED
to tell his children together. He knew Rory thought they should each be encouraged to express their true feelings about the engagement. Perhaps he was a coward for telling them all together, where sibling approval might drown out any dissenters.

So they assembled in the living room of the Empire Street house, their belongings half packed for their departure. He’d asked them to sit down there; he’d said he had something to tell them.

“We’re moving here,” Lauren predicted, without enthusiasm. She’d seemed depressed ever since the conversation when Seamus had given her the new rules. But maybe the rules weren’t the reason. He suspected that Jay Norris had wasted no time in spreading the word that Lauren was fourteen years old.

All four children sat on the couch, with Seuss at Beau’s feet, and Seamus drew up a chair across from them. “Rory and I are engaged to be married.”