Sitting behind Cam in the canoe, expertly paddling across Wolf Lake, she took a mental inventory of all the changes she’d gone through as a result of being in a world so different from her own. By this point, the sight of the back of his head, the thick, dark, wavy mane that peeked out from under the wide-brimmed green felt hat he wore on the water, was a familiar one. She watched his broad shoulders tilt one way, then the other, as he effortlessly paddled through the water.
“You know, Cam,” Laura confessed, “whenever I think back to that first day, I feel really foolish. I acted like such a baby. I guess it was culture shock.”
“Can’t blame you. Alaska’s not like any place else. It’s hardly surprising that someone like you would react strongly.”
“ ‘Someone like me’?” Laura repeated teasingly. “You mean someone whose idea of roughing it used to be drinking out of a coffee cup that didn’t match its saucer?”
“I mean someone who’s in the middle of a divorce. I’ve already told you I went through it myself. It was without a doubt the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Just keep in mind that sooner or later this period of your life will end. You’ll come through it. And you’ll establish a brand-new life for yourself, one that’s a lot better than the one you had before.”
Laura shook her head. “I can’t envision that yet. The part about the new and improved life, I mean.” She squinted her eyes to close out the glaring morning light as she gazed across the lake. “It’s scary, not knowing what’s going to come next. For the first time in my life I have absolutely no idea where I’ll be a year from now. Not even in six months.”
“Actually, that could be liberating.”
“Sometimes it feels that way. But there’s still this uncertainty that gnaws away at me all the time. Am I going to end up living all alone in a room with cracked linoleum and peeling wallpaper, eating off a hot plate for the rest of my life? Or am I going to establish a comfortable life alone, with a double bed all to myself and kitchen cabinets full of every type of junk food I’ve ever craved?”
Cam laughed. “Probably neither. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even get married again.”
“No, thanks,” she shot back.
He laughed again. “Give yourself time, Laura.”
“I know that’s what I need. In fact, that’s partly how I ended up here. I desperately wanted some time to myself, in a situation unlike anything else I’ve ever been in. I wanted to take myself out of my normal routine and force myself to sit back and take stock of my life. Of myself, too.”
She shook her head slowly. “You know, I’ve spent most of my life running around like the proverbial chicken with her head cut off. I’ve constantly been in a hurry—and always looking over my shoulder to see if what I was doing was okay with everybody else. First it was my parents. Then my teachers and my college professors. Finally, it was Roger.
“Now, for the first time in my life, when I look over my shoulder, there’s nobody standing there. Nobody’s watching me. It’s an amazing feeling. The problem is, I’ve spent so much of my life trying to second-guess what other people wanted out of me that somewhere along the way I lost the ability to figure out what
I
want out of me.”
She let out a deep sigh. “And so I developed this idea that what I needed was a block of time to ruminate. To stop thinking about the deadline for my next book and whether or not there were enough dirty clothes to do a load of laundry and what time I was supposed to pick my son up from Cub Scouts. If I could only concentrate long and hard enough, I decided, I’d have this ... this vision. All of a sudden, through some mysterious process, I’d know exactly who Laura Briggs is. Not only know her, but also have the courage to
be
her.”
Cam stopped paddling long enough to turn around and give her a long, hard look.
“You’re certainly full of surprises,” he said gently.
She could feel her face turning red. She hadn’t meant to go on like that, pouring her heart out to someone she barely knew. But perhaps that was why it had felt so safe. She was out in the middle of nowhere with no one to hear except a few fish, a lot of mosquitoes, and more leeches than she cared to think about.
Yes, Laura insisted to herself, earnestly studying the ripples the paddle made as she plunged it into the water, that was probably all it was.
* * * *
“It’s hard to believe I’ll be going home in just three more days. This past week and a half went by so quickly.” The deep sigh Laura let out had nothing to do with the fact that she was trudging along the edge of the lake, struggling with her half of the heavy fishnet that was Cam’s latest toy. “It’s funny; looking back, I see that every day was pretty much the same. But each one felt so different. All the new things I did, the new things I saw ...”
“I knew we’d turn you into a nature lover.” Cam flashed her a smile. He had a particularly warm smile, Laura noted, not for the first time. It lit up his whole face, its sincerity clearly reflected in his brown eyes.
“Well, I can’t deny that I still have dreams about the feather pillow I left behind,” she admitted. “And as much as I hate to admit it, I miss my microwave almost as much as my friends.”
“No doubt they’re all waiting for you.”
“Yes, I suppose they are.” She paused, experiencing a wave of sadness.
It wasn’t as much that she didn’t want to return to her real life as that she was reluctant to abandon the new equilibrium she’d established. She loved the daily routine. The whole crew was up early for coffee and a lumberjack-sized breakfast, followed by a full day on the lake collecting fish. The evenings were just as busy: packing and labeling the day’s samples, making dinner in the makeshift kitchen, eating together, then cleaning up. Afterward it was time to sit back and appreciate the feeling of being physically exhausted, inventorying the aches and pains of overworked muscles and then finally giving in to the intense craving for sleep, knowing it was all the result of having put in a good day’s work. Laura had never been more relaxed ... or invigorated.
She even looked different. She gasped when by chance she caught a rare glimpse of herself in a mirror. She hadn’t even noticed it, propped up on a shelf in the small cabin that housed supplies, machinery, and a rusty metal shower stall that was something out of a grade-B women’s prison movie. Instead of looking uncomfortable and out of place, the way she’d looked when she’d peered at her reflection in the window at La Guardia, she looked as if she belonged here.
Her skin was glowing, its healthy color heightened even further by the pink tinge of her cheeks and the smattering of freckles strewn across her nose. She’d taken to wearing her hair in a ponytail all the time now, which gave her the look of a spirited cheerleader. Her clothes, a mix of plaid flannel, cotton knit, and denim, had lost their stiff fresh-out-of-the-box appearance. After a week and a half her shirts were pleasantly rumpled and her jeans had conformed to the shape of her body. Somehow, the old Laura Briggs had evolved into the new Laura Briggs.
She tried to concentrate on the good points about going home. Her passion for her microwave aside, she couldn’t wait to tell Claire and Julie every single detail of her trip—with a good deal of embellishment, of course. And in two more weeks, when Evan got back, it would be great fun to show him the pictures she’d taken and tell him that his mother, a woman who’d nearly had heart failure the time a frog got into their basement, had actually had a leech stuck to her hand.
But it wasn’t only playing Daniel Boone that she was going to miss. It was Cam, too. Swallowing hard, she realized that whenever she felt a pang of regret over how quickly the time was going, it was partly because of him.
You’ve been out in the wild too long, she scolded herself. Before she could add on half a dozen more arguments, a fat, cold drop of water snaked down the back of her shirt.
“Oh, no!” she gasped. “It’s starting to rain!”
“It’s just a drizzle. No big deal.” Cam was already folding up the net. “Besides, I seem to remember Elsie mentioning something about an outbuilding around here. A storage shed. I’m pretty sure she said it was up this way. Here, let me help you.”
He took her by the hand, helping her across the rocky terrain densely overgrown with a variety of plants. There were no paths on this part of the shore surrounding Wolf Lake. Twice she stumbled, grabbing on to his sleeve, grateful for his surefootedness.
“It’s raining harder,” she commented, ducking her head.
“The shed’s right up here.” He pulled her up a slope, then led her to the door of a small log cabin that looked as if it had been created by the same person who’d conceived the shoebox design of the main building.
Once inside, out of the rain, Laura breathed a sigh of relief. Distractedly she pushed her damp front locks off her forehead. “Safe,” she announced, leaning against the wall.
There was little in the place besides some old tools, most of them rusty or broken. Still, she was glad to be out of the rain. Big drops pounded noisily against the roof. Outside, they made a soft rustling sound as they hit the broad leaves of the trees.
Cam stayed in the doorway, looking out. “It’s beautiful in the rain, isn’t it? A whole different world, compared to the way it feels the rest of the time.”
“You certainly seem at home here.” There was an undertone of admiration in her voice.
“I love it. I feel more alive when I’m up here in Alaska than anywhere else.”
“You’re lucky to have a place like this, one that means so much to you.”
“Now you do, too.”
Laura was silent for a long time. When she finally spoke, her voice was thick and odd sounding. “Cam?”
“Ummm.”
“I feel as if I really owe you a lot. I—I want to thank you for being so patient. And, well, thanks for giving me all this. Alaska, I mean. You’re right; it is a place that’ll always be special to me.”
“The pleasure was all mine.” He turned away from the doorway and came over to her. The shed was so small that he had no place to stand except right across from her. Laura felt her heart shift into overdrive. Looking into his eyes, she had the sensation she was floating.
“I bet you say that to all your World Watch volunteers,” she quipped, anxious to mask her sudden self-consciousness.
“No, Laura, I don’t. I really mean it. I enjoyed sharing it all with you. This is a special place, but not everybody’s capable of enjoying it. I’ve come up here five or six times, but having you up here this summer made this visit really special.”
Suddenly the fact that she was leaving soon, that this magnificent respite from her real life was about to end, infused Laura with a burst of courage. She lifted her face to his, standing on her toes as she placed a gentle kiss on his lips.
When she drew back, she didn’t know who was more surprised. But Cam hesitated only a moment before encircling her with his arms and drawing her close. This time their kiss was nothing like the shy, tentative one she’d offered. She got lost in the sensation of his mouth against hers. For a few moments everything else disappeared, everything else ceased to matter. The rain, the shed, even the fact that she was in Alaska, all faded into the background.
“That was so nice,” she said, leaning her head against his shoulder.
“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” he returned.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to.”
She chuckled softly. “Then I’m glad I finally threw myself at you.” Laura ran her fingers along his face, curious about how his beard would feel. “I like the way your face feels. I’ve never kissed anyone with a beard before.”
“You’d better get used to it. If things go the way I hope, it’ll become commonplace. That is,” he added solicitously, “if that’s what you want.”
Laura shut her eyes, wanting to concentrate on how it felt being so close to a man—-a man who made her feel good about him, a man who made her feel good about herself.
“It’s what I want.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Ee-e-ek! Ee-e-ek!”
With all the squealing and hugging and jumping up and down going on at the edge of La Guardia Airport’s baggage claim, Laura was sure onlookers would assume she’d just been released from a Turkish prison. Two weeks wasn’t very long at all, yet now that she was back on New York soil, the time she’d been apart from Julie and Claire suddenly seemed like eons.
“You look fabulous,” Claire exclaimed, giving her the once-over. “You’re actually tan! And are those
freckles?”
“You look really healthy, Laura.” Julie was beaming. “Happy, too.”
Claire leaned forward to peer at her more carefully. “It’s just jet lag.”
Laughing, Laura slung one arm around Julie, the other around Claire. “It’s so good to see you guys.”
“Tell us about your trip!” Julie cried. “I can’t wait to hear every single detail.”
Claire was nodding. “Don’t leave out a thing.”
“Did you see any bears?”
“How about moose? Did you see Bullwinkle?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Laura, “I stayed on a moose preserve and—”
“You know, you’re not the only one who had an exciting couple of weeks,” Claire interrupted. “Gil and I saw each other every chance we got. We went to the beach and strolled through the surf at sunset. We had a picnic hi the woods. We went roller-skating. We danced under the moonlight—”
“We can talk about that later,” Julie insisted. “Right now I want to hear about Laura’s trip. Did you see any dogsleds?”
“Did you see Mount McKinley?”
“Was it like
Northern Exposure?”
“It’s funny,” Laura began. “It was surprisingly like—”
“Actually, this has been an important time for me, too,” Julie said. “I made a major decision three days ago. To be exact, three days, four hours, and—” She glanced at her watch. “Well, I’m not exactly sure how many minutes. And I suppose it doesn’t matter, except that I like to keep track of things like that. It helps me feel centered. Anyway, I ... I decided to break up with George.”
Laura gaped. “Are you serious?”
Julie nodded. “It’s not that George isn’t sweet and dependable and a whole list of other admirable qualities. It’s just that Bobby is . . .” She was glowing like a chunk of plutonium. “Bobby is
special.
He makes me feel alive. He fills me with joy.”