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“Well, that’s a good thing,” he said generously. “Witt’s worked hard in the mine all his life. You can’t begrudge him an early retirement.”
“I’d never do that. No, I’m really pleased for him.”
“So, is he going to Tahiti?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Seems a shame. But maybe it wasn’t enough for the trip.”
She looked at him sideways. “How about eleven million dollars?”
That set him back on his heels. Numbers like that were usually attached to major construction jobs, none of which he’d so far managed to garner for his company. “Wow,” he said after a moment. “Wow. But it doesn’t pay out in a lump sum.”
“No, but even with the payout schedule it’s a lot of money.”
“I guess he will retire.”
“Actually…” She hesitated. “He’s thinking about a career change.”
“That’s cool.” Like he cared.
“He’s…um…thinking about building a resort on that property he owns west of town.”
And suddenly Hardy understood why she was mentioning this to him. He looked straight at her and felt the entire world hold its breath for a few seconds. Then he said slowly, “Joni…are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Her mouth tightened, and she looked away. When she faced him again, her eyes were moist. “When Karen died, I didn’t just lose my best friend. I lost my other best friend, too.”
In spite of himself, he felt his throat tighten a little, and he cleared it. “Joni…”
She shook her head, silencing him. “It’s been twelve years, Hardy. Twelve years! And ever since we talked this afternoon, I’ve been thinking about how much Witt’s anger has cost me. And you, too. Karen would never have had to sneak out with you that night if Witt hadn’t thought you weren’t good enough for her. And you and I could still have been friends except for Witt. Damn it, Hardy, it’s not right. And Karen had the guts not to let it keep her away from you. Maybe I’ve got the same guts, finally.”
“Joni…Joni, it’s not a matter of guts. It’s a matter of not raking up a whole lot of…unpleasantness. Not at this late date. After all this time, Witt’s not going to change his mind about me. It’ll just open old wounds for everyone.”
“Maybe they need to be opened.” A tear spilled down her cheek. “This money’s a bad thing, Hardy. I’ve been feeling it ever since Witt told me about it. The only way to avoid the bad things is to turn it to some good. You could build that lodge better than anybody.”
“You don’t know that. There’s no way you can know that.”
“I believe it.”
He knew what she was offering him. Witt would never, ever, have asked him to bid on the project, would never even have let him know it was up for bid. But if he could just give Witt the best bid…maybe he’d get the job anyway. And it was exactly the kind of job he knew how to do, the kind of job he was constantly looking for. It could benefit them both.
He shook his head. “Witt will never agree, no matter how good the bid is.”
“I have some influence, Hardy.”
“That may be. But you don’t want to get crosswise with your uncle, Joni. He and your mom are the only family you have.”
“Well, you do what you think best. But I’ll tell you right now, the next time you cross a street when you see me coming, I’m going to cross it, too.” She drew a tremulous breath. “It’s like…it’s like I can feel Karen telling me to do this. I know that’s crazy, but it’s what I feel. I’m not going to let Witt tell me who I can be friends with anymore. And neither should you.”
He looked at her, wondering if she were getting sick or slipping a cog. All this time… Yeah, all this time. He suddenly remembered that it hadn’t been Joni who’d been avoiding him. No, he’d been the one avoiding her. Because of Witt. Because he was scared to look into that abyss yet again. Because he’d managed to put his guilt on the back burner finally, and getting involved with the Matlocks was only going to make him face it all over again.
He closed his eyes, the memories surging in him, filling him with blackness. “It won’t work, Joni.”
“You don’t know until you try.”
He did know, though. He knew in his deepest heart that Witt would never give him the job. But he also knew in his deepest heart that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t try.
Why, he wondered, did nearly every damn thing in his life have to be just beyond his grasp? It seemed to him that life had always been teasing and tantalizing him with promises it snatched away before they were barely fulfilled. And, God, he hoped his mother wasn’t another one of them.
When he looked at Joni again, his eyes felt swollen and hot, and his heart hurt almost too much to bear. “What’s the point? It won’t happen.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she said. “But you’ll never know if you don’t try.”
A great philosophy, but words were cheap. Hardy had absolutely no doubt that he was going to find himself disappointed once again.
But what the hell, he thought. After a while you got used to being kicked.
But all that faded away at four-thirty in the morning when Barbara Wingate awoke, her fever gone and her gaze once again aware.
So maybe, Hardy thought gratefully, you didn’t always have to get kicked.
It was a thought that kept him smiling the rest of the day.
3
Wind whipped the snow into a whiteness that erased the world as Joni drove home from work on a chilly January afternoon. A blizzard was moving through the mountains, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d stayed a little too late at the hospital. She didn’t have all that far to drive, though, and she reminded herself that she would be driving through this kind of weather at least a dozen more times before winter blew its last white breath over the Colorado Rockies. Heck, some years she drove through this until June.
It was two days after New Year’s, and she was feeling as good as it was possible to feel in the wake of the holidays. She wondered if she would have her usual letdown or if she was finally old enough not to get so high on anticipation that she would inevitably crash after New Year’s.
Probably not, she decided. Nor was she sure she really wanted to outgrow the magical, excited feeling that always preceded Christmas for her.
When she got home and had left her outerwear in the mudroom, she went to find her mother. Hannah was sitting in the living room, reading.
“Miserable out there,” she remarked to her daughter. “Did you have trouble getting up the hill?”
“No. But I wouldn’t want to try it in an hour.” The stack of mail was on the table by the door, and she flipped through it, pulling out her credit card bill and the utility bill that she paid as part of her share of the household costs. Then she came to a thick manila envelope that wasn’t addressed to anyone.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Witt left it. He said it’s the request for bids he had a lawyer draw up.” Hannah smiled. “He was as excited as a kid. Apparently he’s sent a bunch of them out to firms in Denver, and now he can’t wait for the replies.”
“So why did we get a copy?”
Hannah laughed. “I think he wanted to show off a little.”
Witt liked to show off for her mother, Joni thought. She often wondered why the two of them had never gotten together. They were both widowed, after all. But…sometimes she sensed there was an invisible wall between them. Some kind of barrier the two refused to cross.
Silly, she told herself. She was imagining things. “I guess he won’t mind if I look at it.”
“I guess he was hoping you might,” Hannah replied. “Witt’s like any other man. He wants to hear how brilliant he is.”
The statement carried the warmth of affection, and Joni laughed. She tucked the envelope under her arm and headed upstairs.
“Trust me,” Hannah called after her, “it’ll put you to sleep.”
But Joni had other thoughts in mind, and she eagerly pried the envelope open when she reached her room. A stapled stack of papers came out, and a quick scan told her most of it was boilerplate, establishing rules such as how the bid should be presented. But there was a specification, too, one that she was able to determine required an architectural proposal for a thirty-room lodge. The other details didn’t matter to her. What did matter was the due date on the request: January tenth.
She was jolted by the nearness of the date. Witt must have sent these out early last month or even in November to the firms in Denver. They would need at least a month to respond.
The due date was only a week away. And Hardy probably hadn’t even seen this yet.
She checked the date again to be sure she wasn’t mistaken. This was fast, awfully fast, but maybe it had to be, so construction could start as early as possible in the spring.
But why had it taken Witt so long to drop this copy off for her mother? Had he deliberately done this so it wouldn’t fall into Hardy’s hands? But why would he even suspect it would? No, it must be that he’d only now gotten a spare copy from his attorney.
Eight days. If Hardy was to have any chance of responding to this, she had to get the papers to him right away.
But even as she jumped up from the bed, ready to dash out into the blizzard once more, a thought yanked her back. If she did this, Witt might never forgive her.
Her pulse racing, she flopped onto the bed and stared at the cracked ceiling, thinking about that. It was all well and good to believe that Witt ought to forgive Hardy. The police had blamed the drunk driver for the accident, and Joni couldn’t understand why Witt persisted in believing Hardy was responsible—except that Hardy wasn’t supposed to be seeing Karen, and if Karen hadn’t climbed out the window that July night, she would probably still be alive.
But Karen was dead, and Witt honestly believed that Hardy was responsible. There was, she supposed, a possibility that Witt was right. Maybe he knew something about what had happened that she didn’t. But it was more likely, she believed, that he simply needed a scapegoat, and since the drunk driver hadn’t survived the accident, Hardy was the only person left to blame.
Taking this proposal over to Hardy would be seen as a betrayal. Witt might never forgive her. But then she decided that was ridiculous. Witt always forgave her. He would be mad, sure, but he would forgive her once she explained.
Explained. It occurred to her that maybe she’d better be able to explain this to herself before she tried to explain it to Witt. Common sense dictated that she just stay out of this. It wasn’t her problem, nor was it her feud—as Hardy had made patently clear since their talk that night at the hospital. He was still avoiding her like the plague.
But it was her problem, she decided. She loved Witt, and she liked Hardy. It pained her that Witt had carried such anger all this time. It meant that he wasn’t healing.
Karen would want her to do this. She believed that in her soul. They’d been like sisters, especially after Joni moved to town, sharing everything—their hopes, dreams and feelings. Sharing Witt as a father, and Hannah as a mother. Sharing Hardy’s friendship, although only Karen had dated him.
Karen wouldn’t like to see her father so bitter and angry, and she wouldn’t like Hardy to miss this opportunity. There was not a doubt of that in Joni’s mind. Karen, had she been here, never would have allowed this state of affairs to continue for so long.
But Karen wasn’t here, and Witt was. She hated to have Witt angry with her and always had. She loved him so much that she wanted to be perfect for him, although it was an impossible goal.
And sometimes, dimly, she realized that she’d spent the last twelve years trying to replace his daughter for him. Maybe it was time to grow up and accept that she couldn’t replace Karen, and that she had to live her own life as she saw fit.
Sitting up, she went to the closet and pulled out a small photo album she kept on a shelf beneath a stack of sweatshirts. Almost all the pages were empty, but that was because she only had a half-dozen photos of Karen.
Oh, Witt had shoe boxes full of pictures of his daughter, but these photos were special. These photos had been hers and hers alone, taken with a cheap camera that hadn’t lasted beyond a couple rolls of film. In retrospect, she wished she’d photographed Karen more often, instead of wasting film on scenery. But she hadn’t guessed what was going to happen.
So here they were, her six private memories of Karen. The first snapshot, her favorite, showed her and Karen sitting on the bleachers at the high school football field. They had both laughed and acted silly that afternoon at football practice, full of the high spirits and joy of youth. Hardy had snapped that photo of them just before practice had started. She could still remember how he had looked all suited up for the game, holding her silly little camera in his big hands.
The next photo, one she would never, ever let Witt see, was of Hardy and Karen. Snow was falling, and the flash had bounced off it, giving the couple in the photo a dim, background look. But they were holding each other, hugging, their faces pressed close as they grinned into the camera.
Where the first picture always made her smile in memory, this one always made her ache.
They had been so young. So sure that the world was their oyster. All of them. And maybe it had been, only instead of finding pearls they’d all found lumps of coal.
Her throat suddenly tight, Joni closed the album without looking any farther. She knew the photos by heart, anyway. She’d wept over them on enough cold, dark nights, lying up here, unable to believe that Karen was truly gone.
There was such a feeling of unfinished business, but not just for Karen, who had died. Lately she had been thinking that they’d all somehow gone into stasis since Karen’s death. As if they were in some kind of emotional suspended animation. All of them: Witt, who had never recovered from his grief; Hannah, who…who just seemed to be getting through the days. Herself, who always felt as if she was just marking time. And Hardy, who, as far as she could tell, hadn’t even dated.
They were all unfinished lives, and for so long none of them seemed to have taken any real steps to move forward emotionally.
Karen wouldn’t have liked that. And it was time, Joni decided with a stiffening of her shoulders, that someone pushed them past their frozen emotional states.
Scooping up the request for bids, she tucked it under her baggy green Shaker sweater and set out on her personal mission to thaw the glacier that had swallowed them all.
“Where are you going?” Hannah asked as Joni passed her in the living room. “Supper’s almost ready.”
“I won’t be long,” Joni replied, not even breaking step. “I just need to run over to…Sally’s. Back in a sec.”
“Be careful out there. It’s getting really bad.”
No kidding, Joni thought after she’d tugged on her parka, hat, mittens and boots, and stepped outside. It had been bad enough when she’d come home from work, but now the wind was blowing so hard that ice crystals stung her face, and the street lamp two houses down was nothing but a glow in the snowhidden night.
If she’d had to go either up- or downhill to get to Hardy’s house, she would have stopped right there. But he lived three blocks over on a cross street, a level run. She could make it.
The night was mysterious and threatening, the whipping snow hiding the landmarks, making the world look unfamiliar. Leaning into the wind, squinting against the stinging snow, she slipped and slid down the drifting street. The sidewalks, caught as they were between two deep snowbanks, were already filled with the snow they caught, and the going was easier on the street. There was no traffic at all to give her any problems.
It was so lonely out here. There was something about being out in the middle of a snowstorm alone that left her feeling cut off and solitary to her very soul. The little bits of warm light that reached her from the street lamps and the glow from nearby windows only made her feel lonelier somehow.
She’d always felt this way on cold wintry nights, walking down darkened streets with no other soul in evidence, but tonight was even worse than usual, as if all the empty places in her heart were filled with a cold, whistling wind she couldn’t ignore. Nor could she shrug off the feeling.
Hardy’s house was just another one of the small Victorians lining the streets in this part of town, but unlike the rest, his was a showplace renovated through his own hard work and skill.
Even back in high school, Hardy had loved to work with his hands and with wood. He’d replaced the gingerbread on the house during those years, spending painstaking hours in the school shop, because he didn’t have the tools at home, whenever he didn’t have to work. Karen had spent a lot of those hours with him, watching him, admiring his growing skill. Occasionally Joni had joined them.
But since Hardy had come back from college, he’d transformed the exterior, getting rid of the ugly aluminum siding and replacing it with wood, hanging new shutters, rebuilding the huge porch. She imagined he’d done a lot of work on the inside, too, but she didn’t know, because she’d never been invited in, not since Karen’s death.
At the foot of the porch steps, she hesitated, forgetting the snow that sliced at her cheeks. This was nuts, and she didn’t delude herself about it. Hardy might tell her she was crazy, to get lost. Sometimes she wondered if he agreed with Witt’s opinion of him.
Then there was Witt. He would forgive her. Maybe. He certainly hadn’t been able to forgive Hardy all these years. But she was different, she told herself. She was his niece. His brother’s daughter. He couldn’t possibly treat her the same way he had treated Hardy.
That was what she told herself, anyway. She was well aware that she didn’t believe it one hundred percent as she climbed the steps and finally rang Hardy’s bell.
A minute passed before the door opened. Hardy stood there in stocking feet, looking rumpled in jeans and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up.
“Joni?” he said as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”
It wasn’t exactly a warm welcome, but Joni hadn’t expected one, not the way things were. But she wasn’t doing this for herself, or even for Hardy, really. She was doing it for Karen.
Before she could formulate a response, the wind ripped around the corner of his house, splattering her face with ice needles.
“Damn,” he said under his breath and reached out, taking her arm and pulling her inside. He closed the door behind her, shutting out the bitter night.
“Thanks,” she murmured, her thoughts scattering as she got a look at the inside of Hardy Wingate’s house.
