Snowfall at Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  “Snap out of it,” she said aloud to the empty house, willfully pushing herself away from the wall. She was restless, but in a way that felt far too pleasant. She moved aimlessly through the house, perusing the books on the shelves, spying a number of fat, enticing novels of the sort she’d always intended to read but never seemed to have the time for. Now she had nothing but time. She picked one and set it on the nightstand.

  Then she stopped and just stood there by the bed, regarding the mussed covers and rumpled sheets while everything she’d done with Noah replayed in her mind.

  She bent down to tug the quilt back in place and make the bed. As she did so, she was inundated again with memories—every kiss, every touch, every word he’d whispered in her ear, every gasp of pleasure. When was the last time she’d been that happy making love? When had she ever been?

  She dropped the quilt. To hell with making the bed. Tonight she would sleep amid the rumpled mess and remember everything all over again. She hugged herself and threw back her head and laughed aloud. Laughed. It was a rusty, incongruous sound in the quiet cottage.

  Still smiling, she checked her e-mail and was surprised to see a note from Brooks Fordham, the reporter.

  “Hello,” she said, clicking it open, “welcome back.”

  The note was brief, just one line: What about that dinner you promised me? followed by a phone number with a New York area code. She went to get her phone, eager to hear his voice, hoping this meant he was fully recovered.

  Before she had a chance to dial, her phone jangled to life with Max’s ringtone, and she snatched it up. “Hey, there,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”

  “Hiya, Mom. I got your messages.”

  His deepening, nearly grown-up voice startled her. “I’m snowed in,” she said. “I’m dying to see you, and I can’t because I’m snowed in.”

  “Everybody’s snowed in. It’s awesome.”

  “An enforced time-out,” she said. “Everyone can use one of those now and then. How have you been, Max? How is school going?”

  “Okay.”

  “And hockey?”

  “Okay.”

  “And life in general and the world at large?”

  “Okay.” A note of humor sneaked into his voice. “So what’s the deal, Mom? Daisy said you’re staying at some house on the lake.”

  “That’s right. I did.”

  “For how long?”

  It upset her that he would instantly assume her status to be temporary. But it didn’t surprise her. This was what she had led her son to expect from her. When he was very small—still nursing, in fact—she had given more milk to the breast pump than she had to her child, leaving bottles behind for others to feed him. Because, she had told herself, her work was so important. Because she wanted to make the world a better place for her own children. Everyone said it was all right to do that because she was serving a greater purpose. Everyone thought it was fine except the one person who really mattered—Max himself. He never got a vote.

  “For good,” Sophie heard herself saying now, and the sound of the words coming out of her own mouth shocked her. She never did anything on a permanent basis. Even her marriage had reached an expiration date. She flinched from the thought, as though she’d touched a hot coal. At some point she would need to deal with what had happened in her marriage, but she wasn’t there yet. One crisis at a time, wasn’t that what Dr. Maarten advised?

  “Seriously?” Max asked. “Come on, Mom.”

  “Seriously. I’m really excited about this. I can’t wait to see you. Maybe the roads will be clear tomorrow.”

  “What’s going on? Is this about that thing that happened in The Hague? Dad said—”

  “Your father talked to you about it?” Her back stiffened, the way it always did when the subject of her ex came up. The thought of him talking to her son about her only added starch to the stiffness. She had talked to her kids; why did they need their father’s input? She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. “Like I said, Max, I have a lot to tell you. What’s your schedule tomorrow? And the rest of the week?”

  As he gave her a rundown on his daily life, it struck her that for the first time, she was going to be fitting herself into his world rather than the other way around. The notion both worried and excited her. She prayed she would measure up. She’d been a mother for nearly two decades. Now, for the first time ever, she was going to be a mom.

  Later that evening, the snow finally stopped. The snow-plows still hadn’t made it out to Lakeshore Road, but they would be working all night. Sophie went to Noah’s for supper. The puppy was ecstatic to see her, its whole fluffy body wriggling in a dance of joy.

  “She needs a home, you know,” he said, taking Sophie’s coat.

  “Ooh, that sounds like a hint.” She expected to feel awkward, and yet she didn’t. Given the shockingly intimate things they had done together, she thought she might have trouble facing him. Instead, she felt deliciously excited. And…happy. Pleased to be in his company.

  “It’s an offer.”

  “I don’t do puppies. And I know I lack credibility with you now…”

  “How so?”

  “I said I didn’t do one-night stands, either, yet I fell right into bed with you.” She gave a nervous laugh. “I’m seizing the day. You know, carpe diem and all that.”

  “You just slept with me in order to carpe the diem? Or because you like me?” He paused. “So we’re talking about this. I didn’t know whether or not to bring it up.”

  “It would be silly to avoid it.”

  He nodded. “I was hoping for an encore.”

  She couldn’t help herself. She felt an unbidden tug of concurrence. “That’s why we should talk.”

  “Okay.” He led the way to the kitchen. “Over dinner.” He fixed macaroni and cheese, salad from a bag. “I’m not much of a cook,” he said, not by way of apology, just explanation.

  “Neither am I. This is comfort food.” She couldn’t help smiling at the way the dogs, Rudy and Opal, sat back and watched, their eyes following his every move. Then she realized she was stalling, so she took a deep breath. “So. As I mentioned earlier…a one-night stand isn’t exactly my style.”

  “If we do it again, then it’s no longer a one-night stand.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is, we hardly know each other. We don’t even know if we like each other. It makes no sense to start something.”

  He placed two wineglasses on the counter and opened a bottle of white wine. “Look, I don’t know you as well as I want to. But I can safely say, I definitely like you. And today made perfect sense to me.”

  She opened the wine and poured while he put dinner on the table. “You’re being incredibly matter-of-fact about all this. Is that because you do this all the time, or is it simply your nature to take things as they come?”

  “I pick door number two.” He lifted his glass in her direction and took a sip of the wine. “Seriously, I don’t do this all the time.”

  “Do you do it sometimes?”

  “Nope. But you…there’s something about you.”

  He was just so great. Too great, actually, to be some single guy living alone among the animals like Dr. Doolittle. “Have you ever been married?” she asked him.

  “Nope,” he said again.

  “That surprises me. You’re a great guy, Noah. You have to know that.” Commitment-phobe, she thought. He wouldn’t be the first.

  “I’m not a commitment-phobe,” he said. “Counsellor.”

  Only then did Sophie realize she’d spoken aloud. “Sorry. Am I being too nosy? Too lawyerly?”

  He folded his arms on the table. “I want to get to know you, too, but playing twenty questions feels kind of phony.”

  “Then what do you suggest?”

  “How about we just hang out? See what happens?”

  “Because—” She stopped, unable to think of a reason. “I’ve never done much of that. Hanging out. I’m not
sure I know how.”

  He refilled her wine and offered her dessert. “Mystic Mints,” he said, pushing a dangerous-looking package toward her. “They’ll change your life.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Tell you what. Why don’t we head out and talk some more while I feed?”

  She regarded the empty dishes. “Didn’t you just do that?”

  “The horses, I mean,” he said. “I have to feed the horses.”

  “You have horses.”

  “I’ve always had them. I never actually meant to keep some of the animals that have ended up with me. Most are adopted out to permanent homes. Some, though, aren’t really adoptable. And some, okay, nearly all—they steal my heart.” He flushed, probably uncomfortable with getting sentimental, then asked. “Do you ride?”

  “I used to ride. A long time ago.” As a girl, Sophie had adored horses. Until the age of seventeen, her best friend in the world was Misty, a beautiful Warmblood she kept at a barn and rode every single day, even when the weather was foul and no one else was around. Those, perhaps, had been her favorite times, when she put aside everything else in the world. However, when Misty died, Sophie was inconsolable, crying so much from the agony of loss that she made herself ill. Her parents sympathized, yet they didn’t understand her attachment to Misty who was, after all, “only” an animal. They advised Sophie not to get so emotionally attached, warning her that everything came to an end. Sophie took the lesson to heart, and took up swimming instead, a solitary sport. There was danger in loving something with its own mortality, a factor completely out of her control. She never went near a horse—or any other pet—again.

  To her relief, he didn’t question her further. He insisted that she borrow a pair of warm ski gloves and his sister’s barn jacket and they ventured outside just as twilight was edging into purple darkness. It was one of those rare, perfect winter scenes, with a crystal-clear sky filled with stars and a full moon that lit the landscape like a huge, celestial floodlight. The contours of the light on the snow created a scene of beautiful mystery, enveloped by a deep cushion of quiet. The dogs came along, Rudy kicking up a flurry of fresh snow while the puppy tumbled along in his wake. When she stepped inside the barn, Sophie was folded into a warm, familiar atmosphere that brought back unexpected, far-off memories of the girl she had once been. She thought she’d forgotten that girl, someone who laughed and dreamed with abandon, who loved the view of the world from astride her horse. She was unprepared for this wave of nostalgia, evoking a past she hadn’t thought about in ages, a rare happiness that was pure and unconditional, and dreams that belonged solely to her.

  Even the ritual of caring for the animals—four horses of varying ages—felt familiar. They stuck their heads out of their stalls, ears pricked and nostrils flaring in anticipation of their evening meal. Sophie loved the smell of their feed and their breath, the dry scent of hay and even the earthy odor of manure that pervaded the barn. She took off her gloves and stroked the long nose of a bewhiskered mare, reveling in the warm velvet texture against her hand.

  “That’s Alice. The others are Jemma, Shamrock and Moe,” Noah said. “I’ve had Moe for years, and the other three, I rescued.”

  Sophie smiled. “I’m seeing a pattern here—you rescuing things.”

  “I have a hard time turning my back on an animal. I lost one last month. He was old, and I had to put him down.”

  She shut her eyes briefly, trying to imagine what that was like, actually being the one giving the injection. She could remember exactly how the loss of her own horse had felt—like a sledgehammer pounding at her until she was numb. In the aftermath, her heart had turned, cell by cell, to stone. “How can you bear to lose an animal?”

  “Because it would be worse than never having them in the first place. I just enjoy the time I’m given with the animals.” He peeled a generous flake of hay from a bale and put it in the stall. “Shamrock’s the newest. The idiots who owned him had no clue how to take care of a horse.”

  He moved on to the next horse. “Jemma was abandoned, and too mean to put up for adoption,” he said as the horse nuzzled him gently.

  “She looks very happy now.”

  “It took a long time to teach her to trust me, but all that work and patience paid off,” Noah said.

  “I guess finding yourself in charge of abandoned animals is one of the hazards of your profession,” Sophie observed.

  “It’s one of the perks. Even the worst cases of abandonment will get better eventually.”

  Are you really this wonderful? she asked silently. Maybe she was blinded by the fact that she’d recently had some of the best sex of her life. She worked beside him at an unhurried pace, falling into the comfortable rhythm of the chores.

  “You’re good at this,” he remarked.

  “I had my horse for a long time.” She felt shockingly close to tears, her emotions hovering just beneath the surface.

  Noah whistled between his teeth as he finished up. They went outside again, where the shadows lay in sharp relief across the fields of snow. Sophie felt somewhat vulnerable, but grateful at the same time.

  “How’s your knee?” he asked.

  “It’s fine. It was minor, Noah, and you took good care of me.”

  “We’ve got a full moon and no cloud cover tonight. Let’s go for a ride.”

  She balked. The idea of riding with him on a moonlit night just seemed so romantic. She didn’t do romantic things. “It’s the middle of winter.”

  “We won’t go far.” He was already taking down blankets, saddles, bridles. “Give me a hand with this, will you?”

  “You’re crazy, you know that?” Yet she found herself opening a stall, leading one of the mares out and clipping on the cross ties.

  He flashed her a boyish grin, then brought out another horse. Sophie again fell into a rhythm her hands and heart remembered—blanket, saddle, cinch, leaving the correct breathing space between horse and leather. The tacking up, gently pressing downward to get the horse to drop her head. Slipping on the headstall, gently inserting the bit. She was amazed by the way simply being in this atmosphere took her back. Every day after school, she used to ride her bike through the hilly streets of her neighborhood, to the barn where Misty was kept. Sophie had loved every aspect of owning a horse, from feeding and caring for her to riding her in the arena or along the forest and bridle paths.

  “You’re good,” Noah observed. “I’m guessing that saying you used to ride is an understatement.”

  “There was nothing more important to me in the world than my horse.” She found it easier to talk if she focused on the task at hand. The mare—Alice—appeared to be well trained, mouthing the bit a little but then accepting it.

  Sophie found herself talking about growing up in Seattle, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood as her parents climbed the social ladder. Misty had been the one constant. Sophie had loved the horse with every inch of her heart. She dreamed about her, created stories in her head about the mare, smiled at the very thought of an afternoon ride.

  With Noah in the lead, they rode out of the barn and into the most perfect winter night Sophie had ever seen. At the sight of the smooth hillocks, deeply carved by moonlight and shadow, she caught her breath and turned to Noah. “This is another first for me, riding at night, in all this snow.”

  “Your knee still okay?” Noah asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  He headed across a pristine pasture, his horse churning a trail through the deep snow. She pressed her heels into the horse’s sides and followed. There was that momentary jolt of pure exhilaration, bringing on a flood of sensation so intense that tears sprang to her eyes again. The cold air on her face, the warmth and strength of the horse, the unparalleled scenery all combined to sweep her away. She and Noah didn’t talk as they rode up a broad, treeless slope. The horses’ breath created clouds of mist, softening the landscape until it took on a dreamlike quality. At the very top of the slope, they stopped to lo
ok down over the farm, the untouched road, the lights twinkling in the houses along the lakeshore. Sophie relaxed forward over the mare’s neck, just letting herself feel rather than worry and plan. “Thank you,” she whispered, addressing both the horse and Noah. “This is beautiful.”

  “I figured you’d like it.”

  She wondered how far it was to town, having the wild idea of going to see Max and Daisy. On a horse. They would think she’d really lost it.

  On the way back, Noah showed her the best sledding hill on the property, a grove of sugar maples Gayle tapped to make syrup, a small bridge over a completely frozen streambed. This was his world, the one he’d always known. It was a place she felt entirely safe, even in the aftermath of a record-breaking snowfall. She found that she liked being snowed in. Being forced by nature to slow down, to stay close to home, was not such a bad thing, particularly with Noah as company.

  She shouldn’t have waited so long to ride a horse again, but the lessons of the past had cut deep. As a girl, she’d given too much of herself to the bond with her horse—at least, that was her parents’ view. They warned it was a distraction from more important matters, like school, sports, music and the kind of extracurriculars she could benefit from later on, when she was trying to get into college.

  Over the years, she’d learned that there were different kinds of losses, and the worst were the ones she had brought about herself. Her fears, anxieties and ambition had eventually driven a wedge between her and her children.

  Now she felt a sturdy sense of possibility. She was here for a purpose—to reclaim her family. This was her shot, her chance to rebuild her life. Meeting Noah was…an unexpected beginning. She had no idea if it would turn out to mean anything, but she felt curiously lighthearted as they groomed and put up the horses.

  Then, as they walked to the house, she felt his hand at the small of her back. They went inside together, and she peeled off her boots and heavy jacket. The next thing she knew he had her backed up against the hall closet door and was kissing her into a state of willing submission. She didn’t speak up, even when she had the chance. And in that instant, that brief heartbeat of hesitation, she was lost, and without her even saying anything, he knew it. He pulled her against him and imprinted her with another kiss that defeated every reservation she had. When they came up for air, she was obligated to whisper, “I didn’t come here for this,” echoing his words to her.