My brother said as much when I’d finally talked to him, but having so little sympathy from my mother when I was first wounded, made me think it really wasn’t such a big deal. I always try to downplay how much I was hurt. But god, I was. Devastated. And now to have not one but two men who are sympathetic amazes at me. Maybe shocks me.
“What did you say to your boyfriend?” Jay keeps caressing the inside of my wrist. “What did you say to your friend?”
“I just moved. I didn't know what to say.” I shrug. “I broke up with both of them. And I guess I haven't made friends since. I mean, I did. I became good friends with my sister-in-law, who is more like a sister to me.”
“That's the sister-in-law who’s in a relationship with three men?” Jay asks.
“Yeah, I—”
“So, what do you think about that?”
“What that?”
“Let’s get a move on,” H says, taking his food and mine too. “We’ll eat in the car. But we need to drive to get to Mammoth before the storm strikes.”
We never finish that conversation, and I was dying to know if Jay was asking again how I felt about Jane dating. Or if he wanted to know how I felt about Jane dating three men at once. Instead, we just get in the Jeep and drive. Somehow we start talking about fast food and restaurants and leave that conversation back in Bozeman.
Driving to Yellowstone National Park is a spiritual experience. Literally. On the way to the north entrance is Paradise Valley. The trees grow closer and closer, clinging to each other as if they’re best friends. Or lovers.
This time of year the snow is thick. On top of the packed snow is a glistening, downy layer. Snow that looks like and might feel like the feathers of grandfather dandelions.
Yet, there’s always a lone tree, laden with the snow. Its branches droop, reminding me of my brother’s shoulders after my father's death. I was just eleven but my brother was sixteen and already showing signs of being a tall and broad man. I'll never forget the way his shoulders stooped at the funeral. Seeing those kind of trees always makes me sad. Or maybe I'm sad since I’m reminded of the past, of a boyfriend who slept with my best friend.
But it's hard to stay sad when there's two men who can't seem to keep their hands off me and keep smiling at me too. I just wish I knew what they meant by saying I’m their girl.
* * *
Mammoth Hot Springs is close to the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Right now, all the trees are suited in white. The ground is sparkling white and even the sky is trying to appear whitish with the clouds hanging low, readying for a winter storm to come. And through it all cuts the formidable mountains that surround the valley. To me, they’ve always looked like a cathedral’s spires. They are covered in white too.
The white, each and every time I come here, baptizes me. I’m born again. I’m new, only I’m also mixed with the old. There’s something so primordial about this place. I can’t help but, again, think of holy lands. I understand why the Native Americans thought this land hallowed.
Ironically, the early white settlers had other thoughts and names for this place—Hell’s Kitchen, Witches Cauldron, The Devil’s Land. Most Americans, during the early eighteenth century, didn’t believe the adventurers who wrote about Yellowstone. It sounded far-fetched. However, the boiling mud puddles and geysers have always been real. The elk and the buffalo that roam and have songs sung about them are here. The feeling that I’m stepping into Eden itself is always with me when I visit the park.
Watching the Boiling River that plays hide and seek with the road, I’m mesmerized. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been a passenger, available to take in the glory that surrounds me.
My god, I want to capture this. I swallow, thinking how I want to set the aperture to make the background gauzy. Maybe set it to f/5.6.
I have to take pictures of this place to show others. I have to show the world what my church looks like, where I come to feel clean and heavenly. If they see it, maybe they will come too, and maybe they’ll feel the same. That for a slice of time, while here, there’s less suffering because here I can’t feel sorry for myself. I can’t feel bad about myself, either.
Yeah, I’m going to take shots of this park. Lots of them.
I haven’t been this excited about an idea in…years.
Nor have I felt this exhilarated about taking a picture, where my hands burn without my camera in them.
H and Jay are quiet too. I think I’m not the only one speechless and in awe.
There’s an elk, I spot, drinking from the steaming river. There are places where it is boiling, but not here. Here, it keeps the animals warm and watered. This is sanctuary from the blistering cold, the wind that can knock the air from any creature. Sometimes the world is cold and takes everything from you, but coming here is entering a haven.
H parks my Jeep in a lot, signs all around, notifying us which roads have closed for the winter, where we can walk safely, and to not feed the animals. It seems like common sense that one shouldn’t feed an animal that weighs a little more than a ton, like the bison. But there’s always some tourist who does and is shocked when that bison dents his car.
When both H and Jay help me with my gear as they did yesterday, I bite down a gleeful grin, taking my Pentax from Jay.
“I didn’t ransom that to you.” Jay pushes his hands in his jeans pockets. “See what a good guy I am?”
I softly giggle.
“I’m glad we’re doing this today,” H says. “I’m glad we forced our girl to come along.”
I shake my head, still chuckling.
H points at the sky. “So on a day like today, where it’s cloudy, but still kind of bright, how do you take a picture?”
I glance down at my camera. “I change the aperture and shutter speed to accommodate.”
“That’s cool.” Jay says and squeezes my shoulder. “I have no idea what that means, but that’s cool.”
I laugh again then point, like H had, at the low hanging clouds. It’s getting colder. My breath wisps away from me. It’s visible. “Well, I do have a light meter, but I’ve tried my best to not use it and go with my gut on shots. See, a light meter can tell me where my shudder speed should be as well as my aperture. But—”
“But you try to use your instincts instead.” H smiles. “Which I agree with Jay is very cool.”
“Thanks. Okay, the aperture and shutters are the eye and lids for a camera.” I tell them pointing to buttons on my Pentax. “I tell it how open I want the pupils to be, how much light I want in the shot, which is the aperture, as well as how fast to blink—the shutters.”
“They say the eyes are the windows to our souls.” H looks past a tour bus and a few snowmobiles parked in the lot to Mammoth Hot Springs. When I was a kid I described the springs to my nanny, Enna, as a conglomeration of white bowls, all about the same size. And the often boiling water in those bowls would either be whitish too or green.
“I suppose then,” H says, pulling me from my view of the white bowls back to him. “The photojournalist is the window to the souls of humanity.”
I blush, loving his words, and look away. “I—I think my pictures are too much a window into my own soul, the things I’m interested in, the things I think about, rather than the whole of humanity. I’m far too simple for something like that.”
Jay captures my chin, forcing me to look at him. “No, you aren’t. I’ve Googled you. I know your shots are…” He looks at H. “Help me with the words, man. Tell her how she sees things few have, she tells the story with her pictures, she focuses on what matters. I don’t know if that’s an aperture thing or the shutter or what, but you show the world the world.”
H softly chuckles. “I think you just did, bro.”
Jay…oh, that man. He got to me. Oh, how he got to me. I want to kiss him. I want to push my lips against his. Hard. I want to show him how grateful I am he’s said something like that. For the last few months, hell, the last few years, I felt like my s
hots didn’t matter. Probably because I wondered if I mattered.
It’s odd to think of myself as the kind of person who gets so wrapped up in what others think of me. And I hate to admit how much that Pulitzer nomination meant. After it, I finally gave myself an ounce of validation. And to not have any shots worthy of such a prize since…well, my worth and validation slid to almost nothingness.
But Jay’s words fill me. I don’t think I realized how starved I was for someone to give me validation. I respect Jay and his opinion, which makes me, in a way, respect me all over again.
A fat snowflake falls between us. It’s one of those brilliant, clumpy flakes that has maybe four or five crystals together, holding hands as they fall to this white paradise. And it breaks my concentration enough to stop thinking about kissing Jay. Besides, I have no idea what the consequences are if I kiss either man again.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Jay releases his hold on me, giving me a small smile. “Sure.”
“It’s those German tourists,” H says.
And there they are, the polyamorous bunch, all in their matching red parkas, taking pictures of each other, laughing, and being so happy it’s a tad annoying. Or maybe I find it annoying because I’d love to be that joyful.
“Maybe we should come back when they aren’t here.” Jay clears his voice.
I glance at him. “Do they make you nervous?”
He shakes his head and looks at his black military-style boot. “I thought they made you nervous.”
Before I can think about what he’s said, someone is shouting my name. My full name, and I cringe as it sounds so much like my mother.
“Deidra Alexandra Emory! Deidra Alexandra!” But the voice is noticeably German as the same woman who embarrassed me yesterday, who’d said H and Jay looked at me like they were my lovers, is rushing toward me, one of her husbands behind her.
She’s as lovely as my mother, and maybe a decade younger, but, oh, does she ever remind me of the one woman who I’m never good enough for. However, this woman, Greta—if I remember right—is smiling at me, her arms open wide, with a glossy magazine in one hand.
“I knew I knew you,” she glances over her shoulder at her husband. “Did I say that right, yeah?”
He nods smiling.
She catapults the rest of the way to me, embracing me with a bear hug. “I knew I knew you.” She pulls away from the rough embrace to look me in the eye. “I know you, American beauty.”
16
Greta points at the magazine, which features a huge picture of Haiti after the disastrous earthquake. I know that picture. I took it.
“I know you!” She points again, this time her finger tapping on the image.
I focus at what she’s wanting me to see. “Oh my gosh.” My heart pounds as I realize, there in the background, is Greta, holding a young woman up, wrapping a blanket around her. “That’s you.”
Greta hugs me again. “And you know me.”
I’m finally reciprocating an embrace when Greta’s husband says, “My wife is a forensic anthropologist. She goes to many disasters to help, the living and the dead.”
Now, I have to look at Greta. God, I’d underestimated her. I guess, because I knew she had two husbands and she seemed so chipper, I automatically assumed her an idiot. Now who’s the idiot?
Greta keeps smiling at me then says something in German.
Her husband translates. “She wonders if you’ve been to many of the places she has—Chile, New York City after 9/11. Oh, but she wonders if you’re old enough to have been there as a photographer.”
I shake my head. “Not in a professional sense, no, but I did go there with my—” I cut myself off, looking at H and Jay. I was going to say my nanny, Enna. Her real name is Ella, but because she was with me long before I could figure out how to pronounce an l, I called her mammy, sometimes mommy. I was reprimanded for that, so my mother forced me call her Ella, which came out as Enna.
I haven’t told H or Jay about the fact that I was born with a silver spoon. And I’m embarrassed to do that.
But who am I kidding?
I can’t lie about who I am. I was born into certain things others don’t have. I was also born into a life with a mother who left me reeling and wondering if I would ever be worthy of love.
“You went there with a friend?” Greta asks.
I think her English is better than she gives herself credit for. Or maybe she’s better at reading people, no matter what language barrier there might be.
I swallow, wondering what H and Jay will think of me if they know that I’ve never been without money. But they do know my father was a senator, so maybe they’ve already guessed that money came easy to me. And I let it go just as easily too.
“My nanny, actually. Enna, but her name is really Ella.”
Greta grins yet again. “What a lovely nanny to have come with you, yeah?”
I nod. “She was lovely, yes.”
“You still keep in touch?” She looks at her husband. “That is how to say it, yeah?”
He rolls his warm brown eyes. “You know how to say it. You’re doing good.” He looks at me. “She’s always worried her English isn’t good enough.”
“I think it is.”
Greta turns back to me, her smile intense and soulfully warm. “You are so kind. Such a beautiful heart.”
I can’t accept the compliment. It feels too good. So I continue the conversation. “And, yes, I keep in touch with Ella. She retired to St. Thomas Island.”
“Ah.” Greta nods. “Warm there.”
“Yes.”
“Like here.” Greta points to the steam rising off the white bowls of the hot springs.
I laugh. “Just without the snow.”
“But here is better because of the hot and cold. It is both and so better.”
“I have to agree with you about that.”
Greta hooks her arm through one of mine and says something to her husband. He smiles at me and then speaks to H and Jay.
“My wife wishes me to take you gentlemen away so she can get to know your wife more. She says we can talk about manly things, maybe you will teach us the value of your American football?”
What floors me is neither H nor Jay object to me being called their wife, even if Werner is pronouncing it like “vife.” Both former Navy SEALs grin at me in that way where we all know an inside joke. Only, I’m not sure I do.
“You okay if we go hang out with the guys?” H asks.
I’m even more surprised because I do want to get to know Greta. I’m kind of smitten with her. Probably because I’ve never had an older woman who wanted to be my friend other than Ella. Oh, I consider Jane a friend, but I often wonder if she thinks me an obnoxious beast who barges into her life from time to time, and she’s just too nice to say no.
I nod at my “husbands,” trying not to giggle.
Wrapping my camera strap more securely around my shoulder, I walk with Greta along the wooden planks that surround the white bowls. I tell her how I called them that when I was a kid and she doesn’t look at me like I’m idiot but smiles and starts calling them white bowls too. We talk about the steam, the few puffy flakes falling, and then she wonders why we’ve never met before.
“Do you believe in a cosmic hand helping us to meet only now?” Greta wonders aloud. Her accent is thick, but she actually has perfect English. Probably better than mine. She continues. “I’d guess we were at many of the same places at the same time. Yet we meet now.” She looks at me. “Interesting.”
I smile. Maybe I’m so taken with Greta because with her I don’t feel the need to cover myself, to watch every single word that comes out and cringe when it does, or the need to be a different person other than who I am.
“It is interesting.”
Greta hugs my arm closer. “I hope we will be good friends for a long time.”
“Me too.”
“Maybe after this, we will meet at another disaster too.”
> I take a sharp breath. “I—I’m taking a break from that job. I’m pregnant.”
She stops and looks at me, her light blue eyes filling with tears. “A child. You are going to have a baby! I’m so happy!” Then she hugs me again in a fierce embrace. “And your men are so happy you’re pregnant too, yeah?”
I shrug. “I guess. I—they really are just friends. I just met them. They wouldn’t want me and my baby.”
Greta makes a coughing noise. “Are you kidding me?”
I blink, not sure if she’s being rhetorical or not.
Greta grabs my arms and turns me to look at H and Jay. They are noticeably the only two in black while everyone else around them is in red. They’re a tad taller and broader than any of the men in the crowd too. They also look like two celebrities, stormed by adoring fans. Men and woman are talking to them, seeming to ask questions.
H must have felt my gaze and glances up to smile and wave. We’re only about a hundred feet from each other, but I want him and Jay nearer.
“That is a man who is falling in love,” Greta whispers. “Or perhaps he is already in love.”
I shake my head.
“And your other friend is in love too.”
Again, I can only shake my head and say a half-hearted, “No.”
She turns me back to her. “You think me wrong?”
I shrug and look down at my white boots. “I—” I try laughing because laughing has always worked to keep me from crying when I’m being too honest. “I can’t imagine them wanting me. In any capacity.”
“Surely you see the way they look at you? They haven’t tried to touch you? Kiss you?”
I really stare at my boot then. “We kissed last night.”
Greta takes my chin, forcing me to look at her. It’s odd, but I don’t mind her touching me like this. Usually, I would. But from her, I get the impression all she wants is for me to be happy like her. But not all of us wind up with a happily ever after.
Greta’s smiling. “They both kissed you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
I roll my eyes. “Have you looked at them? They’re beautiful. Of course I liked it.”
Fly (Wild Love Book 2) Page 13
