by Erin Wright
Ivy forced herself to her feet, stiff and so very cold. She wasn’t sure if it was from kneeling just inside an open door, letting in the arctic air, or the terror from seeing her sister hurt. She made herself throw the towels away in the kitchen trash, and then scrub her hands clean of the dark and crusty blood. She had to clean up. She had to get dressed. She would go with her parents to Boise, and she would take care of her sister.
Her parents were coming back in, shouting as they hurried to get dressed, and as Ivy slipped a sweatshirt over her head, she suddenly realized that today was the day she was supposed to be going back to California. Her mom was supposed to be driving her to Boise this morning, but not to see her comatose sister in the hospital, but so she could fly back home.
Panic clutched at her again. There was no way she could leave Iris. Not now. Not when her sister needed her. When Iris had originally gotten into her car wreck just over three months ago, Ivy hadn’t been able to afford to fly up to see her, and had been forced to sit on the sidelines as her sister made her slow recovery.
Ivy couldn’t do it again.
Screw her job. Screw her boss. He was going to be angry when he heard the news, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.
Iris needed her, and this time, Ivy wasn’t going to let her down.
Chapter 4
Austin
The clear, bitterly cold air hurt his lungs with every breath, with a cloud drifting up from the nostrils of Bob as they plodded along. It was the perfect winter day – cold, bright, and beautiful, ice and snow sparkling as far as the eye could see.
He’d thought about asking Declan to go riding with him this morning, but then decided against it, figuring he was probably spending all of his free time with Iris. After being apart for years, Austin knew it only made sense that his friend would want to spend as much time as possible with her, although it did leave Austin wanting for companionship of his own.
Too bad Ivy has gone back to California.
Austin shoved that thought away. Ivy was gone, and wouldn’t be back. One moment of staring at each other, almost kissing, before that damn Tiffany showed up, did not a relationship make.
Which was fine. Good, even. He didn’t want a relationship. He apparently just had to remind himself of this fact more often in the last four days than he normally had to, was all.
He saw a glint of red through the trees, and sat up straighter in the saddle. He must be losing it. He’d spent so much time forcing himself not to think about Ivy McLain that he’d begun to see her out in the wilds of Idaho.
Bob stepped through the snow, carefully setting down each hoof to make it through the treacherous footing, while Austin kept his eyes trained on the dark red blob of color, growing larger by the moment.
That’s…
That’s really her!
He’d recognize that brilliant red hair anywhere, falling in curly waves over a dark blue jacket. The same dark blue jacket Ivy had been wearing the other night at the party.
He broke into the small clearing to see her perched on a rock, a notepad spread open on her lap as she sketched, staring down at the pad and then up again into the distance. He squinted, trying to figure out what it was she was drawing, when she heard the jingle of Bob’s bridle and turned with a squeal, snapping the notepad shut.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her hand over her chest, staring at him like he’d just descended from an alien spacecraft. He smiled, trying to put her at ease.
“Hey,” he said, swinging down from his horse, patting his dark brown coat on the side for a moment before turning back to Ivy. “What are you doing here?”
The words came out before he could think through them, a rarity in his world. He usually thought through every word, every statement, before he even opened his mouth, but somehow, around Ivy, things just came out.
Sometimes, horribly awkward things, implying shit he didn’t mean.
Her eyebrows snapped together in a glower. “I’ve always come here, way before you moved to town,” she told him pertly. “I’ve been coming here for years. What are you doing here?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he could start this conversation over again. Finding her in his favorite thinking spot had rattled him. He needed to get this conversation back on track. “I found it when I first moved here. I like it. The creek is nice during the summer, although it’s frozen solid right now, of course, and the view of the Goldfork Mountains…” He pointed to them, as if she wouldn’t know where in the hell the Goldfork Mountains were, and then rolled his eyes at himself. Ivy grew up in Long Valley. She knew the area better than he did. He did not need to give her a geography lesson.
He wasn’t exactly doing a good job of getting the conversation back on track, something her deepening glower was only reinforcing.
“What are you still doing in Long Valley?” he tried again. “Declan said you were going to leave the day after the party.”
Okay, so that made it worse.
Much worse. In a totally-different-way worse, but that wasn’t exactly a consolation at that moment.
Ivy stood up, tucking her notepad under her arm, and then walked over to Bob, letting him snuffle her hand before she began stroking his long neck. She shot Austin a knowing grin as she petted Bob, letting the silence stretch out between them, obviously picking up on the implication that Austin had been asking Declan about her, and reveling in it.
Dammit! That was not what he’d wanted to tell her. It was stalkerish and weird, and he didn’t want her to know that he’d been that interested after their literal run-in with each other.
He fished around for something to say, someway to get himself out of this pickle without making it even worse, something he seemed completely incapable of today, when she finally took pity on him. “I wish I could say it was a good thing that I’m still here.” She paused, her breath disappearing in a cloud around her head, her smile fading. “Iris is going to be at St. Luke’s for at least another week, though.”
They were close enough now for him to see the dark flecks in her otherwise brilliant blue eyes, and the dark bags under her eyes. He wouldn’t exactly consider himself to be an expert on Ivy, but even he could see that she looked exhausted.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “I hadn’t heard.”
“The gossip chain here in Long Valley must really be broken then,” Ivy said with a small laugh. “Usually, this kind of thing gets around town, almost before it happens. Somehow, Sawyer is constantly breaking the time-space continuum, and yet, no scientists have shown up to study this phenomenon.”
They both laughed for just a moment at that, and then quickly sobered up. It almost felt irreverent to laugh under the circumstances.
“So what happened to Iris? Did she get into another car wreck?” He hadn’t met her before the wreck, of course, although while he and Declan were college roommates up at the University of Idaho, he’d sure heard a lot about her. When they’d first met after Iris moved back to town, Austin had looked her over discretely, searching for her angel wings. Declan had made her seem one step short of perfection, and although Austin had thought her plenty nice, she wasn’t…
Well, she wasn’t Ivy, that was for sure. Something about Ivy made his heart skip a beat in his chest, an altogether unexpected and not entirely desired reaction.
“No, no car wreck, thank God. Although the whole thing happened because of that.” Bob whinnied and nudged Ivy’s hand, obviously growing discontented at the amount of attention he was getting from her, which made Austin roll his eyes inwardly. Bob always was a glutton for love. Unlike other horses that could take it or leave it, Bob lived for it. Ivy absentmindedly began stroking him again, her eyes focused off in the distance. “Mom found her outside. Iris had thought she ought to clean off her own front steps after that snowstorm the night of my parent’s party. I swear, her stubbornness is going to get her killed.”
She focused back on him, a small smile on her lips. “We McLains excel at a
lot of things, but stubbornness is truly our crowning achievement.”
A bark of laughter tore out of him at that. He guessed it was a real good thing that Iris had hooked up with Declan, then, because he had never met someone more stubborn than Declan. Not even his parents, and that was saying something.
“So when are you heading back to California?” he asked, and she cocked an eyebrow at him. He cursed inwardly again. She hadn’t told him she lived in California; they hadn’t had enough time to get that far during their one and only encounter.
“You spy a lot on girls you meet at anniversary parties?” she asked dryly, but then spared him from coming up with a suitable response. Which was good, because he had none. “I’ll be here another couple of days. I hadn’t planned on that originally, something that you seem to already know—”
He coughed, his cheeks turning red.
The cold was getting to him. That was it. He did not blush, so no other explanation made sense.
“—but since I’ve been here this long, why not stay a little longer, you know? I want to make sure Iris is okay before I head back home.”
Austin nodded, his mind going a million miles a minute. If she was staying on a little longer, well…
“While you’re here in town, want to go out sometime?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he felt like an idiot. She probably had a boyfriend back in California. As beautiful as she was, she probably had ten boyfriends back in California. She wouldn’t want to hang out with him.
And yet, she didn’t laugh him off, or ridicule the idea. She didn’t even gently let him down. Instead, she just cocked her head to the side and said contemplatively, “And if I said yes, where would you take me?”
Oh shit.
Since he hadn’t exactly planned on asking her out, he most certainly didn’t have a specific place in mind. “Somewhere” wasn’t going to work as an answer. He scrambled, trying to come up with something.
“The bells concert!” he said triumphantly, thrilled that his brain had come up with something better than, “Ummmm…” which was originally all that it was supplying him with. “The annual bells concert at the Methodist Church. I didn’t get to go the last couple of years, and I’d love to have someone to attend with me.”
The truth was, it was awkward as hell to go out to public events like concerts by himself, and going with Declan would seem too much like they were dating, which would send all sorts of wrong signals to this tiny mountain town. So, he’d stayed away from pretty much every public event in Long Valley since he’d moved there, despite the fact that this left him lonely most nights.
Which he liked. Of course. He didn’t want to find a girlfriend. He was happy being alone.
Somehow, the idea of going to the bells concert with Ivy made him even happier, though.
She stood there for a long while, staring at him, her eyes inscrutable, until she finally nodded. “Okay,” she said softly.
“Okay,” he repeated, half stunned. He’d somehow expected her to say no, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was almost as surprised by her answer as he was.
He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, so he swung up on Bob to ride away before she could change her mind. “See you at 6:30 at your parent’s house?” When she nodded her assent, he wheeled Bob around and headed back out of the clearing, a tuneless whistle echoing through the snowy forest as he made his way back to the trailhead.
Today was turning out to be a pretty damn good day.
Chapter 5
Ivy
Today was turning out to be a horrible day. Ivy paced the confines of her childhood bedroom, feeling the walls closing in on her.
First, she’d been drawing the Goldfork Mountains, and she just didn’t do that kind of thing. She’d made it a point years ago not to draw landscapes, and certainly not to draw Idaho landscapes. She was a California girl, dammit, and did her best to pretend she’d never even heard of Idaho most days.
But then, on top of that slip-up, she’d said yes to Austin’s offer to go to the bells concert, a concert she’d spent most of her teenage years doing her best to avoid.
The last time she’d gone was in the 9th grade. Tiffany and Ezzy had sat behind her and had pulled her hair anytime they thought no one was looking. She’d turned around and glared at them, but they’d simply send her angelic stares, shrugging their shoulders dramatically. She hadn’t wanted to whine to her parents – what kind of a baby whined to their parents about someone pulling their hair – so she’d suffered through the concert quietly.
She always mysteriously had a headache the night of the bells concert after that.
Going back there was…
She shivered, feeling a little ill at the thought. That night had been the start of the bullying – Tiffany and Ezzy had never been best buds with her, and they’d teased her a few times previously, but that night was when it really began, and didn’t stop until she walked off the auditorium stage the night of graduation and never looked back.
They were, in a roundabout way, the reason why she was in the predicament she was in. If she hadn’t pushed herself to be successful, or at least appear to—
She heard thumping up in the attic, sidetracking her from her thoughts. Was her dad cleaning the attic? She smiled sadly to herself. That was so like her dad – keeping himself busy while waiting for something useful to do. He wasn’t one to sit around, waiting for the world to come to him.
If he couldn’t fix Iris and make her all better, well dammit, he’d clean out the attic.
She wandered out into the hallway, working her way around the fold-down ladder, extending from the ceiling. She could see dust motes dancing in the air of the attic. Truthfully, it was probably a disaster up there, and deserved to be cleaned, whether or not Iris was in the hospital.
“Iv—! Oh hi, there you are,” he said, spotting her as he peered down through the opening. “Look at what I found.” He extended out a dusty plastic container to her, and she climbed up onto the lowest rung of the ladder so she could grab it. “Your art supplies from high school,” he proudly announced, as if she couldn’t already tell what it was she was holding.
“Thanks, Dad,” she said, feeling a little choked up at the sight. She cleared her throat. She looked up at him, peering down through the attic door opening, cobwebs stuck in his hair and spread across his shirt, giving him the appearance of having lived in – or at least decorated – a haunted house. She smiled a little. “Hey, do you think it’d be okay if I went back to Boise tomorrow?”
When Iris had first woken up in the hospital, she’d been frantic with worry about not telling Declan she was there. She’d become so agitated, the head nurse had told the McLains that they were only allowed to have one visitor in the room at a time, so they’d have to decide among them who that’d be.
Mom had won that prize, of course, and hadn’t left Iris’ side since then. Dad and Ivy had driven back to Sawyer to wait the doctors out. It had been four days – surely they’d allow someone else in there by now.
“Yeah, the doctor has said that we can start having two visitors starting tomorrow. After I find Iris’ teddy bear, I was going to drive over there and spell your momma so she could come back home and sleep in a real bed tonight. Tomorrow, though, I know she’ll want to come back. You could hitch a ride with her then.”
Ivy had to hide her laugh at the thought of Iris getting her teddy bear from childhood delivered to her at the hospital. It was sweet of her dad to think of it, although Iris, at age 35, was a little old for stuffed animals.
It made her dad feel useful, though, and that was what mattered.
“Thanks for the supplies, Dad. Oh, and I’m going to be going to the bells concert tonight over at the Methodist Church.” She tried to slip it in there casually, as if it was no big deal, but of course, her dad wasn’t fooled in the slightest.
“Are you going with someone in particular?”
She shifted the heavy box to her other
hip, trying to ignore the fact that she was 32 years old and having to report her dating activities to her father.
This is why she could never move back in with her parents, no matter how poor she became.
Also, why did she have to have this conversation while her father was hanging out above her in the ceiling? Her neck was really starting to cramp up. She rolled it side to side as she mumbled, “Austin Bishop.” She looked back up at her dad. “He was at the party. You’ve met him?”
“Oh, the new extension agent? He took over after Mr. Snow retired. Nice kid.”
Ivy did roll her eyes at that. Austin looked about her age, although she hadn’t actually quizzed him on the topic, but regardless, he was a little old to be referred to as a “kid.” But, her dad would always consider someone her age to be a child, no matter what.
Something she was well aware of.
“Well anyway, he invited me and I thought it’d be fun to go. Something to do to keep my mind off…things,” she ended vaguely, but her dad knew what she meant.
That comment didn’t need any clarification. Not right now.
He nodded. “Does this mean that you’re not going to be struck by a sudden headache right before the concert?”
She gaped up at him in surprise. “Dad!” she choked out through her laughter and he just grinned down at her and shrugged.
“Just because I’m your dad doesn’t mean I’m completely unobservant, despite what your teenage soul probably thought. Was it those two girls?”
Ivy’s breath caught and she just stared at him, the laughter gone. He’d known? She’d tried so hard to hide all of that from her parents. Pride had demanded that she had. “Yeah,” she said softly.
“I never knew what to do about them,” he admitted. “I wish I could’ve…” His voice trailed off into nothingness, and then he harrumphed his way back onto stable ground. Discussing feelings was never her father’s strong suit. “Well anyway, I need to find that teddy bear so I can drive to Boise before it gets too dark outside.” He disappeared from view, heading back into the depths of the attic.
