Read A Little Learning Online

Authors: Margot Early

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary

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BOOK: A Little Learning
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Sondra
had
spoken of those things to her. But she didn’t enjoy it.
He was a playboy, Rory,
she’d said of Kristen Gorenzi’s lover.
A ski patrolman. He was all about skiing, and your mother, in that phase, was his counterpart. She wanted to be the best skier in Sultan.

It sounded now, to Rory, a bit like Janine Jensen.

Abruptly, Rory remembered Lauren and her plan to find out about Silas. Lauren had disappeared, but Beau leaned against a doorjamb in the archway leading to the dining room. He looked dejected.

As Rory headed toward him, she couldn’t help hearing again her father’s heart-dampening words about Seamus. Somehow, they brought home to her just how much of her affection for Seamus’s children was tied to their father’s regard for her. Or that was how it seemed. Suddenly. Only because her father had said that Seamus wasn’t and couldn’t be serious about her. “Taken” with her, yes. Serious, no.

So what was she doing befriending these children? It wasn’t part of her job, not twenty-four hours a day. Her job ended at approximately 5:00 p.m. every day.

But I like them.

And in a couple of months, they and their father would be gone from her life.

Her pleasure in her father’s compliments now diminished by his uncomplimentary remarks, she approached Beau. “How’s it going? You look bored out of your mind.”

“I’m babysitting.” He gestured toward the dining room floor, where Belle and Caleb were playing with giant Lego blocks the Realtor’s crew had brought over.

“Are you getting paid?” Rory asked.

Beau shook his head. “They’re my brother and sister. Anyhow, I get an allowance. We all do. It’s for doing stuff like this.”

Rory thought for a moment. “There are more games down in the basement. Have you ever played Nok-Hockey?”

Beau straightened up. “No. What is it?”

“Why don’t you all come downstairs and we’ll play.”

* * *

S
EAMUS
GLANCED
OUT
an upstairs window. He admired the walnut sill and studied the streetlight below. Because it was on Sultan’s most historic street the lamp was Victorian, as well. What would it be like to live in this town, perhaps in this showpiece of a home?

Rory had made clear that she wouldn’t become romantically involved with a client of the Sultan Mountain School. That was a mature and reasonable stance, and Seamus applauded her for it. But what about when the course was over? He sensed she wouldn’t discourage his attention then.

A figure paused under the lamplight. A young man in a stocking cap, the kind of loose clothing snowboarders wore, a warm jacket. As Seamus watched, another figure came to join him, and Seamus recognized his daughter Lauren.

Rory’s warnings echoed in his head.

Yes, the boy was probably Silas. And yes, he should probably have asked Silas more questions, found out more.

The two weren’t doing anything, just standing in the cold talking. After a brief time, the boy turned away and Lauren came back toward the house, though she looked back over her shoulder as she did so.

Maybe fourteen was too young to be dating.

Well, if so, it was a little late for him to do anything about it. Lauren had had her first “boyfriend” at the age of twelve. A boy in her class. Nothing about the situation, however silly it had seemed to Seamus, had worried him. But how old was Silas, really? Seamus had thought he was high school age. But not a senior.
I just didn’t look at him that closely.

He remembered why he hadn’t. Because Lauren had been acting tough, acting the way she remembered Janine acting.
Any guy who tries taking advantage of me is going to wish he hadn’t.

Seamus had thought,
Yes, he will. Because of me.
Lauren had no self-defense training. She’d just been putting on the attitude, like a clone of her mother.

Seamus had been glad when Silas had arrived and he and Lauren left on foot to go have some dinner at the pizza place up the street.

I’m making a mess of things,
he thought now. How could he lay down rules for Lauren’s life if he was so afraid of another fight with her about Janine, so afraid of unleashing his own anger?

Yes, she was a good-enough student.

Yes, she was an athlete.

What was there to complain about in her behavior?

As long as Fiona’s around,
he thought.

But he had told Fiona he wanted to try getting on without her again—just for a time, just to see how it would go.

He rejoined the house tour. When it was over, he found Lauren talking to her friend, the barista. He joined them, and Lauren introduced him to Helena.

Helena was no high-school student. Seamus felt certain of that. College age, maybe, though she could be in her early to mid-twenties. Helena looked at a mountaineering watch on her wrist and said, “See you, Lauren. At our place, if not before.”

As she left, Seamus said, “Our place?”

“The coffeehouse,” Lauren said. “She works there.”

“That’s its name?”

“Of course not.”

“Her family owns it?”

The briefest hesitation. Yes, she was lying. About something. But she said, “No. Not that I know of.”

“What do Silas’s parents do in Sultan?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“You’ve met them?” Seamus asked.

“Actually, no.”

“How old is Silas?”

Lauren looked at him squarely. “Why are you suddenly on this Twenty Questions About Silas kick?”

“I saw you talking to him out on the sidewalk. From an upstairs window.”

“That wasn’t even Silas. That was Jeremy.”

“Who’s Jeremy?”

“He works at the ski area. He’s just a
friend.
I can have friends, can’t I?”

Seamus felt outmaneuvered and wasn’t sure why. He refused to be sidetracked. “How old, exactly, is Silas?”

“Exactly? Like, when’s his birthday?”

“Years will do.”

She shrugged. “He’s, like, in high school.”

Did the excessive use of
like
indicate lying? Seamus suspected so, in this case. “Like,” he said, “what year in high school?”

“Um, probably about senior because he skipped a grade.”

“He’s out of school, isn’t he?” Seamus said, deciding to sound, at this stage, as though it was no big deal.

She shrugged. “You know. Home school’s kind of loose.”

No, it’s not,
Seamus almost answered.

“He’s here in Sultan with his family. Yes or no?”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “No, all right? He’s got roommates. He’s not, like, a criminal.”

“If he wants to see you again,” Seamus said, and now his daughter’s face was red as she glanced around her to make sure they weren’t being overheard, “he can come talk to me and explain why someone out of school is interested in dating a fourteen-year-old girl.”

“Why wouldn’t he be interested?”

Seamus didn’t want to explain that most males in that general age group had more than kissing on the mind and going further with a fourteen-year-old was illegal. He wouldn’t say this, because it wasn’t okay with him for Lauren get that involved with any boy, and he didn’t want to put the idea in her head. It just seemed
safer
not to explain.

And yet she’d asked.

I can’t do this. I can’t be both mother and father to this child.

“Let’s talk about this at home,” he suggested. Which at least bought him a little time. “Where are your brothers and sister?”

“I don’t know.” Shrug. “We’re all just
friends.

“You need friends your own age.”

“You brought us here.”

Seamus retreated into silence. He prowled the first floor without finding Beau, Caleb or Belle and finally decided they
might
be in the basement—which had not been on the house tour but which the Realtor had shown on request.

His children sat on the indoor-outdoor carpet in the basement, which was set up as a recreation room since Lola’s departure. A three-by-five-foot board, small hockey sticks, wooden pucks. Belle was at one goal and Rory at the other, giving lots of encouragement.

“Nok-Hockey!” Seamus exclaimed. “I haven’t seen this for years.”

“It was my dad’s, actually. A lot of his childhood toys ended up at my grandmother’s house when I was a kid.”

“He must have wanted you to have them.”

She glanced up at him, and a range of emotions flickered in her eyes. A happiness at seeing him that seemed, just as quickly, to be extinguished, as if she’d just thought of something unpleasant or discouraging.

“Dad, play me!” Caleb said.

Seamus smiled and came to sit on the floor. “Well, first let me see what your sister can do.”

As they played, he continued to observe Rory’s changing mood. Pleasure at being with him was suddenly eclipsed by shadows he couldn’t penetrate. As Seamus helped Belle, and Rory defended her goal with deliberate inattention, allowing the four-year-old to score, the boys chattered in the background, looking through the snake encyclopedia.

Beau said, “Now Seuss can come over, right? Because Lola’s in Florida.”

“Right,” Rory agreed. “And it was never part of Lola’s rules that she be allowed to wander all over the house. She had just escaped that time. Good job, Belle! You’re winning.”

“I’m glad she’s gone,” Beau said.

* * *

Me too,
THOUGHT
R
ORY
.

The five of them lingered in the basement, Seamus playing a round first with Caleb and then with Beau. Finally, the kids trooped upstairs in search of gloves and mittens for the walk home, but their father lingered behind.

Rory couldn’t forget any part of the conversation she’d had with
her
father. His reiteration of school policy. And his certainty that Seamus’s designs on her were short-term.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Seamus said, “that it seems you were right about Silas. Lauren has confessed that he’s out of school.”

“Out of high school?” Rory said, a little shocked in spite of herself. But things like that did happen—if parents let them.

“Yes. Lauren doesn’t seem to fully grasp the picture. I’m not sure how to explain it to her.”

You’re not going to push this conversation off on me,
Rory thought indignantly. But the feeling was laced with hurt connected to her father’s assessment of Seamus’s intentions. If Seamus just wanted to, well,
use
her as a girlfriend and a buffer between himself and his children... No. Just no.

She said, “I’m sure the right words will come to you.”

Then she turned and climbed the stairs.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I
N
THE
MIDDLE
of March came the first of the Sultan Mountain School tests for Seamus and his family, so that all of them could earn certificates saying they’d completed their course work. Rory would have liked to make the one-day expedition of skiing and orienteering a family activity, but it wasn’t possible. Seamus, as an adult, would need to be challenged more than his family.

As luck would have it, Rory was assigned as his companion for the day’s skiing, which would take them up onto Cone Mountain and through the ghost town of Gypsum over a twelve-mile course, provided they didn’t get lost.

The morning of the nineteenth, Rory and Seamus set out in her car for Jackson Gulch. From there they would ascend Cone Mountain with climbing skins on, then ski over to Gypsum and in a loop over a mountain pass and back down to the vehicle. Rory hoped.

As she drove, she mentally double-checked everything she’d brought. She always kept a list in her pack so that she’d forget nothing when she set out on a ski trip, but it didn’t stop her from trying to imagine possible emergencies of every sort and then thinking of all the things that would be needed to return them home safely.

When they reached their parking space near the foot of Jackson Gulch and began unloading the car, preparing to don skis and packs, Rory said, “This isn’t a
test,
per se. It’s just a requirement for getting your certificate.”

“I understand.”

It wasn’t the day Rory would have chosen for the expedition. Snow was already falling, two feet expected with the storm. But it was Sultan Mountain School policy to pick a date and make do with the weather. She watched as Seamus briefly consulted the topography, then showed her the route he’d planned the night before. “This is how we’ll go if avalanche conditions allow,” he told her.

“Fine.”

She let him lead off, but he seemed reluctant to plunge ahead, so for a while they skied side-by-side. Then they took turns breaking trail.

Breaking trail on skis going uphill was exhausting work, but Rory knew that they must keep moving to achieve their goal in daylight. Though it was only beginning to lighten as they skied away from her car, they had a long way to go. Also, she had one of her unsettled feelings about this trip; an unspoken fear that they might run into trouble before its end.

They skied for two hours and made good time. When they paused at their first landmark—a ski hut owned by the Sultan Mountain School—and stopped inside for a quick bite to eat, Seamus finally said, “Rory, how would you feel about seeing me once the course is over?”

Seeing me.
Yes, somehow it did sound temporary. But they’d never dated. Dating meant trying things out, seeing how people got along. Dating didn’t mean that Seamus Lee wanted a casual fling with her. It didn’t mean he wanted even that much. A date was a date.

“I’d go out with you,” she said, “but let’s not talk about it until the course is over, all right? Let’s conclude
this
relationship first.” She changed the subject, her father’s warnings about Seamus’s intentions still ringing in her ears. “At least we’ll have some nice powder for all the downhill.”

They put their packs and skis back on, and Seamus checked their bearings again before they set out, still heading uphill. “This is a great adventure,” Seamus exclaimed. “I bet it clears up later, too. Beacon on?” he asked her.

Rory checked, though she’d never turned it off. “Yes.”

The day did clear, slowly, and before they started their descent down the other side of Cone Mountain, Seamus dug an avalanche pit and evaluated the findings. He made a grim face as both he and Rory watched a slab separate in the layers he’d dug. “Well,” he said, “we could go back the way we came. Or we could go on. On either side, the conditions won’t be good, but we can avoid more paths if we go back the way we came.”

Rory said nothing, waiting for him to make the call and hoping she wouldn’t have to overrule it.

“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “Back to the car. We’ll have to do this another day.”

But as far as Rory was concerned, Seamus had just earned his certificate.

She smiled. “Let’s go.”

“After you.”

She went ahead of him, gliding down the slope they’d climbed, following the fall line, gracefully carving her first telemark turn and coming out of it even as she heard the whisper.

It was sometimes possible to ski out of an avalanche by pressing the heels down. She knew this anecdotally and now she attempted it as she headed for the side, away from the path of the slide. It caught her, and she could not keep her heels down, so she swam, focusing on everything she knew. Swim for the top, swim for the top, make a path around your face, swim for the top. And before the snow stopped, in those last moments, she must make a strong thrust and kick hard. Through white, not water. She wasn’t sure what was happening, except that she and Seamus were far enough from help that she was in trouble.

* * *

H
E
WATCHED
HER
and kept his eyes fixed on the last place he’d seen her even as the snow settled, which seemed to take forever. He skied down along beside the chute thinking, No, no, no. He stopped further up slope than he’d last seen her and set his beacon to Receive.

He found her signal much sooner and more easily than he’d anticipated and made his way slowly and carefully toward it, across the avalanche path.

He saw a glove. Moving.

“Yes, Rory!” he called. She had kept a hand above the surface. He reached her, got out of his skis, and began shoveling with his small avalanche shovel. He carefully followed her arm, then saw the bright yellow of her helmet and cleared the snow from her face. She spit out snow, saying, “I’m pretty sure I broke my other wrist—I felt the crack. I think I heard it, but I couldn’t have.”

The injured arm was her left, and he was thankful for that small favor as he continued digging her out.

She helped as much as she was able, saying, “I’m fine, I’m alive. This is good. Thank you, Seamus. Thank you, Seamus,” as if by continuing to talk she would minimize her own peril. Then, a groan, as they discovered that she’d lost a ski.

“It’s worth a little time digging for it right where we are,” Rory said, “but we’re probably out of luck.”
She
was out of luck and out a pair of Sultan custom telemark skis, which started at seven hundred dollars. Also, it was going to be a long trek back, even as far as the hut, on the one small pair of snowshoes they had between them. But at least they had those.

Seamus set to work with his shovel, and Rory poked around with hers, using only her right arm.

But half an hour later, she still had just one ski and no poles. “I can snowshoe,” she said. In telemark boots, which would be a unique form of torture. “You ski, and I’ll go as fast as I can, but don’t go out of sight of me.”

“Why don’t you ski and I’ll snowshoe?”

“No. I’m lighter—the shoes will work better for me.”

Seamus helped her strap the lone ski, which she said they should take with them—they weren’t home yet, and it might prove useful—to her pack.

As she trudged back down toward the hut, following Seamus, who skied for a hundred yards, then waited at a tree, she regretted not having dug a snow pit earlier to check the avalanche conditions. She wouldn’t have suggested it overtly, not at first. She would have just done something to make Seamus think of the idea for himself. But neither of them had thought of it.

At least it was spring, rather than early winter or fall before the winter solstice. As it was, she decided optimistically, unwilling to acknowledge the blisters she was definitely going to have from wearing boots not made for snowshoeing, they might make it to the car by dark.

But they were behind the mountain, and it quickly grew cold in the shade. Rory made herself keep walking, pretending the heat from her blisters was spreading through her limbs. Pretending the cold felt good on her injured forearm. The arm didn’t hurt, except at the wrist; she couldn’t turn it.

Repeatedly, Seamus asked how she was, until she snapped, “Why don’t you ask that just once every half hour?”

It was late afternoon. They had not yet reached the hut, but at least they could see their old tracks. Rory worried they’d gone past it, but Seamus pointed out a ponderosa pine he’d noticed on the way up and said that the tree was above the hut.

I do not want to spend the night in that hut.

It wasn’t exactly a cozy retreat. There was no firewood or coal for the stove, no food. It was shelter and not much more, and Rory knew the insulation was practically nonexistent. Not to mention that it was tucked beneath the trees and received little natural heat from the sun.

But she’d had the miles trudging down, sinking a foot with every step, to remember that there was no moon. They couldn’t walk without moonlight, and she wouldn’t send him on without her for many reasons. No, she and Seamus Lee were doomed to spend the night in that hut, while his children worried about him, and she would have the chance to analyze everything about herself that defined her as a complete screwup. To be caught in an avalanche!

When they finally reached the hut, it was almost dark, and Seamus was as cold as she was.

“So,” he said, “I think we have a cold night ahead.”

“Yes. But I have a stove so we can melt water and make hot drinks. And I have a sleeping bag.”

“I don’t,” he said. “I didn’t think...”

“I know. It wasn’t on your list. You have an emergency blanket, right, and so do I. We’ll share and make do.” It was just survival, not romantic, not any of the things outlawed by the policies of the Sultan Mountain School. She carried her compressed lightweight sleeping bag routinely on day-long excursions, because she’d never been able to get past the image of staying out all night, perhaps, with only an emergency blanket. Seamus, she realized now, should really have been carrying a sleeping bag, too, but the school didn’t suggest it for such a short trip.

Well, now they would make do, as she’d said. “What about your kids?”

He was frowning. “I’ve been thinking of that ever since I realized how late it is. I think Lauren will check with SMS. She’ll go to the school and tell them we haven’t returned.”

“Well,
I’m
supposed to check in there, too,” Rory said. “They’ll realize we’re missing. I just hope someone thinks of the kids.”

“They will.”

She would gratefully have climbed into her sleeping bag and remained there alone, cinching the hood around her head. Instead, she and Seamus rummaged in the cupboards and did find the hut’s supply of emergency blankets, which would certainly make the night a little more comfortable. Needless to say, the other thing that would help was body heat. Snuggling up together.

They peeled out of their outer clothes, and hung them up to dry on the ends of the bunk beds.

“Lower bunk?” Seamus said.

“Thank you. Then, maybe I can manage not to break anything else.”

She’d no doubt she’d need his help getting back into her ski pants and jacket the next morning. Now she felt dirty in her wool-and-silk long underwear. Her wrist and forearm had swelled noticeably.

“Should we make a splint?” Seamus asked.

“I have an Ace bandage in my first-aid kit,” she said. “That would probably help.”

In the light of his headlamp, he dug in her pack until he found her first-aid kit. He had brought a stove, too. And they would certainly have enough fuel to keep them supplied with water and hot drinks through the night.

There were awkward moments as Seamus, also in long johns, climbed onto the hard mattress of the lower bunk with her. Rory attempted to cover him with part of the sleeping bag. “We’ll wrap all the blankets around us tonight,” she said.

“My dream come true.”

“Not mine,” she muttered. “Don’t take it personally. Just... Getting hit by a slide is not my idea of a great adventure.”

But she had to admit that being this close to Seamus... His firm thigh brushed her leg and, even though they were both clothed, blood rushed through her, hot and tingling.

She noted the cragginess of his face as he found the bandage, unrolled it, gently pulled up the sleeve of her long undershirt and began to wrap her forearm, wrist and hand. Without looking at her, he said, “You’re so different from Janine.”

“How so?” She let him take her arm, watched his strong long fingers with the bandage. Thought about how close they were to each other.

Seamus carefully turned her arm, saying, “Tell me if it hurts.”

“That does. I don’t want to turn my wrist that way.”

“Okay. I can do it in this direction.” He began wrapping the injury with a skill that suggested he’d done similar things before.

Carryover from the first-aid course he’d taken with the school? Rory wondered.

“Janine was caught in an avalanche once. I wasn’t with her. She actually broke her femur. But she was proud of the incident. As far as she was concerned, it was a war story to be told and retold.”

“Only where I’m unknown,” Rory said. “I find it humiliating.”

“I’m glad you kept that hand up.”

“I was trying to do everything I could to get to the surface. I thought I could ski out of it, but no way.” He had started to talk about his wife, Rory reminded herself. And she wanted to know about Janine Jensen. “When was Janine’s avalanche experience?” she asked.

“Five or six years before she died. I think Lauren was in kindergarten.” His expression was both grim and sad.

Rory watched his profile, waiting for him to say more. There was nothing she could think to say to encourage him. Not
Boy, it really sounds as though you didn’t like your wife very much.
Or,
I bet she wasn’t easy to live with.

“Have I told you,” she asked at last, “that Samantha worked for her?”

“Samantha herself reminded me of the connection. I don’t know if I was ever introduced to her back then, but I definitely remembered her face.” He shook his head. “The women at the resource center thought Janine should have been canonized.”

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