No Place I'd Rather Be

  “Wait. What happened to Chase?”

  “I had a date with him. He radiated masculinity, but now I want to ask out Zane. For variety.” She ran a hand over her ponytail and zipped her sweatshirt to her chin.

  “Zane Corrigan? From high school?”

  “Yes. One year older than me. Same class as Jace. They were friends.”

  Zane owned a lumber yard. Nice smile. Football. “Divorced, right?”

  “Yep. He married Marilane Trighty. Remember her?”

  “Complete and total snobby priss. Most vain and shallow woman I’ve ever known.”

  “She moved to New York. No one liked her. They married right after high school when Zane was in the military.”

  “I remember. We couldn’t believe he’d married her. And no kids.”

  “No. They didn’t have kids. She probably thought kids would mess up her spaghetti hips or her fake boobs. Anyhow, I accidentally on purpose drove by Zane’s house the other day, all nonchalant, and I saw him and pulled over. Same as with Chase. It was a drive-by.” She took a huge bite out of the pickle.

  “Did you get out of your car? You did? What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Hello, Zane. Nice to see you.’ It’s not like he doesn’t know me. When we were in high school I followed him around for weeks because I was in love with him and he told me to quit following him.”

  “I remember. When he didn’t ask you to prom, you made me break into his locker and we filled it with empty beer cans. So what did you and Zane talk about?”

  “Lots of stuff. I told him that if he was ever lost on a mountain, and hurt, that it might be me picking him up in the helicopter, but I didn’t want him to feel emasculated if that happened. I didn’t want him to get his pecker out of shape.”

  “You didn’t say that.”

  “I did. And I told him that I knew he owned a lumber yard and I told him that I could pick up heavy loads, as I was trained as a paramedic, and I was strong, and logs didn’t scare me. Long logs, short logs, I could lift them, move them.” She took another bite out of the pickle. “Get them in the right place.”

  One graphic image after another dove through my head. I wanted to laugh. I so did. But it would hurt Chloe’s feelings. She would be mortally embarrassed because she clearly did not understand how she sounded about her “logs.”

  “I told him that I had strong ears, too, and could handle all the noises the saws would make.” She flopped the pickle around.

  I had taken a sip of wine, and that wine flew clean out of my mouth as I laughed.

  She was confounded. “Are you okay, Olivia? Want me to pound your back?” She raised a hand.

  “No, thank you.” I coughed. “Can you hand me the powdered sugar, and what did he say?”

  She handed me an orange and a fork. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t.

  “He said that that was helpful information and he smiled at me, and I smiled back and I told him about how feminism works nowadays.”

  “How’d he do on the feminism talk?”

  “He’s a feminist. I told him he was after I quizzed him about his feelings on women. That’s important. I’m not dating a man who isn’t a feminist. I also told him he was a handsome son of a gun, a man who packed his jeans out, and a man who would be warm at night.”

  “You didn’t.”

  My sister became cross and pointed the wiggly pickle at me in an accusatory way. “Yes, I did. I told you I did. Did you think I was lying? Anyhow, he blushed and I said, ‘Don’t worry about blushing, I talk bluntly and it’ll take you some time to get used to me.’ I think he likes rounded women like me. There’s a lot to hold here, and he’s a large man and he needs something to fill those large hands of his.”

  “Please don’t tell me you said that to him.”

  “I didn’t. Yet. You have to save something honest for the next encounter, and that’s what I’m saving. This man is going to be a panther in bed. You can’t tell by looking at him, he’s tall and gangly, looks skeletal. I’ll have to fatten him up if we get together, but I’m telling you, I see it in his eyes. Panther.” She made a growling sound, but then her chin wrinkled up and her eyes filled with tears and she placed the wiggly pickle on the counter and lowered her head.

  I put my arm around her.

  “I’m trying to be brave about dating.” Chloe sucked in a breath. “I’m brave. I’m brave. I’m brave.”

  “Are you sure you want to date?”

  Her lips trembled. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I am so scared I can hardly breathe. I like this man, but I’m sure he’ll be running for the mountains soon because I have to be the boss, and it’s almost impossible to think of being with any man after Teddy, and I still miss him so much, but I’m trying to move on and after eight years I should, but I still feel guilty, and how will it be to have another man in my bed who’s not Teddy, the person I thought I’d sleep with forever and then we’d die together holding hands or we’d be ninety and I’d mount that man and we’d both fall dead in the middle of sex and people would find us naked and still attached, but that was not to be. Teddy is dead and I am alive and I’m trying to move on and be normal, and Zane is sexy and I do miss sex but I still want Teddy.”

  “You were the best wife ever to Teddy and he adored you.” I gave her a long hug while she cried. “But maybe you should try this. A few dates.”

  She said to herself, “Stop crying, Chloe. You are not a baby. You are a paramedic and a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot. You can shoot arrows and bake cakes. You are a tough-talkin’, hip-rockin’ Montana woman.”

  “And you’re strong and smart, and these dates can go nowhere, by your choice.”

  She sighed. She breathed. “I’m going to kick butt, Olivia, I am. I’m a Montana woman and a Martindale and a Razolli.” She wiped her face. “I’m a butt kicker and I’m not a whiner and I’m going to drive by Zane’s house again accidentally on purpose and I’m going to get out of my truck and talk to him about whatever he wants to talk about like engines or football—I know all about that—and skeet shooting.”

  “I know you’re going to kick butt. You always do. You always have.” Together we put the double-layer Lemon Chiffon Butterfly Healing Cake in the oven and decorated it later with the girls using the raspberry filling with pink icing and lots of colorful hard candies on top for the wings. It was scrumptious. I think Esther would have been proud.

  Sometimes that’s all you can do in life. Cry, have a treat, hug someone you love, then get back out there and kick some butt. There’s no choice. So you do it.

  * * *

  We brought Grandma and our mother a slice of Lemon Chiffon Butterfly Healing Cake when they got home from a birthday party. Grandma took a bite and said, her voice tearful, “It’s perfect. It’s tastes exactly like my mother’s, Cinnamon and Nutmeg. It’s as if she’s here with me now.”

  My mother kissed her on the cheek, a rare tender moment for The Fire Breather, and we all sat in that sweet family moment, our ancestors around us, if only through a lemon chiffon cake, shaped like a butterfly.

  * * *

  I kissed the girls good-bye on their way out of the car, lunch and fudge pinwheel cookies and backpacks in tow. The girls seemed to like school better. “No one has called me frog face in a few days,” Lucy said. “I think it’s because I socked Brayden in the gut the last time. Now some of the kids call me Fist. You know, because I punched him because he wouldn’t stop calling me frog face. Do you think I look like a frog?”

  “I had two girls ask me to sit with them at lunch,” Stephi said. “And I said yes and we sat together and I shared my fudge pinwheel cookies with them. They liked them!”

  Aha! I had a tiny solution to this painful problem. If it helped Stephi to make friends, I would add more cookies to her lunch bag so she could share them. I was learning this about motherhood: You do what it takes to help your kids even if it means you’re making special cookies at eleven o’clock every night.

  * * *

 
The next night Stephi couldn’t sleep because she remembered the times when there was no food in the house and she and Lucy had to go to bed with “tummy aches. Two nights.”

  Now and then I see Lucy and Stephi opening the refrigerator just because. They’re not hungry, but they want to know that there is always food, the fridge full. Sometimes I send them to bed with a snack in a sack.

  It’s pathetic. No kid should ever have to wonder if they’ll eat the next day.

  * * *

  Thursday night I made butterscotch cookies for the girls for their lunches. I would put extra in their baggies for their new friends.

  The truth is I love cooking for people I love.

  I used to love cooking for Jace. He loved my food. He made me feel appreciated every single time I put a plate in front of him. His response was always the same: “Wow.” And “Thank you, Olivia,” or “Thank you, baby.”

  He would study the meal, appreciate the way it was grilled/ baked/fried, how I presented it on the plate, how the tomatoes were sliced thin because that’s the way he liked them, how the salads had his favorite homemade dressings, and how my bread was sliced thick and hot. There was not a meal I made that that man didn’t fall over himself thanking me for.

  When we were working together on the ranch he would call to chat during the day, or come by and see me in the kitchen, give me a hug and a kiss and say, “What’s for dinner?”

  I’d tell him, his eyes would light up, he’d listen so close, and then that guy would look forward all day to what I was making for dinner. After dinner he would say, “Olivia, that is the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten,” and we would laugh because he had said it the night before, too.

  Jace worked long hours, all the time, but he always cleaned up after dinner. He insisted. To give him a break, I always washed up the pans beforehand so he wouldn’t have to do much.

  He was a kind husband. He was a sexy husband. He was a strong and smart husband. He was ambitious, masculine, protective, and a tiny bit possessive in a seductive ‘you are my woman’ sort of way.

  It about killed me to leave him, but it was leave him or lose my mind.

  I chose to save myself. It was better than the alternative.

  I still feel so guilty for that, so awful.

  It’s like the guilt is in my bones and running through my bloodstream.

  * * *

  I held the letter in my hand outside the log cabin, the snow sprinkling down, light and fluffy.

  Everything started to spin. The white-tipped Dove Mountains in the distance seemed to blur, then shift, as if they were in the midst of an earthquake. The river expanded, then retracted, then I swear it started flowing backward. Even the snowflakes turned to tiny tunnels, whirling around me, stealing my breath.

  I sank down onto my knees, on my driveway, dizzy, sick.

  I blinked, rubbed my eyes, took a breath, and started reading the letter again.

  It was written partly in legalese, that barely decipherable language that attorneys use to intimidate and demoralize. But I got the meaning.

  Sarah Lacey, aka Devlin McDaniel, the name Devlin chose because she liked that it sounded “devilish,” was going to get out of jail early because of good behavior. Devlin had called me herself when we were in Portland and told me she would get out early, but at that point she was the only one saying it. Still, it had scared me to the ends of every hair on my head.

  Now it was official. There would be a meeting, then a hearing in front of a judge, about the fitness of Devlin’s abysmal parenting and steps she would have to take to get the girls back. As if this was a reasonable, possible option.

  I was invited to that hearing, as was my attorney, and Devlin’s attorney, which Children’s Services would hold in downtown Portland, with caseworkers and other concerned parties.

  I lay back in the snow, like a dying snow angel, unable to stand upright for one more second.

  Chapter 9

  “Dang,” my mother said, hanging up her phone. “Dorene Morales fell out of her hayloft and says she heard a click click click. Thinks her bones snapped.”

  “Did you call an ambulance?”

  “We’re going to get her. We’re closer and we’ll get there faster than they will in the ambulance in this weather.”

  My grandma put the cream away. We were making cinnamon mousse together at the farmhouse. It was one of Ida’s recipes out of the cookbook. Grandma told me she used to make it at her pink and white bakery in Munich. The girls had been invited to Charlie Zimmerman’s house, son of Grace Zimmerman, who did not gracefully get drunk at our choir concert. Charlie had an older brother and the four of them were going to play together.

  The three of us grabbed our coats, shoved our feet into boots, and flew out the door, into a flurry of wind and snow. We piled into the truck. My mother pulled out as I shut the door.

  The snow and wind became thicker as we headed up a hill, then climbed part of a mountain to Dorene’s ranch. They had much more snow up here than we did on the floor of Kalulell. I had felt spring coming around the corner a little while ago. I did not feel spring around that corner anymore.

  The truck skidded and hit a snowbank. We climbed out of the truck, hoods up, grabbed the chains, and got them on. My mother won this time. I used a shovel to get rid of some of the snow in front of the tires.

  Dorene’s driveway wasn’t plowed, so it took longer than we wanted, but we headed toward the barn.

  Dorene is about seventy-five, give or take a couple years.

  “Hello, ladies. I have a date tonight.” Dorene lay on the floor of her barn. She was clutching her side, her breath catching. Luckily she had had her phone with her. “So, let’s get this fixed up quick so I can get ready.”

  “Don’t be delusional. You know you’re going to have to go a few days late to your date, Dorene,” my mother said, her hands gently examining her.

  My grandma examined her, too. “I’ll bring you some of my chicken soup with extra onions when you’re out of the hospital. It will help you to heal.”

  “I know it will, Gisela. You’ve made it for me before, and it healed me so quick I could hardly remember having double pneumonia. Healing done in the natural way, not with all these drugs the pharmaceutical companies gouge us for. Hello, Olivia, wonderful to see you, dear. I heard you’re back together with Jace. Good for you two.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “No? I heard you were.” She said this as if I might be confused. She had heard it through the Kalulell grapevine, so that made it true. “I heard it from Tobey. He heard it from Melissa St. James.”

  My mother could tell I was uncomfortable at the mention of Jace, so she got things back on track. “Who do you have a date with, Dorene?”

  “Francois, the brother of Antoine. You know Antoine? Cecilia’s husband? The French professor at the college? Francois is visiting from France. Doesn’t speak much English, but I don’t need much English in the bedroom.”

  Grandma and she chuckled, like schoolgirls. “No conversation needed, Dorene.”

  “That’s right,” my mother said. “Turn down the lights, pull down the sheets, and let your body do the talking, the bed springs do the walkin’. Or something like that.”

  “You must have learned that phrase in medical school, Mother.”

  “I’m having Francois over for dinner. I made my ribs. Still in the oven. You know what my ribs do to men.”

  We all said, “Ahhh . . .”

  Dorene’s ribs were famous. I’d had them. They were fall-off-the-bone perfect. She’d brought them to my wedding reception with Jace and said, “Have him eat my ribs. He’ll stay fired up for hours. If you know what I mean, dear.” Jace did not need the help, but still. It was a thoughtful gift.

  “Those ribs are from my momma’s recipe. It’s how she snared my father, at least that’s what he said. When they got in one of their fights she always told him, ‘None of my ribs for you,’ and that usually shut down the fight right quick, I te
ll you. My father was begging for forgiveness by the second day.”

  “Okay, Dorene,” my mother said. “You really did it to yourself this time, snap, crackle, and pop, and you’re going to have to spend some time at Hotel Hospital.”

  “Oh, hell, no, Mary Beth. You can fix it. I can’t leave my ribs.” She waved a hand. “Isn’t this ironic? I’ve broken my ribs and I’m making ribs for dinner.”

  “I’ll go and turn off the oven,” I said, “and take care of the ribs.”

  “You have to go to the hospital, lover girl,” my mother said. “One of your ribs has flat punctured a lung.”

  “I am not going to the hospital, Mary Beth. I hate hospitals.”

  “Yep. You are. Quit arguing, you’re giving me a headache. We have a snowstorm and we’re getting out of here before it gets worse. Up you go.”

  “Now, don’t you worry,” Grandma said. “You’ll be pulled back together in no time at all. A hot water bottle and a hot toddy will help heal those ribs, too.”

  We backed the truck into the barn, gently helped Dorene into the backseat, then I ran into her house, turned everything off, grabbed the ribs with pot holders, put them on a cutting board, locked the doors, and headed back through the snow, trying not to lose the ribs. I put the ribs in the back of the truck and climbed in.

  The truck skidded down the driveway, my mother intent on getting to the hospital quickly. The snow was coming down, heavy and thick. I hate blizzards, I do.

  “Buck up, Olivia,” my mother said, sweet as usual.

  “I am bucked up, Mother.” I wasn’t. She knew it.

  Dorene leaned heavily against me in the backseat, pale, her voice raspy, not at all concerned that she had a punctured lung. “This is going to make a mess of my date.”

  “Tell me what Francois looks like, Dorene.”

  “Hot,” she wheezed. “He’s boiling over. Fifteen years younger than me, but I know I can keep up.”

  “Women always can,” my mother drawled. “They always can. Especially those of us born in Montana.”

  “Ruthie has a boyfriend. Hers is fifteen years younger, too,” Dorene said. “That makes us lion cubs!”