The One Who Got Away: A Novel (9 page)

She knew she should have turned
around twenty minutes before. This was also when she should have put on her
headlamp. It had just felt so good to be able to think and to be on her own.

She needed to turn and go back
the direction she had come. Now. Fast. She turned one ski, flipping it up and
facing it in the opposite direction on the trail. And just as she lifted the other
ski and was beginning to turn it into the air, she felt the impact.

Her knee twisted as something knocked
her backward into the snow.  The powder on the side of the trail cushioned her
fall, but a searing pain ripped through her knee. She closed her eyes just as a
wet, warm sensation lapped at her nostrils. She sputtered and blinked her eyes
open. It was a tiny dog, white-faced with two perfect brown spots on either
eye, hopping on her chest, first to one side, then to another. Licking her face
between hops. And then she saw Henry. On the trail. Nearly on top of her.

“Oh Olivine,” he was saying, “I’m
so, so sorry. I was going so fast on the way down and I didn’t expect anybody
out here and I didn’t even see you until it was too late.”

Olivine’s face flushed hot. She
laughed. “Call off your dog.”

“Sorry, sorry. Come on, Lola.”
The dog jumped to Henry’s side and tilted her head, ears cocked.

“Please, please tell me you’re
okay.” Henry said.

“I’m fine.”

“You look sort of…twisted.”

“Yeah, and sort of upside down,
huh?”

“Here.” He held out his hand,
buried inside on oversized mitten, and she grabbed for it while he pulled her
up, but because her leg was connected to the ski, this motion only caused her
knee to twist still farther. She sucked in her breath.

“Oh. Wow. That hurts. Doesn’t
it?“ Henry asked.

She held her breath, then
sputtered. “It does.”

“Oh Olivine, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Probably
just needs some ice.”

He removed his mitten and pulled
a bag designed for dog waste from his pocket. “It’s clean, I promise,” he said
as he scooped snow inside and tied the top. Before she could protest, he had
clicked out of his skis and was reaching one hand under the back of her legs
and another behind her back. And then he plucked her out of the snow as though
she weighed nothing. She looked up at him, seeing only the bottom of his chin.
The whiskers here were entirely silver. Adrenaline surged through her, whether
from being hoisted from the snow by Henry Cooper or from the throbbing pain in
her leg.  

As he picked her up, her legs
untwisted, and he lay her on the soft powder just to the side. Then he removed
her skis and applied the snow pack to her knee.  

“Well,” he began. “It looks okay
now that it’s straightened out, but what the hell do I know?”

She laughed. “Let’s just sit for
a minute.”

“Then we can figure out whether
you need to go to the hospital. Do you think you need to go to the hospital?”

“No.” Olivine found that she couldn’t
stop looking at him. In the fading light, his silhouette. Those long lashes,
sweeping over his coffee-colored eyes. 

Henry settled himself next to
her. He stared down at the icepack sitting atop her knee. “I set off from the
cabin, to clear my head,” he said, low. “I was in my own little world, I guess.
What are you doing out here? Way up here?”

“Well,” she laughed. “I had
stopped and was trying to turn around because I could hear a crazy man yodeling
in the woods, and I didn’t want that crazy man to hit me.”

“I’m so sorry.” He looked up at
her face, his brow furrowed. “Where did you ski from?”

“Straight up. From the
Prospector’s Point Trailhead.”

“Wow, woman. That’s quite a
climb. You don’t mess around,” he said, “But then, I guess you never did.”

The cold from the snow beneath
her braced her, grounded her in the moment. She took off her hat.  

He watched her. His eyes were so
luminous they appeared almost glassy. He gave her a lopsided smile. “You must
have been climbing fast. Your head is steaming. Guess those legs still work
like they used to.”

A memory flashed through her
mind. Her legs locked around his hips, tangled in the sheets. Their fingers
interlocked.

“How’s the pain?” he asked.

“It’s fine. Really.”

“Is there anything I can do. Are
you comfortable? At all?”

“
You could yodel for me.” She grinned.
“That might help.”

“You heard me singing, huh?”  

“Is that what you call that?”

He smirked. “Sometimes, the joy
of the descent just gets the best of me, Olivine. You know?”

She nodded.

“And, when I’m all alone, I like
to hear my voice just echoing along in the trees…I really didn’t expect anyone else
to be out here.”

“Evidently.”

“Poke fun if you must,” he said,
“but yodeling is strangely soothing. Do you want me to teach you?”

“Do I ever!” She laughed and
tried to straighten out her knee. Nope, not quite ready for that yet. She kept
it bent and watched him—his mouth, his eyes— as he spoke.

“I learned the technique on a
visit to the central Alps, where it’s actually a way for herders to
communicate, both with other villagers as well as with their animals.”

“Is that a fact?”

“It is.” He leaned back, rolled
over on his side to face her and braced his head on one hand, just the way he
used to. “Honestly, it’s really fun to make those kinds of noises. Something
deep, deep, deep. From your diaphragm. From your core. There’s something nearly
primal about it.”

He began making a barking pitch,
up and down, with his throat, and the sound made her giggle. His eyes were so
bright, so expressive. And Olivine realized she was smiling. Broad and deep.

“Now you try.”

“Okay.” Olivine lay back in the
snow and stared straight ahead, at the tops of the lodge pole pines, which were
swaying gently, scraping the sky. She took a deep breath and allowed the pitches
to roll out of her. She closed her eyes and let the sound of her own vocal
cords overtake her.
Her
sound, the sound of her voice riding up and out,
on its own. It was as though a wind, a force, something larger than her, had
taken hold. When she stopped, the air around her felt round. Leftover vowels
hung in the air like plump fruits.

“Wow,” he said, after a few
beats.

“I see what you mean. It’s kind
of cathartic.”

Henry scooted closer to her,
still propped up on his side. And when he spoke again, his voice was lower,
softer. “That was one impressive yodel, my dear.” And she looked at him,
bracing his head on his elbow, and she, lying flat on her back beside him. His
face was so much the same. His smile. Only now, the lines around his mouth ran
deeper, and there were three crinkly lines at the corner of each eye. She was
holding her breath. “I never know what is going to come out of you,” he
whispered.

“Nor I you.” Her tone was soft,
intimate. There was a rising in her stomach. A warm, velvety feeling in her
legs.

Silence hung in the air between
them, as though it were an entity—a sheet that neither dared to pull aside. And
she imagined him leaning over and pressing down on her, pressing his body
against hers and kissing her with a gentleness and a familiarity and an
urgency. But neither of them moved, and still the silence hung there.

She let a few moments pass and
she focused on the leaping in her belly. The energy that was rippling through
her now. Finally he spoke. “Okay. Let’s see what we’re looking at here.” He sat
up and removed the ice pack. “Do you think you can stand up?”

He jumped out of the snow in a
single hopping movement and slung one arm behind her. She leaned into him as
she stood on her left leg, applying gentle pressure on the right. “You know, I
think it’s fine. It just feels kind of wobbly. Kind of…like it’s not connected
on all sides.” 

“Oh boy.”

“I know.”

“Good thing your fiancé is an
orthopedic surgeon,” he said, his eyes steady on hers.

“Yeah,” she said, looking down
now into the snow. Their footprints had created tiny caverns of blueness on the
trail. “Good thing.”

And he bent toward her, and in a
matter of seconds, she found herself on his back. Her chest was flat against
him, and her legs straddled his hips. His back was solid, firm, warm. She
leaned forward and felt her body melt into his. “Hold on, okay?” He bent
forward at the waist to pick up her skis and poles from the ground and he held
them in one hand, then clicked back into this gear, all while balancing her on
his back.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “You’re
skiing down, with me on your back?”

“Well, we haven’t got a sled.”

“This is a serious descent.”

“Oh, I’m not going that way. Not
the way you came. I’ll take you back to the cabin so we can assess your
situation.”

“But my car is that way.” She
pointed in the direction she had come.

“I can get you back to your car.
I’ll drive you back. In my bus.”

“Seriously?”

“You don’t have a whole lot of
choice here, Olivine. I promise I’ll be good.”

She paused. He’ll be good? What
an odd thing for him to say, she thought, and she wasn’t sure how to respond,
so she said, “Aren’t I heavy?”

“Not one bit. I can do this,
Olivine. I have skills you may not even know about.”

“You do, huh?”

“I do. Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” She surprised herself by
the speed of her response. “Yes, I do.”

“Well then.” And he started along
the traverse, in the direction he had come. And she bobbed along, harnessed to
him like a papoose, feeling weightless. Giggles erupted from her, bubbled out
of her throat without her consent. She had been just under six feet tall since
the age of fourteen, and she couldn’t remember anyone actually picking her up.
Well, except for Paul’s proposal. Paul lifting her onto the hood of his car. But
now. Now she was flying down the mountain on a man’s back. A man whom she had
dreamed of every day since she was twenty-two. But never like this. She pressed
her nose against the back of his head, into his wool hat. He smelled like the
earth itself. Rich and clean.  

“How are you doing this?” she
asked after he had maneuvered a tight turn in the trail.

“Very carefully,” he said.

He wore her headlamp to
illuminate the path of his skis, and the final descent to the cabin was fairly
gradual. When they could see the house up ahead and the lights from inside his
bus twinkling in the distance, she said, “Okay, you can put me down now.”

“But you’re light as a feather,”
he said, continuing to ski along.

“No I’m not. I bet I weigh nearly
as much as you.”

“Not a chance. You’re not even
the slightest bit as heavy as the pieces I was lifting in your grandfather’s
wood pile today. His pile of treasures.”  

“But you didn’t ski with them on
your back.”

They were against the bus now. He
leaned against it as he bent down, lowering her slowly and gently back to the
earth.

“How’s the knee?”

“It’s fine. It really is. Could
you hand me my poles?”

He held them out to her, and she
balanced her weight on both legs. Her breath caught.

“Do I need to take you to the
emergency room?” he asked.

“I hope not,” she answered,
looking down at her knee. “Paul’s on call until eleven, which usually means
he’s in the emergency room.”

“Oh. Well. Shall I drive you
home, then?”

“You can drive me to my car.”

“Sure. Okay. But can you drive?
With your knee like that?”

“Of course, unless you want to
carry me on your back. All over the county.”

“I would, you know.” He looked
her full in the face.

She opened her mouth to say
something. Closed it again.

Henry motioned her toward the
bus, and then he opened its double doors by reaching a hand inside and yanking on
one of the sides. Both doors rattled open, and then he slid his head beneath
her arm to give her support as they walked up the two short steps into the bus.

He was married. Henry Cooper was
married. She repeated it to herself as he reached over with one arm and
unfolded a canvas camping chair and helped her to settle into it. “I can attach
this to the aluminum rack if you think you’ll feel unsafe as we drive.”  

She looked around now at the
interior of the bus, and memories flooded her. His messy Volkswagen. His
complete lack of pretension. She shook her head. “No, this will be fine. Thank
you.” And his little dog, Lola, hopped in her lap, turned once and sat down, facing
the windshield. Olivine scratched at her neck and behind her soft, floppy ears.