After his astonishing quest to find them, his desolate calling of her name across the jungle, the sight of him standing there so gaunt and filthy and wretched by the burnt-out bus, and then the three of them clinging to one another in the rain, after all this, Julia had assumed that everything was resolved and that, once they got back to Montana, she and Connor would be together and that the three of them would be a blissful fairy-tale family. But it wasn’t to be like that.
While they were away in Africa, the house in Missoula had been rented out to some UM postgrad students. They were friends of friends and had left it clean and tidy and done no damage, but they had rearranged all the furniture and left the place smelling so utterly different that Amy promptly burst into tears. It no longer felt like home, she said.
Once she had found her old toys and books and made contact again with friends, she soon felt better. And whether it faded or they just got used to it, they soon forgot about the smell. But there was something more potent in the air which no amount of freshening or subtle tidying could banish. The memory of Ed was everywhere, not simply in the photographs - many of which Connor had himself taken - but like an almost palpable presence in every room.
Julia knew that Connor must sense it even more sharply than she did. She tried to view it as benign, to convince herself that they had Ed’s blessing, that he would want them to be happy and to move forward, not fester like prisoners of the past, but she couldn’t make the mental leap. She knew that she and Connor should talk about it, but it was too vast a subject and she worried that to raise it would somehow make her seem presumptuous.
He stayed for a couple of days to help them settle in and get themselves organized. But Julia could tell how awkward he felt. After all the trauma, Amy still needed constant comfort and even if she had wanted to, there was no way that Julia was going to let her sleep on her own yet. Connor slept in the little guest room and once Amy had fallen asleep in her arms, Julia lay wondering if she should slip away and go to him. But the risk of Amy waking and finding her gone seemed too great. And, anyhow, although she longed for him, she wasn’t certain that he felt the same. On the third morning he left to go to his mother’s ranch and perhaps she imagined it, but he looked relieved to be going. When he kissed her goodbye, it was on the cheek, like a friend.
It seemed to Julia, in those first desolate days, that the entire geography of their lives had been changed and that by some cruel joke no one had given them a map or a compass to steer by.
In the weeks that followed, Connor phoned every day and came often to see them. And on weekends she and Amy would drive over the divide to stay with him and his mother at the ranch. It was the cusp of spring and Connor would take Amy riding and when the weather grew warmer, the three of them would sometimes go hiking. He gave Amy a camera and showed her how to use it and he took her down to the creek and taught her how to cast a fly.
He had a way with her that was altogether different from Ed’s. Amy’s relationship with Ed had been full of exuberant banter; they were both great talkers and extroverts and being around them was sometimes like listening to a pair of comics competing on a talk show. Connor talked too, but his way was much more gentle and mostly he just listened, fixing her with those pale blue eyes and smiling and nodding.
Watching the two of them grow steadily closer, Julia felt happy for them both. But she couldn’t quite suppress a faintest twinge of envy. For her own relationship with Connor seemed becalmed in a kind of sibling friendship. There were moments, the occasional look or touch, when she felt sure that he wanted her as much she wanted him. But neither of them seemed willing or able to step across the line. In any case, with Amy still so needy and the memory of Ed so vivid and omnipresent, the occasion never seemed to present itself.
One balmy evening in May, Connor dropped by unannounced. Julia had been busy digging neglected flowerbeds all afternoon and was blotched with dirt and sweat. He said he was on his way to Hamilton to meet up with Chuck Hamer and some of his other smoke jumping buddies and since he was passing, he thought he would call by and say hello. He hoped she didn’t mind. Julia said she didn’t and apologized for looking such a wreck. He said he thought she looked just fine. Amy had gone down to the river to see if she could catch supper. She heard Connor’s voice and turned and waved and he waved back.
‘Would you like a beer?’ Julia said.
‘Sure, if you’re going to have one.’
She went inside to fetch them and while she was there tried to smarten herself up in the hallway mirror but decided she was beyond repair. She thought he might have gone down to the river to be with Amy but she found him waiting for her on the deck and they stood there, drinking their beers while the light mellowed around them.
‘I was trying to figure out what was different out here,’ he said. ‘You took down that old rope rail.’
‘Oh, yeah, we did. Well, you know, it wasn’t really needed anymore.’
‘Opens the place up.’
‘It does. Gives us more space.’
He nodded and for a while neither of them said anything. How the conversation might have developed, she would never know, because at that moment, Amy hooked a fish and let out a whoop and they both went running down to the river to join her. She landed it with only a few words of guidance from Connor. It was a rainbow but too small to keep. Connor carefully unhooked the fly and lowered the fish gently into the water and they watched it linger for a moment as if it couldn’t believe it was free, then dart away in a flash of silver.
By early June, Amy seemed to have recovered most of her old zest and confidence. She started to sleep in her own room, though the first few times she came creeping back at the dead of night to Julia’s. At supper one evening she announced that the coming weekend her friend Molly was having a sleepover birthday party.
‘Is it okay if I go?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Is it “okay”? I think that’s terrific.’
‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’
‘Heck, I might even have a sleepover myself!’
‘With Connor?’
Julia gulped. She laughed too loudly and felt herself blushing.
‘Well, no, honey. That’s not what I meant. I just said it, you know, as a joke.’
‘It’s okay, you know. I don’t mind.’
Julia didn’t know where to look or what to say. Amy went on.
‘I mean, I thought we were all going to, like, live together.’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘Of course I do! I love him. He’s not my daddy but he is my father.’
That did it. Julia got up and went to her and they grabbed hold of each other, crying and laughing at the same time. Still hugging her, Amy went on.
‘You love him too. I know you do by the way you look at him.’
‘Do I? I mean, do you?’
‘Yes. And he looks at you the same way.’
‘Does he?’
Amy disengaged from Julia’s arms and sniffed and wiped her tears away.
‘How come you guys are so dumb?’
Julia shrugged.
‘Anyhow,’ Amy went on, with great deliberation, ‘I’m going to the sleepover. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay.’
Julia called Connor that same evening and asked him bluntly what he was doing Friday night.
‘Well, I’ve got a date.’
‘Oh.’ Julia was floored.
‘With you and Amy. Aren’t you coming over this weekend? ’
‘Amy’s got a birthday party.’ She swallowed. ‘It’s one of those sleepover deals, you know.’
‘Oh.’
‘So, I just wondered if you’d like to come over and I could cook us something nice to eat. Maybe cook outside if it stays dry.’
‘Just the two of us.’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. Was he teasing her? She couldn’t tell.
‘I mean, you don’t have to,’ she went on. ‘It
was just, you know, an idea. Maybe you’ve got something else to do.’
‘What time?’
‘I have to drop her off at six.’
‘I’ll be there at seven.’
Friday was slow in coming, but at last it did and Julia spent most of it feeling like a high school kid preparing for a prom and trying to look nonchalant in front of Amy. She changed the sheets and put flowers on one of the bedside tables. On the other one were some framed family photographs of her and Amy and Ed; Julia made a mental note to remove them when old eagle eyes had gone off to her party. She went into town to buy the food and to get her legs waxed and her hair cut. When she came back Amy said how nice she looked and Julia tried to act all casual and said, well, you know, it was summer and all and short hair was cooler. Amy gave her a knowing smile and said the flowers in the bedroom looked nice too.
Earlier in the week Julia had gone shopping for a new dress but everything she saw was either too smart or too fussy. So she dug into the back of the closet and found the old pale blue dress that she had bought all those years ago for Connor’s surprise homecoming party. She took it to the cleaners and it came back looking like new.
She dropped Amy at Molly’s house in Missoula ten minutes early and nearly got caught speeding on the way home. The weather was clear and warm and so she had decided that they would eat outside. She had already set the table and put candles all around the rail of the deck and in the trees. They were going to have tuna steaks and salad and new potatoes and then raspberries and cream. Connor would probably want a beer, but she put wine and champagne in the refrigerator just in case. She lit the barbecue and hurried inside and upstairs.
She showered and dried off and stood in front of the mirror, smoothing herself all over with some fifty-dollar moisturizer that Linda had given her. Allowing for the first effects of gravity, for a woman in her mid-thirties (okay, mid-to-late thirties if you had to be picky about it), although she said it herself, she looked pretty darned fine. She spent an unseemly amount of time deciding what underwear to put on, all the while telling herself what a fool she was being and trying to calm her racing heart and succeeding only in making it race faster. Her shoulders and arms were tanned from the recent good weather, so she ended up choosing a plain cream satin bra and panties to match.
The dress looked great. A little eyeshadow and mascara, no lipstick. Well, maybe a little. No, better without. Turn on the bedside lamp. Would that look too calculating? Dear Lord, after the candles and flowers and champagne, if he hadn’t got the message by the time they got up here, they were in big trouble. What would Linda do? Maybe she should call her. No. Leave the lamp off. On. What the hell.
She went downstairs and put a Spencer Lewis CD on the stereo. It was called A Sense of Place. She remembered Connor commenting on it at the christening, at least she hoped that was the one. Whatever, the music was light and airy and somehow seemed right.
It was five after seven when she heard his truck turn into the driveway. She took a last look at herself in the hallway mirror, then stood perfectly still for a moment with her eyes closed.
‘Ed?’ she whispered. ‘It’s okay. Isn’t it? Tell me it’s okay.’
She took his silence as a yes.
Connor was wearing a salmon-colored denim shirt with white snap buttons and his old blue jeans looked as if they’d come straight from the laundry. He had on his best boots too and his best hat which he removed as he walked toward her across the gravel, never once taking his eyes off her. In his other hand he had a bottle of champagne and there was a bunch of blue cornflowers tucked under his arm. When he was still a short way off he stopped and stood looking at her, smiling his slow smile.
‘I remember that dress.’
‘Yeah. Well, you know, they’re all back there inside, Chuck Hamer and the boys, all ready to surprise you again. Just thought I’d warn you this time.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘You look so darn beautiful, I don’t know where else to look.’
Julia swallowed and smiled and held his gaze.
‘Well, why don’t you just keep on looking.’
He stepped toward her and handed her the flowers. ‘Thank you.’
Her voice was so small she could hardly hear it herself. She tried to stop herself trembling but couldn’t. He stepped still closer until they were almost touching and she could smell his clean soapy smell and saw him take a deep breath of her scent and lower his eyes to her lips. She opened her mouth a little, and moved it slowly up toward his and as their lips touched everything went still as if the world had stopped turning.
Their hands were too full of flowers and hats and bottles so all that touched were their mouths. Then, without a word, she turned and led him into the house. And though it wasn’t what she’d planned, it honestly wasn’t, she led him up the stairs and into her bedroom. She dropped the flowers on the bedside table beneath the others and to her horror saw that she had forgotten to remove the photos from the other table. God almighty, what an idiot she was. She thought about doing it now, but it didn’t seem like a good idea. If he had already noticed, he didn’t seem bothered.
He laid the champagne and his hat on the chair and turned to face her and they stood close, looking into each other’s eyes. He traced down the outside of her arms with his fingertips and then traced up along the insides too and then took her by the shoulders and bent his head and kissed her neck and beneath her chin and along the line of her jaw.
He turned her around and kissed the birthmark on the back of her neck and slowly unzipped her dress and let it slide down her body to the floor and smoothed his hands down her back and onto her hips and thighs. She turned and kissed him and he lifted his hand and brushed the tops of her breasts and then kissed them. As he reached behind and tried to unhook her bra she felt his body quake a little and she had to help him do it and watched him watching her as she slipped it from her shoulders.
She saw his eyes flicker beyond her to the photographs.
‘Connor, it’s okay.’ She kissed him gently. ‘It’s us now. We’re allowed.’
He nodded and she kissed him more deeply and soon she felt him loosen and the worry or guilt or whatever troubled him dissolve. He stroked the undersides of her breasts and then her nipples and then he lowered his head and did the same with his tongue and lips. She lifted his head and kissed him again while she unbuttoned his shirt and reached down and felt him already hard inside his pants.
‘Oh, Connor, I’ve wanted you for so long.’
‘I’ve wanted you too. I dreamed of you like this. A thousand times.’
‘I dreamed of you.’
He lowered her to the bed and she lay there and watched him taking off his boots and his clothes, his eyes fixed on her all the while without shame or shyness. The evening sun was angling in on him and she was struck by how very thin he was and how his pale skin bore many scars whose stories one day she would ask him to relate. When he was naked he knelt before her and ran his hands and then his lips all along the insides of her thighs and then he slowly slid off her panties and kissed her belly and opened her legs and kissed her there too.
She came almost as soon as he entered her, came in great spasms and waves that made her cry out and cry again and again. Then she felt him come too, deep inside her, as though at last he had found his place at the very center of her being, where he should always have been and where he now would be forever. And she started to sob and couldn’t stop, her whole body shuddering and the tears flooding and he lowered his head and kissed them and softly rolled his face in them to mingle them with his own.
‘Promise,’ she at last managed to whisper. ‘Promise you’ll never go away again.’
‘I promise.’
There was almost a foot of new snow and it scrunched and squeaked beneath her boots. The collies ran ahead, chasing each other in flurried circles among the trees, coming back every so often to check that she was still with them. The ban
ks of the creek were plated with jutting overhangs of ice and the water between them curled with steam and ran slow and viscous as though of half a mind to turn into ice itself.
She followed the dogs through the willow scrub and the chokecherry along the bank, past the tangled wreckage of abandoned beaver pools and on and up and around the bend until the land flattened and opened and she could see all the way up the valley. And there they were, still a good half-mile away, coming at an easy walk along the creek toward her.
They were too wrapped up in their talking to have spotted her and she stood at the edge of the cottonwoods and watched them ride slowly toward her. Amy was wearing an old red woolen blanket coat and some battered leather chaps that Connor’s mother had given her. Her cowboy hat was an old one of Connor’s that he’d padded inside to fit her. It was almost as stained as the one he was wearing now with his old tan canvas Carhartt jacket. His horse was a pale buckskin and a little taller than the pretty brown and white paint he’d given Amy for Christmas. Riding side by side now with the mountains behind them they looked a regular pair of desperadoes.
The dogs blew Julia’s cover. They went racing away toward the horses and as soon as Connor saw them he looked beyond them and saw her and waved and so did Amy. Julia waved back and watched them quicken the horses to a trot and then to a lope, kicking snow over the dogs at their heels.
They slowed the horses as they drew near and reined them to a halt.
‘Mommy! We saw wolf tracks!’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah, way up past the old homestead.’
‘Well, you sure better be careful, dressed up in that red coat.’
They both laughed. Connor climbed down and walked toward her, leading his horse.
‘Hey, Mrs Ford, I thought you were supposed to stay tucked up in bed.’