by Jan O'Hara
Then the moment came when she could look behind the plow and see more than wilderness. They had advanced far enough into the valley that she could see Harmony’s Community Center and the Town Hall. Soon enough she’d pass Cougar Road, then the Thurston. Only a few minutes from now, Oliver would belong firmly to her past.
The sadness she had been keeping at bay suddenly overwhelmed her. Yes, she was going to her future, but at what price?
And why the urgency to get to Vancouver?
There. She had dared to think the unthinkable.
For eight years, she had obeyed the annual call to return to English Bay, intuitively understanding it fulfilled a valuable purpose. It had been her lodestar, her proof of lineage. A sign she hadn’t been birthed in a test tube and raised in a lab. Much like an astronaut’s tether, it had served as an anchor to prevent her from winging off into the darkness and frigidity and the aloneness of space.
But now? Now that she knew herself better, was the trip essential? Or was it a sign of inflexibility, an excuse for bruised pride?
She was leaving Oliver. She was leaving the oldsters. And she hadn’t put up a real fight to keep any of them in her life.
Her eyes fell to her backpack, where it lay on the floor to the right of the jumpseat. Had her mom and Nan been here in a more tangible way, would they be disappointed in her?
She had to go back to Harmony. Or, because she wasn’t at all certain of Curtis’s support for that decision, she had to try to go back.
She unbuckled her seatbelt. To counter the sway of the locomotive, she kept one hand on the left side of the can, as Curtis had called it, and shuffled forward until she could gain his attention.
They were both wearing hearing protection, so when he looked an inquiry at her, she didn’t bother to raise her voice. She mouthed, “Please take me back,” while pointing behind the train.
She thought he might peel off an earpiece so she could yell at him, but he flicked a few switches and adjusted the throttle. The engine abruptly slowed, throwing her forward into the control panel. She threw out her hands to brace herself. The iron beast shuddered and groaned, and eventually came to a halt.
Curtis pulled off his earphones and set them on the dashboard with deliberation, as if he wasn’t going to need them for a time. There was something unsettling in his gaze.
In the comparative quiet, Page’s voice seemed loud and childishly high. “Oh. I didn’t expect— I mean, are you allowed to stop a diesel in cold weather?”
He unbuckled his seatbelt and swiveled to face her. “It’s idling.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “What about blocking the track?” She rolled her eyes and pushed out a laugh when he regarded her in stony silence. “Duh. What am I saying? Nobody else can get through until the track is pl—”
“You wanted something, Lurlene?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
The guy had always thrown off a greasy vibe, but his use of her stage name, when she’d explicitly introduced herself as Page, was enough of a red flag. Then there was his tone, and the suggestive way he was staring at her chest, and the not so suggestive way he had seized the tab on her coat’s zipper.
“I’ve decided I’d like you to take me back to Harmony,” she said firmly. Maybe a show of confidence would be enough to redirect him.
“Oh, I’ll take you, all right.”
He began to inch her zipper downward, and she could feel her heartbeat escalate. There was no mistaking his intent now. His jaw was set in a mean cast and the light in his eye said he knew she was afraid and was getting a kick out of her fear.
All these years on the road and all the close calls, and she’d always found a way to extricate herself from danger. Had her luck finally run out?
When the zipper cleared the last tooth and her jacket swung open, the urge to put some space between them proved undeniable. She effected a neat twirl, simultaneously slipping her arms free of her coat. The bulk of it fell to the floor, leaving a surprised Curtis holding one corner aloft. He looked like a magician at the end of a favorite trick, stuck holding a dead and bloodied rabbit.
“Now that’s not nice,” he said, and climbed to his feet. He kicked her coat out of his way.
She took a step backward.
“No harm meant,” she said, aiming for a playful tone. “I think I owe you a private dance, don’t you? I mean—” she forced out a laugh “—after my disastrous night at the Wobbly Dog.”
His eyes glinted. “Go ahead, then. I’m watching.” He slowly pulled off his own coat. He flexed his hands a few times before letting them drop to his sides.
“D-do you have any music?”
When he turned his back, she glanced wildly around the cabin for a weapon. The small can of hairspray she used in lieu of Mace was in the pocket of the coat she’d stupidly discarded. Her backpack was heavy, but too soft to do any damage. There was a fire extinguisher near the brakeman’s seat, but Curtis stood between her and it. Short of banging him upside the head with a clipboard, she had nothing to work with.
As for escaping, it was hopeless. Even if she could somehow open the door, get outside, and tolerate the cold without her frigging jacket, there was no place to flee other than back over the tracks, into the tunnel they had plowed. All Curtis would have to do was put the train in reverse and he could run her down at his leisure.
The tinny strains of Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy) filled the cab. Curtis propped his phone on the dashboard and turned back to her. “I believe that’s your cue.”
And to think she’d once liked this song.
She couldn’t even manage a strained smile as she swayed and began to shake her hips. The glint in his eyes said he wouldn’t wait any longer, so she started on her shirt buttons. When she reached the last one, there could be no more delay. She grasped the fabric below her collar and eased it over her shoulders, feeling the cold of fear settle into her bones as the cold air touched her flesh.
Then a flash of movement caught her eye. Something outside the plow had zoomed in and out of her vision.
She hunched her shoulders so her sleeves slid back into place, and pointed. “What was that?”
It had been an honest and spontaneous response. As far as Curtis was concerned, it was also a deliberate provocation.
He pushed off from the back of the chair, where he had been leaning as she fought for time. “I knew you weren’t going to play nice.”
Page backed up. “No—I swear, Curtis, I—”
She got no further before he seized her by the lapels and hauled her close. One of his arms went back, one fist formed, and she was bracing for impact when he froze.
“What the—” he said, and released her so suddenly she collapsed backward, banging her head on the edge of the jumpseat.
He wrenched open the personnel door and used a grab bar to anchor himself as he angled his body outward, craning to face the rear of the plow. “What the… Did you see that?”
The rush of wintry air hit her hard. Page shook her head to clear it. This was it. Her opportunity to change the course of what would happen. She had to get it together.
She crawled towards her coat and fumbled for the pocket. She could feel the outline of the hairspray, but before she could extricate it, Curtis was back, looming above her.
“It’s the strangest thing. I thought I saw an old man on the side of the train, walking on top of the snow.” He shook his finger at her. “You’ve got me hallucinating, Lurlene. Now, where were w—” Once more, his face contorted with comical surprise as something behind Page captured his attention. Once more he opened the door and peered outward.
But this time, when he returned, Page had staggered to her feet and was prepared.
She applied her size seven boot to his groin. When he bent over, the hairspray hissed into his eyes. And with a great and abiding satisfaction, she kicked him in the chest and sent him pinwheeling outward, into the snow.
He landed a good ten feet away and wit
h enough force to all but disappear into his body’s depression, like a cartoon character.
She watched to ensure he wasn’t going to be an immediate threat. Now and then a body part churned into view, but between where she had kicked him and his streaming eyes and the cold, he wouldn’t be bothering her for a while.
She had barely enough time to fasten her blouse and squirm into her jacket before a non-Curtis sound had her dashing back to the door of the plow.
A hundred feet ahead of the train, astride the buried tracks, an elderly Asian man sat inside a red kayak. When he saw her gaping at him, he lifted his paddle and waved.
“Son of a chainsaw,” she said on an exhalation.
She heard a whooping and hollering behind her and followed the sound back over her left shoulder. Maybe two hundred feet back, a blond man was seated inside a red kayak.
“Bart?” she said.
His “vehicle” hadn’t fared as well as the other man’s in that it had fallen into the plowed space. The front end was crumpled and partly buried in the opposite snowbank. Miraculously, Bart appeared uninjured.
Then some instinct had her shielding her eyes against the sun and tracing the kayaks’ paths upward, to where they converged in the foothills far above.
There, at their probable point of origin, another splash of scarlet was visible—a bright poppy against the snow.
Oliver. She knew it. Oliver, with his head injury and visual problems, was in a kayak and about to begin a downward run.
The object started to move now, gathering speed at an incredible rate. It approached a cluster of conifers and vanished for impossibly long time.
She pictured Oliver dead, the kayak wrapped around a pine tree, and she a sobbing mess in black at his funeral. Then he emerged, the kayak pointed in a direction that would carry him straight into a giant snow-covered boulder.
“Turn, you fool, turn,” she urged him.
But instead of obeying, he tackled the boulder head-on, by some trick of magic going up, over, and airborne. There was a long breathless moment where he was suspended against the sky, the kayak rotating under him. Then he landed, facing uphill, effectively blind as the kayak continued its relentless slide.
Finally, he dipped one side of the paddle into the snow and leaned, forcing the craft to rotate as it careened downward for the last stage of descent. He was heading straight for the plow in a path of certain collision.
Chapter 31
“Too fast,” Page shrieked, as the kayak loomed and his eyes grew huge.
At the very last second, Oliver extricated himself from the kayak. He hurled himself into the snow as the kayak met the blade of the plow with a resounding twang.
Page felt the reverberation throughout her entire body. As she stared at the crumpled boat, a violent trembling overtook her and she felt dizzy, so she had to sit.
Oliver lay in the snow on his back, splayed and unmoving.
“Oliver?” she called. She inched to a different position in the doorway to get a better look at his face. “Oliver!”
He remained motionless.
She couldn’t tell if he was breathing. She pushed one leg over the edge of the plow. She was going to have to go to him, to get to him somehow despite the snow and despite the—
One of his arms came up, and flopped into the snow near his head. Oliver’s chest heaved. His legs twitched. Was he having a seizure?
No… Was he laughing? The bloody man was laughing?
He closed his eyes, tilted his head back and howled at the sky. It was an honest to goodness wolf call, complete with yips and yaps and the whole prolonged ululation.
While Page blinked, Oliver’s lunacy was echoed by Bart and answered by several other voices high in the foothills.
When he was done and the chorus had fallen off, Oliver tilted his head to grin at her. “Did you see that descent? Did you see that? That was freaking awesome.”
Page clenched her hand into fists. She was going to kill him. “Are you insane?”
“Definitely. Brain damage, remember?” He tried to stand up and made it two steps before the snow depth defeated him. He rolled onto his belly and, pushing his paddle before him, inched forward, almost like he was swimming. His destination wasn’t the plow, however, but the depression holding Curtis.
“You could have been killed, Oliver.”
He grinned at her and inched resolutely forward. “But I wasn’t.”
She suddenly realized why his eyes seemed an unearthly blue. “Where are your glasses?”
“Dunno.”
“You just whipped through the trees, between branches, without eye protection of any kind?”
“Guess so. Oh, look who we have here,” Oliver said as he arrived at the depression. “Curtis Blackstone, as I live and breathe.” Oliver turned to Page. “What happened to him?”
Page winced and used the door frame to climb to her feet. Curtis was a mess. His eyes were bloodshot and streaming, along with his nose. He looked like he’d gone a few rounds with the riot police.
“Hairspray. I’m sorry. I know anything to do with eyeballs grosses you out, but I had good reason—”
Oliver reached out with the kayak paddle and bopped an emerging Curtis on the head. “From the minute I saw him, I hated that guy.”
“Oliver!”
“What?” Oliver’s eyes blazed. “He put his hands on you. He’ll be lucky if I don’t do worse. Hey,” he said more gently, finally taking in the level of her distress. “You still have your scarf? Tie it around one of those handles. I can get to you faster.”
Page’s legs were obeying her now. She found the scarf puddled beside the jumpseat. When she had one end secured, she tossed the other to Oliver, who had nearly reached the plow.
“Shouldn’t we fish him out?” she said, referring to Curtis. Though she didn’t want him anywhere near her, the man was shivering and she had a certain sympathy for his plight.
“Nah,” Oliver said as he finally pulled level with the train. “We’ll wait until Mr. Lee gets here with the duct tape.”
Page turned.
The Asian man had planted his feet inside the cockpit of the kayak and stood upright. He was using the paddle to pole himself forward, like a Venetian gondolier who’d mistakenly steered north and kept on going.
She blinked. “He’s inventive.”
“You have no idea. He talks, too. We have our own sage.” Muscles flexed beneath Oliver’s jacket as he pulled himself up beside her. “Well, hello there, pretty lady,” he said breathlessly, before sweeping her up in his arms. He waggled his brows. “Going my way?” He gave her a bruising kiss.
She had never seen this Oliver—roguish, light-hearted, outrageous. She had a feeling she was getting a glimpse of the pre-injury Oliver, which might have something to do with Bart’s influence. Maybe this was the post-injury Oliver, too.
“So I come bearing messages,” he said as he set her on her feet. He left his arms around her, keeping her warm and safe.
She kept her arms around him, so he’d know how much she liked it. She cocked her head, finding his mood infectious. “Messages? You can’t use the post, like regular people?”
“Nope.” He grinned down at her. “My girl doesn’t have a fixed address.”
My girl? “No?”
“Or a cell phone, though both of those things are about to change.” He was looking at her in a way that promised everything she’d hoped for, and more than she’d dreamed.
“They are?”
“Most definitely. I have needs. Urgent needs. Needs that couldn’t possibly be met by one night of love-making.” He nestled her closer and she went willingly. “I want my wife reachable when those needs become pressing.”
“Wife?” she said faintly.
He nodded. “I love you, Page.”
“You do?” She couldn’t seem to stop parroting him, but after the shock of Curtis and the kayaks and thinking she was losing him, it was all so much to take in. Not too much, though, to tell h
im how she felt. With a finger she traced the outline of his lips. Their upward curve shot a sweet arrow of happiness into her heart. “I love you, too, Oliver.”
He was kissing her again, and she was melting into him, when she remembered the brutality of his note.
“Now you’re just busting my chops,” Oliver said when she pushed him away and demanded an explanation. “But I can respect that.” He dove in for another kiss, then explained about his phone troubles. “So what do you say, Maddux?” His expression had become vulnerable. “Do you believe me?”
She did, of course. How could she not after her own communication disasters? “I’m nearly there,” she said, “but I could use a little more persuasion.”
Sometime later, when he was seated on the brakeman’s seat, and she was seated in his lap, she reminded him about the messages he’d come to deliver.
“Right,” he said. He tipped his head back against the headrest, looking more relaxed and happier than she’d ever seen him.
“Let’s see… Assuming you accept my offer—” he ducked his head and gave her a pointed stare “—Mrs. Horton wants to be flower girl at our wedding. Paul Dubois is in charge of decor. I haven’t talked to her yet, but my money is on Mrs. Arbuckle to help you find the right dress.”
It sounded like heaven.
“Yo, Bart,” Oliver said, speaking over his shoulder to the blond man who was pulling himself up into the doorway. “Shawn has dibs on best man, but will you be a groomsman?”
“I’d be delighted.” Bart inclined his head toward Page. “Ma’am.”
Page shook her head and grinned. Yup, this was definitely the rogue-influence in Oliver’s life. “So I take it you two made up?”
Bart pulled his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’d say so, since he finally agreed to drop the lawsuit.” Bart shot a mischievous grin at Oliver. “Right, Oliver?”
Page shot to her feet. “You were suing him?” she said to Oliver.
Oliver stood. A look of embarrassment traced across his face and vanished as quickly. He shrugged. “I was in my angry phase. Besides—” he grinned at Bart “—you can’t sue a teammate.”
