Snowbound Summer (7 page)

Kara had never really felt that athletic herself, but she'd toned her muscles since she started dating Ron and she had to admit that she liked the new look. She also appreciated that Ron never made her feel bad about being less physically fit than him.

“You look great!” Anne told her. “I mean, not to push the age thing, but we're peers and I don't look half as good as you.”

“Of course, you do,” Gene told her. “You look awesome, and Kara hasn't had three children.”

“Yet,” one of the kids added in a stage whisper.

Everyone thought that was absolutely hilarious.

Everyone but Hanna, that is.

“Do you want to have children, Kara?” she asked. “I don't want to be insensitive, but you are getting past normal child bearing age.”

“Mom,” Ron said with exaggerated patience, “this isn't the dark ages anymore.” He didn't say it but that the implication was clear—
back when you were having kids.
“Women can safely have kids a lot later than they used to. If you're really afraid you're not going to get some grandkids out of Kara and me, then that's something you can stop worrying about.” He covered Kara's hand with his own. “If we do get married one day, you'll have some little Millers to carry on Dad's name.”

“Oh, that is so sweet,” Kitten said in her best mocking tone. She might actually have thought it was sweet, but she
never
passed up an opportunity to tease someone.

“Ron
is
very sweet,” Kara agreed. “He's everything a woman could ask for in a boyfriend.”

Despite the public surroundings, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

Ron actually blushed, which made Kitten and the others laugh some more. His fair coloring showed embarrassment much better than his family's darker looks.

“I think we've done enough talking,” Ron said. “Why don't we all hit the slopes again? Are you coming, Dad? With a little effort, we'll have you skiing straight down the mountain instead of shoveling it with all of those snowplows.”

* * * *

* * * *

One of the few pleasant things about skiing in the company of Howard Miller was that he was a comically poor athlete. Absolutely everyone looked good in comparison to him, and Kara, who was better than competent, but nowhere near as accomplished as her younger sister, Liz, felt damn near professional by comparison.

On the downside, he was so terrible a skier that he couldn't keep up with anyone, and Ron obviously felt bad about leaving his father alone on the slopes, so he hung back to coax and encourage his father to keep trying.

Ron's concern for his father clearly aggravated his mother to no end. Kara felt that Hanna's unhappiness probably had its roots in the same jealousy that made her want to drive a wedge between Ron and her. But having clearly failed to win the current battle for Ron's attention, Hanna abruptly changed tactics and began to attach herself at the hip to Kara—as if they had magically become best friends.

Not that Hanna was a substantially better athlete than her husband. She was much thinner than Howard, but only slightly less awkward on the slopes. She was good enough to stay in the general vicinity as Kara as long as she wasn't trying to speed down the mountain—which politeness now prevented Kara from doing.

All of which explained how Kara found herself riding the ski lift with Hanna, when Ron was still halfway up the mountainside with his Dad. The clouds that had hovered on the far horizon were much closer today but they didn't feel as foreboding as the serious expression on Ron's mother's face.

“I have been looking forward to a chance to talk alone with you for some time now, Kara,” Hanna told her as the lift started to carry them back up the mountain.

Kara could think of nothing she would less rather do than get into a deep conversation with Hanna Miller. The woman had never been honestly warm or friendly to her and Kara truly couldn't imagine anything she wanted to talk to her about. However jumping off the ski lift at this point would have been physically dangerous and unforgivably rude, so she pretended that there was nothing she wanted more than a chance to talk with Ron's mother. “Me, too, Hanna!” she lied. “It's so nice that Ron gave us some time alone together.”

Kara wasn't certain she had convinced Hanna, but at least the woman wouldn't be able to complain to Ron that Kara had been rude to her.

“Ron seems very devoted to you,” Hanna observed, honing in directly on the subject Kara least wanted to discuss with her. “All of this talk about the two of you moving in together, it came as quite a surprise to me.”

It had surprised Kara, too, something Hanna should be well aware of. “Ron's a very special man,” Kara told her. “We've been dating for just about eight months now and he's starting to think about our future together. That's a conversation we both need to have. It's unfortunate that it started here in public, but that sometimes happens with important issues. They bubble up at inopportune times because they're always on our minds.”

“So you don't want Ron to move in with you?” Hanna asked. Her tone couldn't exactly be called hopeful, but there was an edge to it that elevated her query into something more than a simple question.

Kara wondered if Hanna thought that there was some way in which she could use this conversation against her. “Oh, I didn't say that,” Kara told her. “I said that moving in together is an important step and Ron and I need to discuss it. Eight months is a pretty long time. I think we'll both agree that we're ready to take things to the next level.”

“And your parents are okay with that?” Hanna asked. She didn't try and hide her own sense of disapproval.

“Of course not!” Kara said. “My mother will be horrified, but then she's never approved of her son-in-law or any of my younger sister's boyfriends either. No one is ever going to be good enough for Mama's little girls.”

Hanna's eyes flashed with anger. “What do you mean Ron's not good enough? Ron's—”

“A very fine man!” Kara cut Hanna off. She should have found the transformation in Hanna's demeanor amusing, but the older woman's sense of outrage didn't equate to support for Ron and Kara's relationship. It only reinforced the notion that she found Kara unworthy of her son's affection.

“Then why?”

“For exactly the opposite reason that you don't approve of Ron and me,” Kara explained. “Ron is younger than I am.” She didn't add that her mother also had problems with the interracial nature of their relationship. That little tidbit embarrassed Kara too much to mention.

She looked around at the ski slopes below them. They were about halfway back up to the top of the mountain and high above the skiers racing down. At this rate, they were never going to get to the top.

“It is a big age difference,” Hanna agreed.

Kara reached out and touched Hanna's gloved hand. “Yes, it is, Hanna, but it's not a
generational
age difference. Ron's not a child and while I am older, I'm not that much older than him.”
Not old enough to be his mother, as you seem to think,
she wanted to add. “Ron and I met at a good time, and we haven't rushed into anything. You don't have to worry about us running headlong into a mistake.”

Again she restrained herself from tacking a barb onto the end of her sentence.
Like you clearly did
might be a true observation but it wouldn't be diplomatic to actually say it. Kara wondered if she could use the small opening this conversation had provided to really tackle the heart of Hanna's objection to Ron and her relationship.

“You know, age isn't my principle concern about my long term relationship with Ron,” she said.

“Really?” Hanna asked. From the expression on her face, Kara suspected that Hanna believed it should be her total concern regarding Ron and Kara dating.

She would have to shatter that illusion. “It's not really your main concern either,” she said.

“Yes, it—”

“No, Hanna,” Kara interrupted. “It isn't! You're worried about whether I can really make Ron happy in the long term. Your concerns about our age difference really come down to wondering how compatible Ron and I will still be twenty or thirty years down the line.”

Hanna didn't object so Kara continued. “I have a lot of personal concerns about long term relationships in general,” Kara explained. “When I was growing up, I listened to my parents fight all the time. I knew things weren't right between them but I didn't know why. Heck, if I'm being honest, I still don't really know how things went so wrong between them.”

She knew what she was saying had to resonate with Hanna. The woman's marriage appeared to be a punishment worthy of one of Dante's circles of hell. But what Kara didn't know was if her allusion was going to make Hanna angry or help to bridge the gap between them. Unfortunately, Hanna's facial expression didn't help her figure out which way Ron's mother was leaning.

“So my number one example of an adult relationship—my parents’ marriage—isn't exactly a healthy model, and frankly neither is Ron's.”

Hanna bristled and opened her mouth to retort, but Kara simply smiled at her, meeting her gaze without flinching away. It wasn't, after all, as if the failure of Hanna and Howard's marriage was a big secret. Howard took great delight in detailing how much he detested the institution.

Hanna closed her mouth without saying anything.

Kara patted her hand again. She noticed that the ski lift was honing in on the top of the mountain and so she'd better wrap up this awkward conversation.

“So my principle concern is avoiding having my marriage deteriorate into something like my parents had.”
Like you have,
she added silently. “There's no doubt in my mind that I love your son, but then I hope my parents were in love, too, when they walked down the aisle. So I want to take things slow enough that if Ron and I reach the stage where we want to marry, we're absolutely sure that we're not going to regret the decision ten or twenty years down the line.”

The ski lift reached the top of the mountain and Kara scooted off the chair with Hanna gliding easily beside her.

“When Ron told me he wanted to move in with you,” Hanna told her, “I suddenly had the image of him pulling out a ring and proposing to you on the spot. I know this sounds terrible, Kara,” she said, “but that thought horrified me. It's not that you aren't a very nice woman, but I don't think Ron and you know each other well enough to get married.”

Kara stifled her urge to respond and let Hanna talk.

“And contrary to what you think, your age really is a big part of my concern. Ron's young. He's going to want children some day and you're old enough that that might not be possible. I know it's hard on a marriage when your spouse can't give you something you want desperately.”

“Hanna?” Kara asked before she could censor the question. “I never really thought about this before. Is that what went wrong for you and Howard? I mean, Ron is your son, isn't he? Biologically, I mean. You didn't adopt him.”

Hanna's facial expression confused Kara. It got strange—not exactly hostile, but nothing that could be described as open or friendly. Secretive might describe it, but Kara couldn't figure out what the woman might be hiding.

“No, no,” she told Kara, “Ron's my son through and through. There was never anything wrong with
my
fertility.”

She touched Kara's shoulder with her gloved hand and effectively ended the conversation. “I'm so glad we've had this chance to talk,” she said. “Do you think if we start down now we can still catch Ron and his father before they reach the bottom?”

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Chapter Seven

Kara didn't get a chance right away to talk to Ron about her conversation with his mother. For the rest of the morning, they never got any privacy on the ski slopes and while they sat next to each other at lunch, it wasn't exactly an opportunity for quiet conversation.

After lunch Howard and Hanna both announced they were taking a break from skiing. They each seemed surprised—and maybe even a little disappointed—to discover that their respective spouse had reached the same conclusion. Sadly it seemed that the opportunity to spend some time together made the suggested break look far less appealing.

Anne and her husband surrendered to the pressure of their youngest daughter and agreed to take little Emmy further down the mountain to ride the ponies. Their older children were not entranced by Emmy's idea of a great afternoon and ran back to the ski lifts. As Kitten and her family had never even appeared for lunch, Ron and Kara suddenly found themselves presented with the privacy Kara had been longing for—or at least they would have been presented with it if Ron hadn't suddenly disappeared, leaving Kara by herself looking around in confusion.

The conversation with Ron's mother still bothered her and she wanted to talk to him about it. She had the nagging suspicion that she'd missed something important on the ski lift—that Hanna had been on the verge of confiding something critical to Kara's understanding of the Miller family dynamic, but the moment had been lost because they reached the top of the mountain a minute too soon. It made Kara feel surprisingly close to Ron's mother. She still didn't exactly like the woman, but she felt they'd forged a connection which she wished they could have strengthened with a few more minutes of discussion.