Sleeping Beauty (42 page)

Or had it? She wasn't sure. That had been Dora's word. She wondered how much she had seen and heard because she expected to, from Dora's descriptions.

Josh looked at her and met her eyes. “Are you planning to be here often?”

“Yes,” she said. “It's a wonderful place.”

“Is this your first visit? No, of course not; Gail said she's been coming here since she was five. You would have been with her.”

“Yes.”

After a moment, Leo said, “I'd been here exactly twice before Ethan hired me. I can't believe it now; I moved here without really knowing anything about the place. What if I'd hated it?”

“What was the first thing you did?” Anne asked.

“Hiked up Douglas Pass. I thought I'd die; weak muscles and thin air and I'd picked probably the toughest hike around. But the view knocked me out. I sat up there eating a doughnut, not another soul around, not a cloud, either, all sun and blue sky and enough breeze to cool me off, and I looked around, three hundred sixty degrees, at what I could have sworn was the whole wonderful world, peaks and valleys, forests, rivers, and Douglas Lake a couple thousand feet below, and I knew Ethan was right: it was paradise. That's still my most special place.”

“Do you remember the first thing you did here?” Josh asked Anne.

“I rode in a sled pulled by a team of huskies.” She smiled, remembering. “But the next summer was even better. I hiked with my grandfather, and found a magic place and said I wanted to live there forever.”

“Where was it?” Leo asked.

“Riverwood. Not far from your house. Of course it didn't have a name, then; all the land up there belonged to a couple of ranchers. I called it my secret garden, which was stretching it, because the ranchers were there and their families, not to mention their cattle and horses and dogs and cats and the rabbits the kids kept in pens, but when I was there, hiding in the fir trees and sitting by the creek, it was all mine and I could absolutely believe that no one else in the world had discovered it, or ever would.”

“Hiding in the fir trees?” Josh asked.

A faint flush touched her cheek. “All children have hiding places. Where were yours?”

“In museums,” he said promptly. “I went once a week, whenever I didn't have baseball; my parents would drop me off after school and pick me up when they closed. I got locked in once; it scared the hell out of me. I was sitting behind a display case, drawing a statue of an Egyptian dwarf, and the guard didn't see me when he came through announcing closing time, and I didn't tell him I was there because I wanted to finish my drawing. Next thing I knew the lights went out and there wasn't a sound. Except that,
after a minute, there were sounds everywhere: the place creaked and groaned and whispered at me, and it was pitch-black and I was crawling on the floor so I wouldn't crash into glass cases, and crying.”

“How old were you?” Anne asked.

“Nine. I promised God everything I had in the world if I could get out of there. I even promised to practice the piano twice a day.”

“But your parents were waiting for you outside,” she said.

“They were shouting at the guard that he had to open the place. And he did and they found me. On hands and knees, still carrying my sketch pad, and whimpering. And I was so glad to see them I never had time to feel embarrassed.”

“Did you want to go back the next week?” she asked.

His eyebrows rose. “You're the only one who's ever asked that. I wasn't sure I wanted to, but my parents thought I should, so I did. For a while, I hated the smell of the place, and the way footsteps echoed, and the angles of the shadows. It didn't last long; a couple of weeks, I think, but I've never forgotten it.”

“Josh is a professor,” Leo told Anne after a moment. “Archaeology, at UCLA. Well, but you know that, don't you? You probably know more about him than—” He took a drink. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Lots of quicksand around here.”

Josh burst out laughing. “It's all right, Leo. You don't have to tiptoe around it; it was only money and my pride, and I can deal with both of them. And Miss Garnett is a hell of a lawyer and I'd like her with me if I ever need one again.”

Anne looked at him in surprise. “Thank you,” she said.

Leo looked at his watch. “My guess is, it's time to go. It'll take us ten, fifteen minutes to get back and pick up our water. Is that okay? I'll be right back; I want to thank Timothy again.”

Josh held the door for Anne and they waited for Leo outside. The street was empty and dark, the pale light from antique lampposts casting small circles on each side of
them. “I'm busy with friends tomorrow,” he said abruptly, “but I'd like to call you on Monday. May I? About noon, if that's all right.”

Anne looked at him for a long moment. His eyes met hers steadily. There was not the slightest hint of arrogance in them. “I'd like that,” she said.

T
here's a place called Defiance Lake,” Josh said on the telephone on Monday. “Very beautiful and not well known, so it shouldn't be crowded. I thought we'd hike up and have a late lunch, if that would please you.”

“Yes,” Anne said. She did not say she had not hiked for years; she would go at her own pace, and if it was too slow for him, he would either adjust his pace or go ahead. It did not matter to her; she liked the idea of hiking to a lake. I'll borrow hiking boots from Gail, she thought.

“I'll pick you up in half an hour,” Josh said. “I don't suppose you have a backpack; I'll take extra gear in mine.”

“No, I'll borrow one from Gail,” Anne said. “I like to carry my share. What can I bring for lunch?”

“Nothing; it's all taken care of. I'll see you soon.”

When he arrived, Anne was sitting on a boulder in front of the house, reading. She wore khaki hiking shorts, a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and Gail's white tennis visor. “Gail and Leo took the kids to the Labor Day parade,” she said, putting her backpack in his jeep. “They all say hello.”

“What book were you reading?” Josh asked as he drove toward the main Riverwood road.

“The
Los Angeles Law Review
.”

“Do you always bring work when you come here?”

“Always. Don't you?”

“I'm afraid so. I can get away from my offices, but not from my briefcase.”

“How many offices do you have?”

“Two. The university and the museum. Have you been to the Ancient?”

“No; I don't have much time for museums. I've heard it's wonderful.”

“It is. We'll have a private tour, if you'd like, after hours one day. When do you go back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“And you're here every weekend?”

“Oh, no, I can't get away that often; I'll be lucky to get here once a month. If I do manage it more often, I'll have to rent a place.”

“Gail and Leo didn't say that.”

Anne smiled. “Of course not. But I always prefer being in my own place; I stay with them because they insist. But even that has limits.”

“But you enjoy staying with them.”

“Yes.”

Brief answers, Josh thought. Simple, to the point, volunteering almost nothing. A private person.
I always prefer being in my own place
. Probably without much room for anyone else, he thought. There were so many questions he wanted to ask her, especially about her place in the Chatham family, why she left them, and when—she'd said she had been gone a long time; how long was that?—and why, in all the years he'd known Dora, no one had ever mentioned her. But he kept his questions to himself. Someday they might know each other well enough that she would be open with him.

He drove across the valley and turned up a narrow road past a sign pointing to a ranch. “Friends of mine own this place; wonderful people. I hope you'll meet them one day. The trail starts on their property, which is why almost no one uses it. It's only a couple of miles to the lake, but it's steep in places; if your backpack is heavy—”

“It's fine.”

The road was covered with aspen leaves sent spinning by the car into little golden tops. Anne watched them, and breathed the warm air that smelled of sun and earth, and closed her eyes briefly, remembering Ethan and their walks, and how he had taught her the names of flowers and trees along the way, and helped her clean the sticky resin of pinecones from her fingertips, and laughed at her disbelief the first time he picked up a tiny whorled shell and told her there were indeed snails in the mountains: land snails that looked just like those found in water. Everything in the world had seemed filled with wonder and beauty in those days, before her thirteenth year.

“They're out of town, so I can't introduce you,” Josh said as they drove past a stone and wood house with horse corrals beyond it. “Maybe next time.” The road curved and began to climb, becoming rutted and studded with half-buried rocks. They drove across a shallow stream to a small turnaround beside the road. “This is it. The trail is on the other side.”

They put on their backpacks and began to walk through the forest, Josh in front. Thin, white trunks of aspen trees closed in on the trail. Sunlight cast narrow beams of light through the yellow leaves still clinging to the branches, and dappled the yellow and brown bushes along the trail, and the wine-red sumac bushes peeking through. The last purple gentians and blue mountain asters nestled beneath prickly raspberry plants with fading leaves; the dried heads of cow parsnip made faint crackling sounds in the breeze, the only sound besides the scuffling of Josh's and Anne's hiking boots in the aspen leaves on the trail. They did not speak. Anne watched Josh's back, his broad shoulders supporting his pack, his muscled calves below khaki shorts, his surefooted steps, using jutting rocks as footholds, the easy way his arms swung in rhythm with his walk. He was an experienced hiker with a relaxed pace that Anne found almost too slow.

But in another few minutes it was not too slow. Imperceptibly, the path became steeper, and then steeper still, and as it went on and on, Anne's thighs began to ache, her legs felt
too heavy to lift, her breath came in gasps, and she felt faintly dizzy. She tried to peer past Josh, to see the end of the trail, but then she decided against it. If she knew how far she still had to go, she might not take another step. And of course she would take another step, and another and another. Josh was climbing steadily—she could not hear him breathing hard at all—and she was damned if she'd give up. She'd get to the lake and she'd stay with him all the way.

“Put your shoulders back and breathe deeply,” Josh said over his shoulder. “Fill your lungs. And breathe in time with your steps. Don't gasp.”

She thrust out her chest, pushing her shoulders back, and took deep breaths. The dizziness vanished. She began to count as she breathed, in time with her steps, and her gasping stopped. “Thank you,” she said. Now if he could just make my legs work, she thought wryly, but she did not have the energy for any more words: she just kept behind him, step for step.

Josh reached back, handing her a plastic water bottle. She drank as she walked, gulping the velvety coolness, keeping an ice cube in her mouth when she returned the bottle. The trail leveled out and they walked through a pine forest and then across high mountain meadows like bowls that trapped the burning sun. Then they were in another pine forest, dark after the golden glow of the aspen forest and the meadows; no sunlight penetrated here. The air was soft and cool, tangy with the scent of resin; the path was covered with a bed of pine needles that made it spongy and silent. Josh and Anne walked in silent harmony. Gray jays flew from branch to branch, keeping up with them; chipmunks darted alongside. Anne moved as if she were deeply a part of the earth. She felt a moment of pure happiness.

And then she glanced up, straight up, and saw the treetops swaying slightly in the breeze, their narrow trunks tapering to small points against the brightness of the sky. They creaked slightly.
Listen to that, Amy. The trees are creaking. Like in a horror movie. Close your eyes and you can believe something really awful is about to happen
.

She was crying. Walking behind Josh, doggedly forcing step after step to keep up with him, her back erect to support her pack, she felt the tears streaming down her face. The trees wavered, the road blurred, she tasted tears on her lips. She could not stop them; somewhere within her she was sobbing and the tears came of their own volition, beyond her control. She walked that way for what seemed an endless time, across a slope of rocks and boulders and into more pine trees, until Josh slowed, pointing to their left. “Defiance Lake. Named by a bunch of miners who defied a terrible winter and survived.” He turned. “Anne, what is it? What's wrong?”

She shook her head. “I'll be all right.” The sudden stop made her feel she was about to topple over. She knelt, pretending to tighten the laces on her boots, and took long breaths. Her tears stopped. When she stood and adjusted her pack, her voice was steady. “You were right: it's a very beautiful hike. Thank you for bringing me.”

“You aren't hurt?”

“No. I'm fine.”

“Was it a memory, then?”

She gave him a quick glance. “Do you have memories that can cause tears?”

He smiled faintly. “I don't know anyone who doesn't. I know you thought I was incapable of feeling deeply enough to weep over anything, but yes, I have memories that cause tears. Shall we find a place for lunch?”

“Yes.”

Again he led the way. The small lake nestled like an Indian turquoise at the bottom of a bowl of pine trees. From the water's edge, the trees climbed steeply five hundred feet, then gave way to gray rock outcroppings that formed a great circle of peaks above the lake. Josh walked along a narrow strip of sand at the water's edge, then turned into the forest. Anne followed. The pain was gone. She had trained herself for many years to block out memories, to believe with all her heart that they no longer existed, and to behave as if everything were perfectly fine. She followed Josh as he turned back toward the lake, and in a minute they came out
of the trees at a group of flat boulders jutting over the water. “I come up here sometimes for breakfast,” he said.