Until Spring (15 page)

Across the room, Amos lay curled up on the couch, the tip of his tail trailing across his nose.

"You know the plan," she said.

"If you want to change our original agreement, we can always renegotiate."

"You're so kind to me, but I want to be free to set out on a life of my own. To have a home of my own or to find the home I left. To make friends. I want meaningful work that will allow me to be independent. I'm not ungrateful, but now I'm at the point where I can see an end to my quest, and I want to get on with it."

"You really know what you want, don't you?" he said. His eyes were somber now.

She nodded.

"The last time I saw such determination was when my wife left," he said reflectively.

"You haven't ever spoken of her before," Jane said. She wouldn't have known about Duncan's former marriage if Mary Kate hadn't told her, and she was uncomfortable pursuing the topic.

"Sigrid found someone else, and she left me a couple of years ago. By the time she'd made up her mind to go, there wasn't anything I could do or say to make her change her mind."

"Do you ever see her anymore?"

"No, she lives in Albuquerque with her new husband. We keep in touch, but—" He shrugged.

The mention of Albuquerque reminded Jane of the pink envelope that had arrived in today's mail. She jumped up and went to the closet, where she rummaged in her coat pocket and produced the envelope. Silently she handed it to Duncan.

He slit the envelope with a brass letter opener and read the contents quickly. When he had finished, he tossed the pink paper onto a nearby table.

"Well, what do you know," he said heavily. "It's from Sigrid. She's had a baby girl."

He looked so sad that Jane sat down on the ottoman in front of his chair. She regarded him with a frown.

"Duncan, is everything all right? With you, I mean."

He lifted his shoulders and let them fall. "I thought it was. I figured I had handled the situation with my wife—I mean my ex-wife—pretty well. I was over it. But now I get this birth announcement from her and I feel like going and burying my head in the sand. Explain
that."
His face, usually so handsome, suddenly seemed to have developed lines where none were before.

Jane felt at a loss for words. Behind her the fire crackled and spat glowing sparks up the chimney, and outside the wind had picked up. She felt as though she'd like to melt into a small invisible blur rather than talk about this. She'd had so little experience with events that normally occurred in people's lives that she had no store of wisdom from which to draw at the moment. Yet she suspected that she was the only person in Duncan's life with whom he could discuss the things closest to his heart.

"I can't explain why you feel the way you do, Duncan," Jane said after she had groped within herself to find the right words. "I can only tell you that it seems to me that you're fortunate to have been married once. It must be wonderful to find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, and even if it doesn't work out, at least you have something. For a while."

"You're right, Jane. It was a good marriage, a strong marriage, for a time. And when it failed..."

"When it failed, it couldn't have been entirely your fault," she pointed out.

He focused his eyes on her. "Once I thought it was. I've tempered that judgment, because I see now that we both were at fault. I wasn't sensitive enough to her emotions, or at least I could find no way to let her know that I was, and she was wrong, because she didn't try hard enough to make me understand how important it was for her to know that I cared. And I cared, Jane. I really did."

"I know you did, Duncan," she said softly.

"This birth announcement underlines the truth that Sigrid and I can't do it over again. It's too late for that."

Jane rested her hand on top of his. "Sigrid thinks enough of you to share her news about the baby. You should both congratulate yourselves on managing to split without hard feelings."

"In a way I wish she hadn't sent the announcement. It makes me see that she's been going forward with her life while mine stood still. She has a husband and child, and I have—well, I have a herd of llamas and a ranch foreman. Oh, and don't forget Mary Kate." He gave a snort, which was probably meant to be a laugh but fell short of the mark.

Jane was relieved that Duncan was trying to make light of his situation.

"You've forgotten Amos and me. We're here," she said before she thought.

His eyes suddenly went bleak. "But only until spring," he said.

Duncan continued to look at her, and all at once the room seemed too hot, the fire too bright, his expression too needy.

Overhead the mantel clock's tinny gong struck the hour, and Amos stirred.

Elaborately casual, Jane stood up. "I guess I'll turn in," she said.

"It's early," Duncan pointed out.

Jane faked a yawn. "That walk to the mailbox must have tired me out," she said. It was a lame excuse, but at this point anything would be. Duncan looked as though he was ready to pour out his soul to her, and she wanted to avoid that at any cost. Suddenly she knew that any kind of intimacy was more than she could handle.

He said nothing, only watched her as she fled, and never had the staircase seemed as long as it did on this night. When she reached her room, she discovered that her heart was pounding out of all proportion to the physical effort involved in running up one flight of stairs.

Almost immediately she heard Duncan's footsteps mounting the stairs, and she went to her door and listened for the sound of his door latch. She didn't hear it, and presently he walked past her room on his way out of the house. That wasn't so unusual, since he often went over to Rooney's place in the evening.

It took all her willpower not to open her bedroom door and speak to him as he passed, although she realized with a start after she heard the front door slam that she had no idea what she would have said.

Chapter 8

The next day Duncan woke up, looked at himself in the mirror, and said to his reflection, "You fool." After that he cut himself shaving and had to look all over for his styptic pencil, which he never found.

He was a fool for pouring his feelings out to Jane last night when it obviously made her so uncomfortable. And he was twice a fool because he'd been entertaining the thought that Jane would stay past spring. That particular season, which he had long considered a time for beginnings and renewal, would this year be a time of ending. He found that he didn't relish the idea of her leaving.

He had grown accustomed to Jane at breakfast, to Jane humming as she dusted the furniture, to Jane folding the clothes fresh from the dryer and looking over her shoulder to greet him when he came in during the day. He had grown accustomed to
Jane.
Or whoever she was. That her name wasn't really Jane did not matter to him. What mattered was that he had grown to care about her. Her story touched him; he couldn't imagine not having a past.

His past was with him constantly. He had grown up here on the ranch, helping his father and Rooney with what was essentially a cattle operation in those days. His mother had been a delicate, gentle woman not unlike Jane. They sometimes visited his maternal grandparents in Moscow, Idaho, where his grandfather was a professor at the University of Idaho. His grandparents and his mother always seemed slightly startled that she had married a rancher who was many years her senior and that she now lived on an isolated ranch in Wyoming.

Duncan was an only child, and there was never any doubt that he was going to take over the ranch when he grew up. His mother, fragile until the end, had died of complications from the flu when he was thirteen. Duncan had vivid memories of the events leading to her death, which was why he was so insistent that Jane take care of herself.

Then ten years ago, when he was only twenty-two, his father had died. From then on, Duncan had relied on Rooney's help and advice in running the ranch, and when Duncan decided after much thought and study to convert from cattle to a llama-breeding operation, Rooney had encouraged him to ease into this new livestock management program. They both needed a challenge, and llamas could provide it.

Their venturesome endeavor proved worthwhile. No longer regarded as novelties for zoos and animal parks, llamas had recently come into their own in the United States as pack animals and wool producers. Last year he and Rooney had sold their best breeding female at auction for major money. The sale was a triumph for Placid Valley Ranch, and it validated Duncan's decision to become a llama breeder.

He couldn't imagine what it was like for Jane, who faced the monumental task of recreating herself after losing her memory. What would it be like to have no memory of your heritage and no guidance from the past? How would you know who you were, much less what you wanted to do with your life?

It was good, he supposed, that Jane had set goals for herself. But why California? Why so far away? Why couldn't she stay here?

Silly questions. After all, there was no work for her here. There were no apartments such as the one Jane would like to have, and as for friends, well, he and Rooney and Mary Kate were just about it. In town she might meet people, but Durkee, Wyoming, was thirty miles away and consisted of little more than a post office, a gas station and a convenience store where, in a shed out back, the owner sold junk as a sideline. Duncan hardly thought that the town of Durkee was enough to keep Jane here.

After giving up the search for the styptic pencil, he went downstairs, surprised at how late it was. Jane sat at the kitchen table leafing through his mother's cookbook. She had been learning to cook with mixed results.

"Good morning," she said brightly. Her hair held the color of the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window; the fine strands shimmered like gold.

"Good morning," he replied. The place where he had cut himself shaving still smarted.

They heard footsteps on the back stairs that were followed by Mary Kate's entrance. "Hi, you two. I've brought the Sunday paper."

This was a weekend ritual in which Duncan had long participated with Mary Kate. She walked to the road and retrieved the Sunday newspaper from the box beside the mailbox, and in return, Duncan read her the comics. This ritual persisted, even though at the age of ten Mary Kate was able to read the funnies to herself. Now she peered through one of the windowpanes in the back door, and he hastened to let her in.

"Are you ready for me to read the comics to you, Mary Kate?" Duncan asked.

"As soon as I pet Amos," Mary Kate said, dropping her coat onto the kitchen floor and darting into the living room in pursuit of the cat.

"Come back and pick up this coat," Duncan ordered. "And hang it in the closet."

Mary Kate, having caught Amos, walked slowly back to the kitchen, scratching him under the chin. The cat closed his eyes in obvious bliss.

"Amos likes me," Mary Kate said. "The other day he let me rub his stomach and didn't even move. He didn't used to let me do that." She set him down gently on the floor and picked up her coat without complaint.

"Mary Kate, why don't you stay and have French toast with Duncan and me?" suggested Jane. "I'll make it while Duncan reads you the comics."

"You're making French toast?" asked Duncan.

"I found this recipe for Orange Blossom French Toast, and we have all the ingredients. I think I'd like to try it."

"Oh, good," Mary Kate said, grinning from ear to ear.

"We'll be in the living room," Duncan said, leaving Jane to her recipe.

It all seemed so domestic to Duncan, with Mary Kate sitting close on the couch as he read, Amos purring on the rug at their feet, and delicious aromas floating in from the kitchen.

He tried to recall ever having this cozy feeling on a Sunday morning when Sigrid was here, but all he remembered from those days was Sigrid's discontent at being cooped up here on the ranch with just Rooney and him for company, Mary Kate having arrived only shortly before Sigrid departed. And when Sigrid had cooked, it had been done grudgingly. Unfortunately, his ex-wife had never taken to life at Placid Valley Ranch.

He read to Mary Kate with one ear cocked toward the kitchen, where Jane hummed as she went about her tasks; he loved the way she hummed as she worked. Duncan looked up between comic strips, catching a glimpse of an ankle as she temporarily moved out of view, appreciating the way her hair curled against her cheek, and was rewarded for his vigilance by her glance in his direction and a fleeting half smile before she turned toward the stove again.