by Peggy Webb
And I said to her, “You will do no such thing. Hunter Wolfe is a genius. He’ll figure out something’s wrong. He’ll be there waiting when you get there.”
“What if he’s not? What if his answer is no, and he’s long gone and I never get another chance to see him?”
“Horsefeathers!” I said, and Hannah laughed so hard she got a stitch in her side.
It was strong laughter, too. After she’d got over her mirth she said, “They’re starving me to death in here. Call Dad and tell him to bring me a double burger with french fries and a chocolate malted milk.”
About that time Michael came in the door with this big smile on his gorgeous face and an armload of sacks from Burger King.
“With cheese, I hope,” he said, and I said, “Michael Westmoreland, I do believe you’ve added mind-reading to your many talents.”
“So you think I have many talents, do you?”
He got this amazingly sexy look on his face, and of course I started flirting with him like crazy with Hannah egging me on from the bed. “Way to go, Mom. Strut your stuff.”
I love that about Michael and me, that we still flirt with each other, and that we do it in front of our children so they can see for themselves what true love does to people. It never grows stale. It just gets better and better.
Clarice came in about that time bringing a sackful of creme-filled doughnuts. “Are you two at it again?” she said, then she gave this big dramatic sigh (typical Clarice-style). By that time Michael and I were kissing, mostly because we wanted to, but partially because we knew Hannah and Clarice were getting such a kick out of our shenanigans.
“A girl could starve to death waiting for these two lovebirds,” Clarice said, and Hannah told her, “I don’t intend to wait. I need my strength.”
The two of them began ripping into sacks, and I swear to you, you could smell the calories.
All four of us sat on Hannah’s bed laughing and carrying on and eating like pigs. It was one of those serendipitous times I will remember often and cherish always.
Chapter Forty-Four
She was fifteen days late. As Hannah set her plane down in Denali, excitement pulsed through her. And fear.
What if Hunter didn’t come? What if he had given up and gone to another part of the vast parklands? What if he had followed the wolves to some faraway corner of the wilderness? One she would never find?
It was almost dark when she landed, far too late to go trekking up the mountain in search of Hunter’s cave.
She unloaded her gear and set up her tent, all the while searching the woods for any signs of him. By the time she had finished setting up camp, she was exhausted.
Her mother had thought it was too soon to come, that she needed to wait another week in order to be stronger. But Michael had said, “It’s all right, Anne. Hannah wouldn’t be leaving unless she knew she could make it.”
Her dad had been right. She’d known she could make the long trip. In order to see Hunter again, she would walk through fire and flood.
A sound caught her attention. A twig snapping? A footstep on the forest floor?
Hannah whirled toward the deep woods and squinted into the gathering darkness. There was nothing except the long shadows of trees.
She ate beans cold out of the can and drank plenty of water, then fell into her sleeping bag with the thought that he might come to her at night, that he might stand watch from a distance for old time’s sake.
She woke up at dawn and, wrapping a quilt around herself, hurried outside. There was no sign of him. If he had come during the night, she hadn’t heard him. Her sleep had been too deep.
It was almost sunset when Hunter heard the light plane. He and the wolf pack were miles away in a high mountain meadow, teaching two young wolves to hunt small game. The two youngsters had chased rabbits all day without any success, and the leader of the pack was chastising them for not taking their lesson seriously.
The resulting squabble was so loud that at first Hunter wasn’t certain of what he’d heard. He raced across the meadow, scrambled to the top of a bluff and strained his eyes upward. There. A tiny silver speck.
As the plane came closer, the droning of the engine grew louder. Was it Hannah? At this distance it was impossible to tell.
Hunter didn’t wait for confirmation. He couldn’t wait.
His heart hammering, he set out running. If he paced himself he would be back at his cave by morning.
Everything looked different clothed in green. Was she on the right trail? Hannah wasn’t going to start second-guessing herself. If she did she would lose confidence, and perhaps even lose her way.
She climbed steadily upward, stopping every now and then to catch her breath. While she rested she wished all sorts of calamities on the disease-carrying mosquito that had temporarily robbed her of her stamina.
In spite of her frequent rest stops, she arrived at the cave shortly after sunrise. Hannah let out a whoop and raced toward the mouth. Dense growth made a green curtain that almost obscured the opening.
“Hunter?”
She called his name and waited for a response. There was nothing except a vast and empty silence. Should she go in or wait outside?
Wait, she decided. “Hunter? Are you there?” Why would he be waiting in the cave after two weeks? It was too much to hope for.
“I’m not going to panic,” she said, then she sat down on a medium-size boulder to wait.
Perhaps he had gone to the stream to bathe. Or maybe he was out hunting. There were any number of reasons why Hunter was not there.
Time inched by. Hannah tipped her canteen up and took a long drink of water.
What if something had happened to him? Something terrible? Or what if he had decided to remain in the wilderness? What if his answer was no?
Leaving her backpack beside the cave, she skirted the area looking for a sign. Hadn’t he said he’d leave her a sign? Hadn’t she said, If you choose to stay, I don’t think I can bear to face you.
What sort of sign would he leave? Obviously it would be near the cave. Or perhaps even inside.
She had to go in. Taking her flashlight from her backpack, she knelt in front of the opening and pushed the curtain of tangled vines aside.
“Hannah.…”
Suddenly he was there. She looked up into the amazing silver eyes, and lost her breath.
“Is it really you?” he said, then knelt beside her and caught her shoulders. “I can’t believe it.…” He traced her eyebrows, her cheekbones, her lips. She wanted to revel in his touch forever.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” she whispered.
“I’ll always come to you, Hannah. No matter what.”
He didn’t ask why she was late. He didn’t ask for explanations. He merely devoured her with his incredible eyes.
“If you hadn’t come, I was going to walk out of the wilderness to find you,” he said.
Yes, she exulted. Yes! Sometimes the angels smile.
She held her breath, drowning in him. “Come,” he said, and she followed him into the mouth of his cave.
It was colder inside the thick rock cavern, and when the ceiling opened up, she wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. Hunter pulled her into a warm embrace and held her for a very long time. They didn’t talk, didn’t move; they absorbed each other.
At last Hunter said, “I have something to show you, Hannah.”
He led her to a far corner of the cave, then holding her from behind, he turned the beam of her flashlight onto the wall. The last of the cave drawings ended, and a large block of text began.
It was a while before Hannah could make sense of what she saw, and then she began to make out the words. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.…”
It was all there, every word of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love sonnet.
“I started carving that about a year after the crash,” he said, reading her mind. “It was the poem my father quoted to my mother.”
> “Amazing.”
She fell silent as he read the rest of the sonnet aloud. She imagined him as a young boy chipping away at the rock, bit by laborious bit preserving a part of his past.
“I was afraid I would forget,” he said. “I was afraid the wilderness would steal my memory of and my capacity for love.”
He tightened his hold on her. “In a way, it did. As the years went by I stopped reading the sonnet, and then the memory of words faded altogether. Along with the memory of that kind of love.”
She felt the tension in him, the passion. But there was something so sacred, so beautiful about his confession that she didn’t want to interrupt. Hardly daring to breath, she waited.
“When you first came to Denali, I was more wolf than man…but you loved me anyhow. You gave yourself freely to me, Hannah, nothing held back, nothing required.
“You gave it all back to me,” he added, “the words, the memory. But most of all love.” He turned her in his arms and cupped her face. “I love you, Hannah, and I want to be with you for the rest of my life if you’ll have me.”
It was more than she’d ever hoped for, more than she’d dreamed. If he had said, “I want to mate with you for the rest of my life,” she’d have been happy. But to have love, too, was almost overwhelming.
In spite of her independence, in spite of her freewheeling lifestyle, she’d had a secret dream all her life: to find the kind of love her parents had. Never mind all the trappings. She just wanted the love.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll not only have you, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. Wherever you are, whatever you want to be, I’ll be there at your side. Loving you, Hunter. Always loving you.”
He picked her up and carried her to the bearskin pallet, and there, surrounded by the evidence of his life as a wolf-man, they came together as a man and a woman who truly love.
Chapter Forty-Five
July 20, 2002
Last week I became grandmother to the most beautiful baby in the world. Michael agrees, so that’s a majority opinion, not the biased blatherings of two doting grandparents.
Jake called us in the middle of the night and said, “I’m taking Emily to the hospital. Your granddaughter is on her way.”
Michael grabbed the pink teddy bear and I grabbed the pink hand-crocheted receiving blanket and off we went. In Michael’s plane.
“Pity the poor grandparents who have to fight traffic,” he said.
“Or fly commercial,” I added.
Oh, we were so proud of ourselves. It wasn’t until we got to Atlanta that we remembered our luggage. Sitting in the bedroom closet where it had been packed and ready to go for two weeks.
My darling husband and I looked at each other and cracked up.
“I prefer you without clothes anyway,” he told me, and I said, “You’re acting mighty spry for an old grandpa.”
We caught a cab from the airport and cracked grandpa/grandma jokes all the way to the hospital. By the time we got there, Emily was in the pushing mode, and we paced the hall like any two sane first-time grandparents.
Every five minutes Michael said to me, “Do you think Emily’s all right?” and I said, “Darling, women have been having babies since the beginning of time. Our daughter is going to come through like a champ.”
At times like that it’s wonderful to belong to the sisterhood of women, to be the keeper of secrets, the oracle of wisdom.
While we waited, Michael drank so much coffee that I told him, “You’re going to be up all night.” He gave me an incredibly sexy, for-my-eyes-only look and said, “Good.”
Lord, it’s a sight how this amazing man can ring my chimes. And me a grandmother.
Of course, Michael and I had already discussed our new status.
“We’ll love the baby with all our hearts,” Michael told me, “but she will belong to Emily and Jake. The three of them will be a core family.”
“That’s the way it should be,” I said.
“Being grandparents will not change us,” he told me. “Our relationship will still always be first.”
Call me selfish, but his declaration thrilled me all the way to my bones. Actually, call me the luckiest woman alive.
When I think of all the otherwise sane people who turn their lives upside-down in order to devote themselves exclusively to a child, it makes me realize how very lucky I am. I’ve even seen people who can barely stand each other, remain chained together because of progeny.
How sad. How tragic.
Life should be lived fully, with arms and heart wide open.
Anyway, back to our escapades in Atlanta.…
By the time our nerves were thoroughly frayed, Jake stepped into the hall with a huge grin on his face and announced, “I have a son.”
“You mean a daughter, don’t you?” I said, because naturally I thought the stress of childbirth had addled him.
“No, I mean a boy! Come inside and meet Jacob Michael.”
Oh, the look on Michael’s face! Priceless.
We went inside and Jake laid the baby in Michael’s arms. That’s the first time he’s cried since he came out of the coma.
The beautiful thing about my precious husband’s tears is that he’s not afraid of letting his feelings show.
“Look at the size of those hands,” he said. “And those feet. He’s going to be a fine mountain climber.”
“Or a great concert pianist,” I said, and when Michael handed the baby to me he said, “Another musician in this family would be wonderful.”
See why I love this man so.
Daniel and Skylar came to see the baby, and I could tell what they were thinking by the way they looked at each other. It wouldn’t surprise me if they start their family soon.
We left them with Emily and Jake while we raced to Rich’s and bought out the baby department. “My grandson’s not going home from the hospital in pink,” Michael said.
After our spree we checked into a hotel sans luggage, and got some funny looks.
“Let’s relax awhile before we call Hannah,” Michael said, so we stripped off our clothes and crawled into bed and you know where that led. Thank goodness.
Afterward we held each other close and Michael said, “You know what I was thinking the whole time we were in the hospital?”
“No. What?”
“How I could hardly wait to make love to you.” He kissed me, and one thing led to another.
It was dark before we called Hannah. On her cell phone.
She and Hunter are in Denali “living wild and free” as she puts it.
I’ve never seen her happier. She and Hunter are so much in love. He returned with her in May. They stayed at her cottage in the woods for a few weeks.
“I’m regaining my strength and Hunter’s painting,” she told me after they got back from Denali.
“Then what?” I asked her, and she said, “I’m going to the Everglades on assignment in June. Hunter will go with me. He’ll paint while I’m working. He’s getting ready for another show in October.”
“And after that?”
“If you’re listening for wedding bells, Mom, you can forget it.”
I guess I was, in a way, but knowing Hannah, I should have expected the unusual.
“Not really,” I told her. “I only want you to be happy, Hannah, and secure in that happiness. That’s all.”
“I’m very, very happy and completely secure. Don’t you know, Mom? Wolves mate for life.”
Hannah loves to shock, but I have news for her. I’m not a bit shocked. I’m ecstatic. They love each other, and people who love each other should be together. Period. End of discussion.
The lifestyle they’ve worked out is totally unconventional, which is exactly the way it should be with two people as unusual as Hannah and Hunter.
After they came back from the Everglades, they loaded up Hannah’s plane and flew back to Denali.
“We plan to spend all our summers there,” she told me. “Living wild and
free.”
And though she didn’t say as much, I suspect that “living wild and free” means that for a brief interlude each summer she will become wolfwoman to Hunter’s wolfman.
It almost makes me wish I were young again.
But then I wouldn’t have what I do. This remarkable love that came through a six-month fire of separation stronger and more beautiful than ever.
Hannah and Hunter will be back in time for Jacob Michael’s christening in September.
So will Clarice. She and Larry Baird are in Italy.
I halfway expected this to be a honeymoon, but then knowing Clarice, I’m not surprised that she’s still putting off a wedding. Larry asked her to marry him six times before she ever accepted a ring, but she won’t even talk about a wedding date.
“We’re having too much fun to stop so some old fogey with a degree can sanction us,” she said.
Oh, it will be good to have everybody gathered at Belle Rose once more. The entire family, plus a few good friends.
Afterward Michael and I are going to Italy. “Nowhere near the Dolomites,” he assured me, and I said, “Thank you, darling.”
Then I finally told him the truth. “I don’t think I could bear to see you near another mountain. They stole six months from us, and I won’t ever risk that again.”
“You won’t have to, my precious. I don’t plan ever to leave your side.”
Italy is going to be wonderful. “A second honeymoon,” Michael said, and we both laughed.
But our time in Italy is so much more than a second honeymoon. It’s a fulfillment of the promise we made to each other…to keep our relationship sacred.
We will wrap ourselves in a pink cocoon, and there we will stay, loving each other till the end of time…and beyond.
Chapter Forty-Six
Nature compensated the frozen Northwest by turning it into a lush blooming Eden in summertime. In the midst of this rainbow-hued paradise in the remote reaches of Denali, Hunter and Hannah cavorted like a naughty Adam and Eve.
They raced from their cave and through the wilderness to a mirror-smooth lake so clear they could see their reflections.
