A Little Learning (16 page)

“We’re going to have to discuss it, in any case,” he said.

Rory knew he was right and she didn’t argue with his assessment. “If you’d like me to choose a job closer to Telluride when my father’s ready to go back to work, we should discuss that. But maybe we don’t have to talk about something that’s not going to be an issue.”

“How would it not be an issue? If you direct SMS, you can’t live in Telluride. I think we both realize that.”

“But my father may come back and take over again.”

“You’ve said it’s his long-range plan to hand off the position to you.”

“I didn’t say it was
my
long-range plan,” she answered. “I’m not Janine,” she added, then immediately wished she hadn’t.

Seamus gazed at her for a long time.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“That I don’t think you’re Janine, and that we still need to discuss things.”

“Maybe we should start with where you plan to live once we’re married,” Rory said.

“With you,” he answered. “That’s where.”

She relaxed slightly. “We can... We can call off the engagement, if you think that’s better.”

Seamus felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. “Do
you
think it’s better?”

“I think we’re already arguing.” Then she said in a rush, “I didn’t
want
him to ask me to do this. I tried to get him to say it was temporary. I mean, I
did
want him to need me—before he did. Now, the timing’s all wrong, and you’re misinterpreting my decision to help him.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, I know you think I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do, to help my father when he’s sick, but I think you also believe I’m doing it because I care more about his opinion than yours.”

Her own words stunned her to silence.

Seamus said, “Maybe that’s why you
think
you’re doing it.”

“I don’t care more about his opinion than yours.”

“He’s the only parent you’ve ever known, and for most of your life he’s had nothing to do with you. Now, he’s approving of you. I can’t imagine you want to give that up or risk it by doing something that will disappoint him.”

“I
did
risk it when I got involved with you.”

“How much of a risk was that? After all, if I end up moving to Sultan, Kurt’s end will be accomplished.”

Rory began to suspect that her not-very-sound sleep the night before was affecting her reasoning. Maybe Seamus hadn’t slept well, either, and that explained his behavior.

Seamus paced the waiting room and picked up a magazine. Rory sipped from a cup of bad coffee.

Too fast—we got engaged too fast. We fell in love too fast.

And yet it still felt right to her, as if her destiny was to marry Seamus Lee.

I can do it all. I can run the Sultan Mountain School and mother his children.

But she saw the sacrifice for Seamus. He would have to make the decision to move to Sultan. And it wasn’t fair to put such a pressure on him.

She looked at the ring on her hand. The fiery cauldron. Then she took it off, stood up and handed it to him.

“I made a mistake,” she said. “Taking this job. I suppose I had a choice all the way through, but it forces a decision about where you’re going to live. I don’t want to start a life with you that way. Let’s just back off. If things are meant to be between us, they will be. But now is the time to hold off.”

Seamus gazed down at Rory’s ring. She thought that in taking the job as head of the Sultan Mountain School, in doing what her father had asked of her, she was forcing him to move to Sultan.

And if she continued to run the Sultan Mountain School, there was no other answer.

The rift between them seemed to be growing, and Seamus asked himself,
What has happened to us? How has this happened?

But perhaps it had happened when he, returning to Telluride, had asked her to marry him. She, after all, still held a job in Sultan. And then her father had become incapacitated and he wanted her to step in. But also, this was her chance at a career, whereas he’d known success for many years.

How important was this work to her, really, in the long run? He could see the difference between Rory’s unilateral decision to support her father by agreeing to run the school and Janine’s unilateral decision to buy a handgun. But if Rory’s new position was a long-term thing...

He didn’t want to take the ring she had just given him back. He felt that by accepting it, he was letting her slip away and that he might never again...

What? Possess her? She’s not yours.

She had said,
If things are meant to be between us, they will be.

Did he believe that? Or did he believe that they
made
things happen?

Above all, he felt hurt. She had seemed so casual, handing it back.

Could he have broken their engagement just as easily; said,
If it’s meant to be it will be?

No. He didn’t want to let her go, even now.

They were alone in the waiting room, and he was glad of that. He asked, “Are you in love with me?”

“
Yes,
” she whispered. “And I want to marry you and live with you and your children, but this is the wrong way to begin.”

“How did it become wrong for you to help your father?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “And it’s not. But I can’t promise you that I’ll be willing or able to walk away from this job when he’s fit again. What if I love it? What if I don’t want to give it up? What if, because of my job, you move to Sultan and it turns out to be the wrong thing for the kids? It might not be the best place for Lauren, after all.”

“Please wear this,” he said, pressing the ring back into her hand. “As a pledge that we will make it work.”

Rory hesitated. She no longer knew what was best. She
did
care about the opportunity her father had just given her. And she cared about Seamus and his children. She slowly said, “Would you please keep it for me, instead?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

H
E
TOOK
TO
CARRYING
the ring with him, and then, so that he wouldn’t lose it, to wearing it on his little finger.

“Why do you have Rory’s ring?” Beau asked when he saw it, three days after Kurt Gorenzi’s successful bypass. Rory was back in Sultan, busy running the mountain school, and Seamus had returned to Telluride to try to focus on the Koneko project.

Seamus did not want to lie to his son. Nor did he want to discuss his rift with Rory. He should be able to put his life back together better than it had been before the family had gone to Sultan. He was closer to his children and he felt less angry at Janine.

Yet Rory had agreed to marry him and then run away at the first sign of conflict. And it wasn’t as simple as fear of conflict, either. She had been afraid of a wrong start.

Belatedly, he’d remembered how her parents’ marriage had ended—her mother dying while out skiing with a lover.

No wonder she might be a bit afraid of marriage.

Finally, he said, “I think she has cold feet.”

“What does that mean?” Beau said.

“That she’s not sure she wants to marry me.”

“Because of Lauren,” Beau said with certainty.

“What? No, it has nothing to do with Lauren. Well, no more than anything or anyone else.” Briefly, he told Beau about Rory running SMS for her father and her concerns that maybe Sultan wasn’t the right place for their family.

“Because of Lauren,” Beau repeated, this time with an edge of bitterness.

“What’s because of me?” She peered through the doorway, eyebrows drawn together in preparation for a fight.

“That Rory’s not going to marry Dad.”

Lauren looked interested but not remotely sorry.

Again, Seamus explained the true situation.

“I don’t want to live in Sultan,” Lauren said. “I hated it there.”

“Once everyone found out you weren’t sixteen,” Beau said.

“Enough,” Seamus interjected.

He wondered if Lauren had truly “hated” Sultan, if she now hated the idea of living there, the idea of leaving Telluride and, most of all, the thought of her father marrying Rory Gorenzi.

“In any case,” he said, “there’s some chance we’ll be moving there when summer comes.”

“I’m not going,” Lauren said. “Forget it.” And she left the room.

Beau gave Seamus a
What did I tell you?
look.

* * *

C
OULD
HE
TAKE
his children out of school in Telluride, where they’d grown up, and move to Sultan, Colorado, just because he wanted to marry a woman whose work was there? For the first time in months, Seamus remembered that initially he’d wanted to take the kids to Sultan in part to free them from the sense of entitlement they’d seemed to have as children raised in Telluride. Now, he saw how silly that idea had been.

He was a wealthy man. He’d allowed his children cell phones, computers, iPods, state-of-the-art skis and snowboards, all the things their contemporaries had. If they felt entitled, he, not Telluride, was to blame. And they would feel every bit as entitled in Sultan.
Or
they would feel resentful at being deprived of things they knew he was able to provide. When Lauren had become interested in Rory’s staff-twirling and dance classes, he’d somehow felt that his daughter was on a better path. What Rory had been doing seemed more wholesome than the too-fast life of Telluride.

But then his daughter had told some college students that she was sixteen—and why those people chose to befriend a sixteen-year-old was nearly as mystifying to him as them wanting to pal around with a fourteen-year-old. His vision of Sultan had changed. It had become a minefield, and Lauren was running through it heedlessly. Telluride had looked safer, and so he’d retreated.

I’m not going. Forget it.

Yes, he could make Lauren go to Sultan.

And she could make all their lives miserable in return.

His daughter, however, would not decide whether or not he married Rory.

He still wanted to be with Rory; still wanted her for his wife. She was confused and afraid. He didn’t think he was projecting that.

He would give her what she’d asked for—time.

He would go to Sultan to see her as often as he could without depriving the kids of the time they deserved, time he was now determined to give them. He would take another look at Sultan as a possible home for his children. And he would hope for a miracle where Lauren was concerned.

* * *

S
EAMUS
AND
R
ORY
talked on the phone most nights. On the evening of April second, a Friday, Rory said, “I got the day off tomorrow. Carrie is going to cover for me. Unless...did you want to do something alone with Lauren?”

“The two of us have something planned. Or actually I have something in mind that I’m going to spring on her. A father-daughter thing.”

“That’s what you should do, then.”

“But will you join us for dinner? She’s already asked to go to her favorite Thai restaurant, and we have reservations.”

“Great. I want to bring her present to her.”

“Rory, thank you for getting the day off. I wouldn’t have asked.”

Rory knew that he regretted what had happened the day of her father’s surgery. She was sorry they’d argued, but she still believed a situation that required them to live in a particular place because of her job was not a good situation. His job, yes. But even directing the Sultan Mountain School... She’d been happy just being an instructor. Responsibility for the whole school was overwhelming. Already she worried that she might have to fire an employee.

She’d talked to her father on the phone, of course, explaining the situation, which so far only involved rumors—but the rumors were serious. She’d asked the instructor if there was any truth to the gossip that he’d shared a joint with a client on a backcountry overnight trip. And she hated being in this position, and with a man who was roughly her same age. He’d denied it, but she’d still had to say, “Because if that happens, we’ll let you go. You know that.”

Then there were all the small rules that had to be followed precisely for insurance reasons, and her part in enforcing those rules. She’d loved teaching skiing and snowboarding and avalanche safety. She’d loved guiding clients. She wasn’t sure she even
liked
being in charge.

However, she was making more money than she’d ever made on a job before. If she stuck with this, she could eventually afford to buy one of the houses in Sultan’s new low-income housing development. Owners contributed sweat, helping build their homes, and ended up with manageable mortgages as a result.

Yes, if she married Seamus she wouldn’t have to worry about buying a house. And, yes, she would inherit her grandmother’s house one day. But Rory wasn’t used to looking at things that way—thinking in terms of what someone else could give her. She was used to figuring out what she could manage for herself.

Seamus said, “On Sunday, Fiona is willing to stay with the kids. I thought I’d like to come and see you in Sultan. But if you have tomorrow off...”

He’d already come to Sultan once, since their falling-out at the hospital. He’d also been to Montrose to pay an extra visit to her father, so that he could assure Rory that Kurt was regaining his strength and health. In Sultan, they’d skied together and eaten dinner, but he’d needed to return to Telluride that night.

“Can you stay in Telluride tomorrow night?” he asked.

“I think so. I’ll double-check with Carrie, but I think that will work.”

“Then we’ll see you at the house at, say, five?”

“Great.”

* * *

L
AUREN
APPEARED
IN
the kitchen early Saturday morning, the day of her fifteenth birthday. She was an early riser even on weekends, always eager to be outdoors snowboarding or, in the summer, trail-running.

Seamus was at the table, writing, working on the Koneko story and drinking coffee. “Happy birthday,” he said.

She started, actually jumped. “You remembered.”

“I always remember.”

“I thought Fiona did the remembering for you. Then you’d leave a gift on the table the night before.”

“Well, I wanted to make sure I caught you this morning. I want to take you shopping.”

“For what?”

“For your present.”

“Whatever I want?”

He smiled slowly. “I don’t think I can promise that. But we’ll try to find you something you like.”

“Thank you.”

He picked up a package that had been sitting on the chairs out of sight. It was long and cylindrical.

“What’s this?” Lauren asked.

“Your big present. But since the finished version couldn’t be ready for today, we prepared this for you in advance.”

“
We?
” Lauren asked suspiciously. She came to the table and examined the package. The paper had Ki-Rin and other story characters drawn all over it. She unwrapped it carefully, and a poster unrolled.

Koneko: The Movie.

Her face registered nothing but shock and pleasure, and then her eyes suddenly grew moist. Seeing this, Seamus felt himself tearing up, as well.

“Dad!” she said.

That word. That seldom-spoken, long-missed word.

“Thank you!”

He stood up from the table so that he could hug her. She hugged him back.

“It’s all about Koneko?” she said.

He nodded. “And how she became a demoness. It should be a terrific story. People like her already, and now they’re really going to love her.”

“I’m so excited.” She gazed at the poster. Black-haired Koneko with her geisha-white face, pointed ears, large eyes, long nails and trademark dark blue costume.

“Any ideas what you’d like to commemorate your birthday, besides a movie?” he asked. “I thought maybe a nice piece of jewelry. Something you can keep forever. Or we can just go look around.”

“I wouldn’t mind art,” she said. “Or clothes. But clothes are more temporary.”

“Why don’t we go when the stores open,” he said, “and we’ll have lunch out?”

She nodded enthusiastically.

“And Rory’s going to join us for dinner,” he said, not adding,
which I hope is all right.
He was not going to ask Lauren’s permission to include Rory in their family.

He couldn’t read her face. She simply shrugged. “Can I get this framed?” she asked about the poster.

“I will gladly take care of that for you. This is obviously a prototype, and probably the real poster won’t look like that.”

“That makes this better.”

* * *

T
HE
MAIL
ARRIVED
before noon, carrying Lauren’s birthday gift from Janine’s parents. They often sent her clothing from posh department stores, usually preppy. Lauren always liked what they sent, so she turned to the package with interest. Beau, who was in the kitchen with Seamus at the time, watched as she began to open it. He usually received the same type of garment, which never went over as well with him as it did with Lauren. He preferred to buy his clothing at thrift stores or get it out of the Telluride free box.

As usual, it was a clothing box, and Lauren lifted the lid to find a card on top of the tissue paper. She read it, said, “Oh, wow,” then folded back the tissue to reveal a blue-and-white letter jacket. “It’s Mom’s letter jacket from school! She was varsity, like, everything.”

Seamus’s stomach twisted painfully. Resentment curled inside him before he could stop it.

Janine’s parents had inserted her into this day.

Of course, that wasn’t fair.

His own relationship with them was edgy. They blamed him for Janine’s death. In their eyes, it was his fault that she’d owned a gun. It was his fault that she’d felt the need for one. It was his fault for “letting” her buy one. It was his fault for not teaching her “how to use it correctly.”

These things had been said, both obliquely and directly, and Seamus hadn’t forgotten. Why would he? Neither parent had ever apologized for saying them, even after learning that Seamus had never seen any need for her to own a handgun, had objected to her buying one and knew almost nothing about guns himself.

A letter jacket. Lauren had already slipped it on. Her mother had gone to school in the Midwest. Coincidentally, the colors of her jacket were the same as Telluride’s.

It makes her happy,
Seamus thought, and he told himself that the fact should be enough to make him happy.

But instead it had the reverse effect. He did not want this reminder of Janine today, and he disliked himself for the feeling. He knew that the kids had told their grandparents he was planning to marry again—Lauren, in fact, had mentioned it to them before he’d thought to do so. Part of him believed that their reaction might have something to do with giving Janine’s letter jacket to her oldest daughter this year.

Would he have felt differently about the gift if his engagement to Rory was still definitely on and if Lauren was happy about the idea of his marrying Rory? Perhaps. But that wasn’t the case.

As predicted, Lauren wore the jacket on their shopping trip. Seamus did his best to put it out of his mind, asking her where she’d like to go first. “One of the galleries?” she suggested.

He nodded, and remembered shopping with Rory for the engagement ring he now kept for her. He would hide it when they entered the gallery where he’d bought the ring.

What drew Lauren’s interest surprised him. She was most drawn to several metal sculptures of powerful-looking women. One carried a bow and arrow. It was almost a foot tall and cost a small fortune. “It’s Artemis,” she said. “It reminds me of Mom.”

He harnessed his self-control, silently praying he wouldn’t have to pay for a reminder of Janine—not this one anyhow. “Tell me how she’s like Mom. Who was Artemis, again?”

“The Huntress. She was Apollo’s twin. She was a virgin, and when men pursued her she turned them into stags and hunted them with her bow and arrow.”