Snowbound Snuggles

by T. F. Walsh

  Sipping his own tea, he looked at the black, wood-burning stove and wondered if she’d ever tried to cook anything on it. “It’s like a whole different world out here, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “In some ways. But it’s really not all that strange.” She turned back to her magazine.

  Not that strange. She had to burn wood to keep her house warm, and pay somebody to plow the road. Her house was made of logs, and the TV weatherman couldn’t predict the weather for her piece of his viewing audience. No, this wasn’t strange at all. Hell, it was so much like New York City, who could tell the difference?

  Chapter Five

  Joely sat at the kitchen table and sketched for a time, trying to pretend Rey wasn’t sitting across from her. Not the easiest task.

  He’d gotten his computer out and connected to her wireless so he could catch up with the news. Apparently, the idea of trudging down her driveway through eighteen inches of snow to get the paper didn’t appeal to him. Of course, that was assuming the paper was even there. Given the conditions, Joely suspected it wasn’t.

  So, between the scratching of her pencil and the tapping of his keys, they filled the silence companionably.

  It didn’t seem right, though, to sit and say nothing. There were fourteen months of silence between them already—shouldn’t they find some way to address that?

  “What are you working on?” Rey said suddenly.

  Joely tweaked a line she’d been fussing over before turning the sketchpad to show Rey. He perused the picture. “Nice. This goes with the one you drew at the hotel.”

  She nodded. Finally happy with the vase she’d sketched, she’d tried variations of the columbine design on a bowl and mugs. “I like to do things in sets. Sometimes somebody even buys them all together.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “And yet they work as single pieces as well, so if somebody only buys one, you can still sell the rest.”

  “That’s the plan.” She turned the book back around, eyeing the drawing again. “These mugs I’ll probably price as a set of four, though.”

  “You know what you need?”

  There was a loaded question. “A million dollars?” A good lawyer in tight blue jeans?

  He plowed past her joke. “You need somebody to handle the financials so you can concentrate on the creative end of the business.”

  “If I had a million dollars, I could hire someone.”

  He opened his mouth, but closed it again, an oddly disappointed look on his face. She had the strangest feeling he’d been about to volunteer for the job. Instead he picked up his laptop and put it back into its case.

  She found herself watching him, her eyes fixed on the sure movement of his long fingers. She’d always loved those hands. He pulled the zipper shut and pushed the computer case aside, bumping it up against the end of the couch.

  Something in her throat started to burn. She swallowed hard before it could turn into tears. “I shouldn’t have said what I did,” she said abruptly.

  He looked up, puzzled. “When?”

  She swallowed. “Last August.”

  The puzzlement faded from his face and he nodded slowly. “I probably would have come after you sooner if you hadn’t.”

  There was no answer for that. When she spoke again she spoke to his hands, unable to meet his eyes. “I was angry.”

  “You don’t say.” His mild tone caught her off-guard. When she looked up, he had a quirky smile on his mouth. “I never would have guessed.”

  She returned his smile, sadly. “We have a lot of things to talk about.”

  “Do we?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “We can’t just . . . forget about it and move forward?”

  “I don’t think I can, no.” No matter how hard it might prove to be, she didn’t think she could consider a future with him without working through their past.

  His gaze slid sideways, and she could tell he was disappointed by her answer, but he shrugged, resigned. “Okay, then, we might as well dig in.” Folding his hands in front of him on the table, he added, “You first.”

  Her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected that. Where in the world was she supposed to start? Of all the wounds they’d inflicted on each other, which should she pick open first? Rallying, she said the first thing that came to mind. “Why did it take you so long to come after me?”

  He nodded approvingly. “Okay. A tough question, but fair.”

  “You’re stalling, Rey.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Resting her chin on her fist, she waited while he gathered the pieces of his answer. Would this be the honest Rey, who’d bared his soul to her from time to time? Or Rey the equivocator, whom she’d seen wowing the jury in court? Or attempting to wow the jury. She still couldn’t shake the image of the last trial of his she’d witnessed, when all attempts at wowing had failed miserably.

  “When you left—” he started, then broke off, shaking his head. “I don’t really want to go into this. It can’t help. We both know what happened.”

  Joely blinked back sudden, surprising tears. She remembered it all too well. Inwardly, she cringed to remember the imprecations she’d thrown at him along with the divorce papers. “Don’t bother calling me, Rey. It’s too late to fix this. If I never see you again, it’ll be too soon.” And that had been the least of it. She hadn’t thought about that in a long time. She’d shoved it into the back of her mind so she could pretend it had never happened. A part of her still refused to believe she could have been so awful to him. So hateful. Hurtful.

  His gaze caught hers as she regained control of her swimming eyes. His pain was masked there, but she could still see it lurking. Maybe he was right. It would be like picking at a nearly healed wound to revisit those moments.

  “It occurs to me,” he said slowly, “that you might have some of the answers you need if you’d taken the time to read my letters.”

  She swallowed. The letters. She hadn’t wanted to read them last night, and she didn’t want to read them today. But maybe he was right. Maybe she’d missed what she’d needed to hear, back then, by not looking at them. A wave of nervous tension suddenly passed through her, making her almost nauseated. Better to get it done, if he was going to insist. Like pulling off a Band-Aid. Make it quick.

  He wasn’t sure why he brought up the letters. He already knew she hadn’t read them—she’d told him that in the restaurant. But when she got up and walked into the bedroom, he had a sudden sense that it had, in fact, been the right thing to say.

  She came out carrying a shoebox, which she set on the table next to him. Tentatively, she sat back in her chair, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. So he opened the box.

  They were all there. All the letters he’d written her after she’d stormed out of their apartment. Running his fingers over the edges of the envelopes, he counted twelve. None had been opened. Was that really all there’d been? He could have sworn he’d written at least a hundred. He looked up at Joely.

  “Read them,” she said. “Or shall I?”

  He cast his mind back and dredged up some of the more colorful contents of the letters. “I’ll read select highlights under one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I burn them when I’m done.”

  Her eyebrows shot up into neatly plucked, pale blonde arcs. “That bad?”

  “Some of it.”

  She considered. She looked almost frightened. “All right. It’s a deal. Read.”

  He opened the first envelope, unfolded the letter, and confronted his own, old pain. If he let his guard down even a little, he could feel it burning a straight line down the middle of his chest, as if someone had sunk a knife there. He cleared his throat. “‘Dear Joely,’ blah blah blah, ‘I can’t believe you’re running to Colorado. Why don’t you just go all the way and head for L.A.?’”

  “That was cold.”

  “A little.” He went on. “‘Are
you sure this friend of a friend with the storefront up for sale is legit? You have no idea what you’re doing and you could get screwed over big time.’ See? I was concerned for your welfare.”

  “Nice.”

  “Yes. ‘Also, where the hell is Bailey, Colorado, anyhow?’” He paused, skimming a few paragraphs. “‘I don’t want you to be in Colorado. I want you back here where you belong. And if you think I’m signing those divorce papers, you’re fricking nuts.’”

  “Does it really say ‘fricking’? You’re not censoring?”

  “Not that part.”

  “You skipped a lot.”

  He winced, thinking about some of the harsh words he’d skipped as he’d read. “Just filler.” He put the letter back in the envelope and set it out of her reach.

  As he opened the second letter, he wondered again why he’d decided to do this. Each letter was like a window into the past, allowing him to relive the brutal, searing emotion he’d poured into each one. It hurt.

  So he continued to read aloud, a sentence here, a paragraph there, just until he saw on her face that she understood. That was all he wanted. Just for her to understand why he hadn’t pursued her more diligently. Why he was only here now, fourteen months later.

  I won’t chase you halfway across the country if you don’t still love me. There’s no point. Give me some sign I should come and I will. Because I still love you. That’s not going to change.

  Five letters on the pile.

  If you meant what you said, I don’t suppose there’s any point, but do you remember what we said on our wedding day? Just give me some kind of sign that we can have that again and I’ll be on the next plane to Denver.

  Number ten.

  You can’t possibly understand how much this hurts, Joely, when you don’t call, you don’t take my calls, you don’t answer my letters. But I’m not signing the divorce papers. If you want a split, you’ll have to talk to me face-to-face. No other options.

  Eleven and twelve went right onto the stack. He didn’t even bother opening them. Joely’s eyes were swimming by now. She swallowed lurking tears, then asked, “Don’t I want to hear anything out of those?”

  “Nope. I think you get the point.” He picked up the pile of letters, carried them to the stove and tossed them in. The fire curled under the sheets of paper, blackening the edges. Eradicating another piece of their past. It felt like surgery. Cauterization. He closed the heavy, wrought iron door and the flames took the letters silently, with no witnesses. Better that way, he was certain.

  Presently she said quietly, “So why did you finally come?”

  “I took a really close look at those divorce papers and realized I’d been operating on a false assumption.”

  “That was it?”

  He shrugged. “Mostly. Does it really matter, now that I’m here?”

  She crossed her arms, staring at the squat, silent stove. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  • • •

  So they had moved forward, through some of the issues, seeking closure. Joely couldn’t help but wonder why she didn’t feel any better about it all.

  The camaraderie they’d shared through the morning was all but gone. She couldn’t look at Rey without thinking about the months before she’d left, when he’d barely spoken to her, and the minutes before she’d left, when she’d said far too much.

  The process didn’t seem to have affected Rey as deeply, though. He sat watching a cable news channel—after he’d gone outside to scrape the snow off the satellite dish—and seemed not to be agonizing over anything at all. It was a man thing, she supposed, that ability to shrug off a deeply emotional situation and just move on.

  Or was it? If he could really shrug things off so easily, what had been the point of his reading the letters? If he could shrug off the pain, he never would have written them in the first place.

  Unable to concentrate anymore on the sketches, she found herself looking at the empty shoebox. Finally, she picked it up, took off the lid. There was nothing left inside. She wasn’t sure what she’d thought she might find.

  “I don’t think it was the greatest idea.”

  She jumped at the sound of Rey’s voice and looked up. He was watching her, frowning. He looked sad.

  “You think we should have left well enough alone?” she asked.

  “Quite likely.”

  She put the lid back on the box. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Isn’t that the kind of thing a therapist might tell you to do?”

  “How the hell should I know? I’m a lawyer.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her. The perusal, detached and non-sexual as it was, made her warm. “Let’s try something else.”

  “I’m game.”

  “Good. The letters have been burned and obliterated—let’s say right now that everything associated with them has been, too. All that baggage, all that ugly past. We’re starting all fresh. Like—” He paused, then pointed out the window. “Like out there. All the imperfections of the world made right by a layer of snow. Everything smooth and pure and even.”

  The image appealed to her. “Square one?”

  “Square one.”

  “Which means?”

  “That I intend to romance you like you’ve never been romanced before. You were worth pursuing the first time—I’m sure you’re equally worth pursuing again.”

  She smiled. It actually didn’t sound like a bad idea. “Then I look forward to being pursued.”

  • • •

  Well. Now he was going to have to follow through. Like most ideas, it had seemed like a good one at the time. But how was he supposed to romance her in this tiny house, where they couldn’t get more than a few yards from each other? Plus, he was at a disadvantage since it was unfamiliar territory.

  He considered waiting until tomorrow. Joely had assured him they’d be able to get out of the house in the morning. If he waited, he’d have more resources available to him. But he also would have missed out on his first opportunity to date his wife.

  His wife. He hadn’t thought about her that way in a long time. His ex-wife, yes, until he’d found out he wasn’t really divorced or even close to it. Then he’d come up with several rather uncharitable epithets, until he’d finally just started thinking of her as Joely again. Right now, he felt much as he had during their early courtship. She was a beautiful woman. He sensed a connection that made his body hard and wanting. But he wasn’t sure he knew her yet, certainly not as well as he wanted to.

  She had disappeared into her bedroom about fifteen minutes ago. Stymied in his romantic pursuits, he decided to check on her.

  Peeking around her door, he found her sitting at a small desk looking at spreadsheets on her computer. From what he saw, the data looked good. He watched for a moment while she frowned at the screen, adjusted a few numbers, changed them back, muttered to herself, then combed her fingers through her hair in what looked like frustration. He didn’t think it was, though. Just absorption, more likely, a thought-gathering gesture. He took a step forward, not quite into the bedroom, then paused, hearing the rumbling of a vehicle outside.

  Joely turned at the sound. Seeing Rey, she lifted her eyebrows questioningly.

  “Is that your snowplow?” he asked.

  “Sounds like it.”

  “I’ll go check things out.”

  “I don’t think that’s really necessary.”

  Rey shrugged. “Never know. He might need some help.”

  She grinned, obviously unable to imagine what he could possibly do to help Joe or Roy or Rob or whatever his name was plow the driveway. She was probably right, but he was going, anyway. He wanted to check out this strapping Colorado snowplow guy. See what the competition looked like, if he was competition at all.

  He dug his coat out of his suitcase and pulled it on. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any boots, so he’d just have to tough it out. He went out to the deck to retrieve the snow shovel he’d used to dig his way to the satellite dish on the side of th
e house, then went back through the house and out the front door.

  Rob the snowplow man proved to be about sixty years old and thus out of the running, but very efficient with the plow. Rey managed to clear the short sidewalk before Rob finished the driveway, but only barely.

  Waving goodbye to Rob, Rey took a moment to take in his surroundings. Snow. Lots of snow. Massive, phenomenal quantities of snow. He was almost certain he’d never seen this much snow, except maybe that one time he and his family had gotten stranded in Buffalo on the way back from a trip to Canada.

  A thought came to him. He grinned, blew a long plume of white with his own breath, and set to work.

  • • •

  Finally done experimenting with permutations and projections, Joely turned off the computer. It occurred to her then that the snowplow had departed quite some time ago, but she hadn’t heard Rey come back into the house. Surely he hadn’t gotten lost, or frozen to death. Not in less than an hour.

  Then again, he was from New York.

  She should probably go check on him, just in case. She pulled her coat out of the front closet and opened the front door . . .

  And stopped cold on the front step.

  “Hey, Joely!” Rey called.

  Laughing, Joely zipped up her coat. “Rey, you’re insane.”

  He only chuckled and went back to work.

  He was building a snow fort, the second of two. They were spaced about six yards apart and stood about three feet high at the front. He rolled the last snowball into place to finish off a side wall and straightened. He rubbed his hands together briskly.

  “Wanna go at it?” he said.

  She did want to go at it. Not in the snow, though. Preferably in a nice, warm bed. Forcing her mind back to what Rey had really meant, Joely stepped off the sidewalk, trudging through the snow to the nearest fort. “Where’s the ammunition?”

  Rey looked at his watch. “Fifteen minutes to make all you can, then we start.”

  She jumped the last few steps to the fort and started grabbing handfuls of snow, smashing them into tight, icy snowballs. “You’re gonna regret this!” she shouted, and was answered by Rey’s laughter.