Until Spring (21 page)

"Yeah. A pink one."

"Well, okay," Jane said dubiously.

"Something nice, Jane. Really nice," urged Mary Kate.

Jane smiled. A soft shade of pink would brighten Mary Kate's sallow complexion.

She bent to hug Mary Kate. "I'll buy you the nicest, pinkest, frilliest dress I can find," Jane promised.

* * *

Duncan and Jane left the ranch a week later and flew into Chicago in early afternoon. They rented a car and left the city, Jane staring with conflicting emotions at the buildings looming against the city's skyline. Behind them jets soared up and out of O'Hare Airport, and Jane couldn't help but recall all the times she used to wish she was on one of them and headed for California.

"You're awfully quiet. Is everything okay?" Duncan asked anxiously.

"Not really."

"You look tired," he said.

Jane pulled down the car's visor and checked her reflection in the mirror. Her face was pale, and there were deep circles under her eyes. She had hardly slept at all last night. She shoved the visor up again and tried to smile through her fear that somehow the city might swallow her up again if she wasn't careful.

"Seeing Chicago again makes me feel like I've been socked in the stomach," she said.

"Was living here that bad?"

"I couldn't keep a job, I was constantly trying to find a place to keep warm, and I mostly lived in shelters for the homeless. One time some men came in a police wagon and started rounding up people on the streets, and we heard later that they'd been taken to a mental hospital. I thought they'd get me next, and I hid in the basement of an abandoned building with some other street people until I was sure the threat had passed. Yes, it was that bad. Oh, and then there were the gang fights. And gunfire." She hunched herself into the corner of the seat.

"Didn't you go to the authorities and explain what had happened to you? That somebody was supposed to help you get on your feet and find a job?" he asked incredulously.

"Sure, but no one seemed especially interested. I don't think anybody believed me. The prevailing attitude was that I was a lot better off than a welfare mother with children, so I was left to fend for myself. I was still having headaches when I lived here, and it made holding a job difficult."

"You don't seem to be having headaches now."

"It's odd, but I don't think I've had a headache since I fell and hit my head in the snowstorm the night you found me in the mine," she said. They were on an interstate now, driving past neat subdivisions. Traffic moved faster, and she sat up and looked around. Now that they were away from oppressive tall buildings and ugly warehouses, she felt better.

"And your cough is almost gone, too," Duncan said, hoping to cheer her.

"The antibiotic did wonders. I thought I'd need a warm climate to shake it," she told him.

"Is that why you decided to go to California?" He was curious as to why she had chosen that particular state for her new start.

"There was another reason, too. All the time I spent in the library trying to keep warm, I used to read a lot. One of the magazines I read outlined training programs in the Silicon Valley. I thought I could learn computer coding or, well, I don't know. Something useful that pays well."

He sent her a sharp look. "Is that what you still want?"

"Maybe. It all depends on what we find out on this trip. Perhaps I have marketable skills and just don't know it." She stared out the window at a passing blue Ford van. It somehow seemed familiar. She shook the feeling off because there was nothing she could tie it into; there was no vehicle like it at the ranch.

The flat land stretched out white and frozen on both sides of the road. They were in the country now, and the roads were straight with few intersections between the towns. Duncan held their speed at a steady fifty-five miles per hour, and the dotted line in the middle of the road hypnotized her so that all she wanted to do was let her head loll back against the seat. They played the radio to break the monotony, but soon it became part of it, droning on and on about commodity prices or community happenings that had nothing to do with them. They were travelers in a strange land, part of the landscape but curiously detached.

It was growing dark when they reached the outskirts of Springfield. Duncan pulled the car off the interstate and into the parking lot of a large chain motel. Jane waited while he went inside and registered them in two different rooms.

When he came out, he seemed to be thinking about something else, and she had to ask him their room numbers twice. The rooms were on an inside hall, and Jane trailed behind him, lugging the suitcase she had borrowed. He offered to carry it for her, but she refused. Duncan shook his head as if to say that it was her own business if she didn't want his help, which made her feel as though she had fallen short of some mark that she hadn't even known was there.

He unlocked the door of her room for her and handed her the key.

"Let's eat dinner later at the restaurant across the street," he suggested. "Say, at seven o'clock?" His eyes in the light from the lamp on the wall seemed overly anxious.

"You're on," she said, smiling.

"I'll call you to make sure you're ready."

"I'll see you later," she said, suddenly feeling shy about this, and went into her room. She heard his room door open and close next door.

Jane set her suitcase on the luggage stand and looked around. The window faced the parking lot. She closed the sheer draperies, but not the heavy light-blocking ones, and moved restlessly around the room, examining it. She opened a door, thinking it was a closet, and found its twin shut and latched. The second door must open on Duncan's room. She closed the door on her side very carefully so that he wouldn't hear.

After that, an inspection of the dresser drawers turned up a folder full of stationery. She hated the dresser with its plastic top, but the little plastic glasses in their wrappings of cellophane on the tray there amused her. She tested the double bed, which after the comfortable one at Duncan's ranch seemed hard, and the rust-colored carpet was ugly.

She'd grown accustomed to the welcome of a lived-in room full of lemon-polished furniture and scented with the fragrance of wholesome food cooking in the kitchen.
You've gotten awfully particular,
she chided herself. A few months ago she would have counted herself lucky to be in a room such as this for only a few hours. Here there was all the heat she could want, there were clean sheets, and no one was around to tell her to move on.

But she had changed since she arrived at Placid Valley Ranch. What had once seemed like enough—a warm place to live, plenty of food—was not adequate for her needs now. She had to have more. She had to know who she was.

She lay down on the bed to rest, and before she knew it she was asleep. She didn't wake up until Duncan called her on the phone.

"Hi, beautiful," he said. "Are you ready to go to dinner?"

"I fell asleep," she admitted, thinking that "Hi, beautiful" didn't sound like the kind of thing Duncan would say.

He laughed, and she didn't let him in on her puzzlement.

"I'll be knocking on your door in ten minutes or so," he told her.

When she hung up, it was a few seconds before she could move. All at once Duncan was acting differently. Had he been this way on the ranch? She didn't think so.

There he had always been helpful and forthright, and she could usually tell what he was thinking. As soon as they'd checked into the motel, he'd changed. It was as though he was trying to figure out how to act in these circumstances, as though he were trying to impress her.

But why?

She was used to his habits and the way he acted around her, used to
Duncan.
She didn't want anything between them to change.

What was she thinking? That Duncan was interested in her in a way that she couldn't accept?

No, that was ridiculous. They'd already covered that ground the time that he'd kissed her.

If anything was wrong, it must be her imagination.

Chapter 11

She and Duncan had never gone anywhere alone together until today, and she realized that she was as nervous about dinner together as a girl on her first date. Which was an unfortunate comparison, she told herself. This wasn't a date. This was just Duncan.

When he rapped twice, she opened the door to her room. He'd had his hair cut before they left Wyoming, and while it usually grew slightly down over his ears, now it didn't. His ears looked pink and shiny, as though he'd scrubbed thoroughly for this outing, and she wanted to smile at the idea. Instead she only stepped into the hallway to join him.

When he took off his coat in the restaurant, she saw that he had put on a suit. She'd never seen him wearing a suit before, but he looked wonderful in it. She couldn't recall ever thinking that Duncan was handsome, but now she realized with a start that there was no man in the restaurant who was better looking.

The waiter came to take their order. Duncan ordered a steak, and when Jane hesitated and said that she didn't know what she wanted, he ordered the same thing for her. She was glad, because she found that she couldn't think about the choices on the menu with him sitting across from her looking as though he was hanging on her every word. This was another difference from the way things were at the ranch.

What to talk to him about? She cast about for something, anything. She didn't understand why it should be so hard to think of a topic; talk had always seemed to flow easily between them, and she'd always loved their lively exchanges.

She knew that Duncan was having an equally hard time trying to start a conversation. But this was small solace when her tongue seemed to have turned to lead and her brain was too mushy to think. She had an idea that they were both thankful when the waiter brought their salads.

Every word Duncan said seemed pulled from him, and it was unnatural, unreal. Jane wished that she had made this journey alone, and then was glad she hadn't. She was grateful for his presence and most of all for his help. His help... Maybe they could talk about tomorrow.

"Do you think I should bother to go to the hospital when we get to Tyree?" she asked.

He latched onto her question as though it were a lifeline. "I think the first stop should be the sheriff's department. Then you can decide if it's worthwhile to go see this Carlton Jones and his son or whether you want to drop by the hospital."

A shadow passed across her face. "I know all the nurses and doctors at the hospital would be glad to see me. I was a favorite. Yet I'm reluctant to go there." She finished the last of her salad and sat back.

"Why?" Duncan wanted to know.

She shook her head. "Why should I deserve any more of their attention?"

"They'll be happy to see that you survived," Duncan said. "There's a lot to be said for that. It wasn't easy."

"No, it wasn't," Jane said, recalling all the times she'd been evicted and the close call when she might have been shipped off to the mental hospital. When you were on the streets, if anyone suspected you of acting irrationally, they'd get suspicious. Sometimes it was hard not to act irrationally when your head had been aching for a solid week and you'd gone without a decent meal for that long.

"It's not easy for you to think about those days, is it?" Duncan observed with a sharp look after the main course arrived.

"I suppose not. After all, I don't feel that far removed from that time in my life." She regarded him with a wistful look.

Duncan stopped eating and held her gaze with his own. He reached over and covered her hand where it rested in her lap. "Those days are over," he said firmly. "Believe it."

Embarrassed by the steadiness of his gaze, she lowered her eyelids. They finished eating in silence, but it was a comfortable one.

After dinner, Duncan surprised her. "Let's go into the lounge," he said.

Through an archway framed by wrought iron scrollwork Jane saw a bar where people were sitting and drinking, and from farther inside came the sounds of a live band.

"I don't know," she said doubtfully, but Duncan overcame her objections when he took her hand and led her inside.

In the small cocktail lounge they were seated at a table about the size of one of the big dinner plates at the ranch, and Jane commented on this. Duncan laughed. She hadn't thought that what she said was all that funny but was pleased that Duncan thought so. Maybe she'd think of something else to make him laugh. She couldn't stand the way either of them was acting tonight.