The You I Never Knew

by Susan Wiggs

  The boy blew on his hands to warm them. “You guys know each other?”

  “Reckon we do,” said Sam, his gaze never leaving Michelle. Holy Christ, Michelle Turner. When he had first met her, she was the prettiest thing he’d ever seen in his life—long yellow ponytail, big blue eyes, a smile he liked better than air. Now she wasn’t pretty anymore. She was beautiful, the way a goddess is beautiful, the way the moon is beautiful. Perfectly formed, luminous, chilly, and… distant. That was the word for it. Distant.

  Where’ve you been, Michelle?

  The unexpected quake of emotion pissed him off. He didn’t need this, didn’t want the memories she stirred up. Turning away from her, he tucked the card back in his pocket. “Look, kid, forget about the trailer.”

  The boy let out an explosive breath of relief. “Hey, thanks. That’s pretty cool of you—”

  “He’ll be at your place tomorrow.” Michelle’s voice was flat, neutral. Sam had no idea what he was seeing in her eyes, her face. A stranger. Michelle had become a stranger. The person who had once been the sole keeper of every hope and dream he’d ever had was now a complete mystery to him.

  “You don’t have to—” he began.

  “Yes, he does, and he will.”

  “Mo-om,” the kid said.

  What an annoying little shit. Sam got prickly hearing some kid call Michelle “Mom.” He felt even more weird thinking that somewhere in the world there was a guy the kid called “Dad.” So where was he? Sam wondered. He knew he wouldn’t ask.

  “Now,” she said, “where’s your ‘place’?”

  He reluctantly held out the card. Their hands touched as she took it and stuck it in her pocket. A cold, impersonal brush of the fingers. A stranger’s touch. What was he expecting? Fireworks? Electricity? Christ, violin music?

  She wore a thick, artsy-looking ring that was more sculpture than jewelry. A wedding band? He couldn’t tell. He wouldn’t ask.

  “I’ll have Cody there in the morning,” she said. “Is nine o’clock all right?”

  “Yeah, okay. Nine o’clock.”

  “Mom,” the kid said. “Do I really have to—”

  “Get in the Rover, Cody,” she said brusquely. “And I’ll drive.”

  Chapter 5

  Michelle shivered against the cold as she walked across the guest compound to the main house at Blue Rock Ranch. The moon was out, dazzling above the peaks of the Swan Range. She could see all the lunar craters as if through the lens of a telescope. Icy silver light poured invasively across the snow-covered meadows.

  She experienced a gut reaction she hadn’t felt in a very long time. It was a strange, impossible-to-forget combination of pain and ecstasy that always preceded inspiration. Artist’s inspiration. Joseph Rain, who had been her teacher that long-ago summer, called it the touch of the damned, because it hurt, it burned, it was beautiful.

  When was the last time she’d felt this desire, this ache? This sharp need to create an image, to speak in color and shape when there were no words?

  She couldn’t remember, because she had learned to squash the feeling as quickly as it came over her. She didn’t have time. She was too busy at work, too busy with Cody and Brad.

  But here? Would she be too busy here? The thought of actually having time on her hands frightened her, it really did. Back in Seattle she took a certain comfort in having so much to do that she never found time to think.

  At the moment she couldn’t do anything but think. Sam McPhee was here. He had a ranch called, according to the business card he’d given her, Lonepine. It was located up the old logging road between two hanging lakes. A guy who wasn’t supposed to amount to anything had a place of his own. And first thing in the morning, she had to take his son to see him.

  She hugged herself, staring up at the white winter moon, wondering if he’d guessed yet. Wondering if he would stay up late tonight, thinking about the past.

  The garden gazebo rose like an ice sculpture in the middle of the front yard. She had been sitting on the steps of that gazebo, drawing, the first time she met Sam. She remembered the quiet of that afternoon, the scratch of her pencil on the Firebrand tablet she held in her lap. Joseph Rain had called Montana a “place of great breathing,” his apt phrase for the expansiveness of the landscape.

  “Nice picture,” said a voice behind her.

  She froze, charcoal pencil in hand, at the sound of that voice. It was nice, a baritone, but youthful, too.

  “You think so?” she asked, getting up. And it was him, just as she had suspected—hoped, prayed—it would be. The boy from the training arena. She’d spotted him the day she arrived. Her first glimpse of him had been from a distance.

  He’d been working in a round pen with a mare on a lunge rope. She had been watching from the porch. He wore scuffed boots and blue jeans, a plaid shirt and battered cap with the Big Sky Feed Company logo on it. He was tall and rangy, like Gavin’s favorite trail horse. She knew, to the very depths of her eighteen-year-old soul, that no one in the entire universe had ever looked so good in a pair of Levi’s.

  Up close, she noticed that he had sandy brown hair, a lean, suntanned face, and eyes the color of her birthstone.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he replied. “Haven’t had much call to look at art, but that’s a fine picture.”

  She stuck her pencil behind her ear, suddenly self-conscious in her cutoffs and cropped T-shirt. “I’m Michelle.”

  “I know. I’ve seen you around with your sketchbook.”

  He noticed. Hallelujah, he noticed.

  Michelle had been drawing ever since she was old enough to hold a crayon. It was all she ever wanted to do, and she excelled at it, blazing like a comet through high school classes and special courses she took outside of school. Her inspiration and talent had served her well when she went to Montana to spend that precollege year with her father. Montana seemed so huge and limitless that she got into the habit of drawing constantly just to feel a measure of control over something so overwhelmingly vast and wild. She drew everything: the placid bovine face of a cow; a line of trees along the creek with the stars coming out behind them; the silhouette of a mare and her foal on the slope behind the paddock; a common loon nesting in a marsh.

  “I never go anywhere without my sketchbook,” she said.

  “I’m Sam. Sam McPhee. I work for your dad.” He grinned, and her heart began to melt. If she looked down, she figured she’d see it in a puddle like hot fudge at her feet.

  “I know.” She grinned back, hoping her neck didn’t go all splotchy the way it usually did when she blushed.

  “So you’re an artist?” he asked. Not with the hefty skepticism a lot of people exhibited when she told them her ambition, but with genuine interest.

  “I want to be.” She gestured at the sketch. “This is practice. I want to paint for real.”

  “You mean like on an easel with brushes and a palette and a beret and stuff?”

  She laughed. “Exactly. Well, maybe not the beret.”

  “So do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Paint for real. Don’t just say you’re going to. You can’t be an artist if you don’t paint, right?”

  “Guess not.” She scuffed her foot against the gazebo steps. “You ever heard of Joseph Rain?”

  “Sure,” Sam said. “He eats at the café where my mom works. I heard he lives out on the Flathead reservation, but he’s a recluse.”

  “Well, he’s just about the most famous painter in the West,” she explained. “I came here to study with him.” Her father had arranged it all. Though the artist rarely accepted students, Gavin had sent him a box of her sketches and attached a very large check. Mr. Rain had kept the sketches, returned the check, and agreed to work with her—for a fee, not a bribe.

  “Yeah? I’d heard he was an artist or something.”

  “He did a series of paintings for the National Trust.” In her mind’s eye she could picture them—deep burning emotional scenes that haunted her
long after she had walked away from them. “I’m lucky he agreed to be my teacher.”

  “Is that the best offer you’ve had all summer?”

  “So far.” She dropped her sketchbook. Klutz, she thought.

  Both she and Sam reached for it, their hands touching. He gave an easy laugh, keeping her hand in his.

  The sound of Sam McPhee, laughing. The feel of his hand, touching her. These were the first things about him that she had loved. In the years that ensued, they were the things she remembered more vividly and more frequently than she wanted to.

  She wished she had never come back. How would she bear the beauty of this place with its pure light, its slashing cold, and now Sam McPhee? Gritting her teeth, she let herself into the main house. When she stepped inside, she remembered her first visit here, how grand and solid everything had looked. Back then, she’d had her own room upstairs. Now she and Cody occupied a guesthouse. Gavin thought Cody would feel more comfortable in his own space.

  “I’ll be right out,” Gavin called from somewhere upstairs. “Make yourself a drink.”

  She crossed the living room—a Ralph Lauren ad in 3-D—and stepped behind the wet bar. On a polished shelf, she found a heavy crystal highball glass and shook some ice from the undersized freezer. As she perused the bottles of exotic, expensive whiskey and liqueur, she tried to get her thoughts in some sort of order.

  She tended to put things into compartments. Here, in this box—worries about Cody. She spent a lot of time sifting through them, never getting to the bottom, because every day he came up with a new challenge, from asking to get his eyebrow pierced to wanting permission to go to an overnight rock concert.

  In another box—work. The agency liked her because she did good work and kept her clients happy. This spring, she would make partner and would earn more money than she ever dreamed of. The other partners lived in fear that she would leave them for a bigger, more lucrative firm, taking her clients with her. But why go elsewhere? To draw bigger, more lucrative ads for fertilizer and tampons?

  Another box—Brad. After three years together, they hovered in the same spot where they had begun. They’d bought side-by-side units in a tony Seattle town-house complex, their outdoor decks divided by a wall of cedar planks. They were socially compatible. Sexually compatible. Financially compatible. Rough when it came to Cody, because he and Brad didn’t get along.

  Now she had a couple of other boxes under construction. Her father, whose life depended on her giving him one of her kidneys, took up a lot of space in her thoughts. For most of her life, he had ignored her, and only when his survival hung in the balance did he acknowledge her existence. A psychiatrist would have a field day with the two of them, she reflected wryly. Sharing their flesh, an organ, the mysterious life force—so damned symbolic. And—she kept telling herself not to think this but she couldn’t help it—it was icky. There, thought Michelle. I’m a terrible person. Acting like Mother Teresa on the outside, while the coward inside trembled in horror at the ordeal to come.

  And now Sam. Good God, Sam McPhee.

  “I don’t need a drink,” she muttered under her breath, regarding the array of bottles. “I need a twelve-step program.”

  “Try the Booker’s. Used to be my favorite.”

  She whirled around, startled. “Daddy. I didn’t hear you come down.”

  He winked, looking spruce in a thick terry-cloth robe and leather slippers. “Light on my feet.”

  Obediently, she poured a splash of Booker’s over some crushed ice. The first sip brought tears to her eyes. “That’s lighter fluid, Dad.”

  “Good, huh?”

  She coughed a little, feeling the rich amber liquid burn her throat. “You want something?”

  He held up a tumbler. “My trusty cranberry juice. I’ve been on restriction for a long time.”

  A long time. When had he first fallen sick? How long had he suffered with no one to talk to about what was happening to him? Michelle didn’t know him well enough to ask.

  They sat together in the sunken living room. Rustic millionaire, she mentally classified it. Muted evergreen-and-burgundy plaid, peeled lodgepole pine, a massive fieldstone fireplace. She stared intently at the flames lapping at a big log and sipped her single-barrel bourbon.

  “So here I am,” she said, hopelessly inane.

  “Here you are. My angel of mercy.”

  She blinked fast, taken aback by the bitterness in his voice. “You’re mad at me?”

  “Hell no, honey, I’m mad at the world. Have been ever since the frigging diagnosis. I failed the medical standard for renewing my pilot’s license.”

  “Daddy, I’m sorry.” Everyone knew how much flying meant to him. A week seldom went by that he didn’t take off, even for a little while, in his beloved airplane. He had brought her to Blue Rock for the first time in his vintage P-51 Mustang, modified to accommodate two seats, and she used to love flying with him.

  “Do you still have your plane?”

  “Yep. I keep the Mustang out at the Meridian County Air Park. And a biplane for stunts.” He held up his glass. “Can’t even have a drink with my long-lost daughter. The kidney specialist has some diet Nazi monitoring me almost twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Yeah, kept me off dialysis longer than it should have. The biggest culprit is protein—damned hard to stay away from. Cheating isn’t an option, either. If the kidneys have to work extra hard, it just hastens the breakdown. I guess that’s why I’m resentful. And because I wish I was brave enough to just shoot myself rather than take a goddamned organ from my own child.”

  “Stop it.” Michelle was starting to worry, trying not to show it. “We already agreed it’s the right thing to do.”

  He fell silent, staring at the fire in the grate. His famous profile was illuminated by kindly soft light. He still had the charisma that made him a beloved icon in the world of film and a stranger to his family. After a while he let out a heavy sigh. “Anyway—” he clinked his glass against hers “—welcome home, long-lost daughter.”

  “I was never lost, Daddy.”

  “You stayed away a long time.”

  “You should have invited me back.”

  “Didn’t think you’d want to come.” He rubbed his cheeks, looking no less handsome than ever. Lord, the man was an android. Dorian Gray with bigger shoulders. He never seemed to age. Even sick and white-haired, he appeared tanned and fit, mature yet ageless.

  “Dad, you should have asked me to come back. Before it was too late, got too awkward.”

  “What would you have said?”

  She laughed humorlessly into the crystal highball glass. “I’d have told you to piss off.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  They finished their drinks, and somewhere in the house a case clock struck eleven. All the things they weren’t saying to each other—about Cody, about the transplant, and now about the surprise cameo appearance of Sam McPhee—hung like cobwebs in the air between them. Why hadn’t Gavin told her the father of her child was in Crystal City?

  The prospect of an explosive, accusatory conversation held no appeal at this late hour. Without even speaking a word, they made a tacit agreement to avoid touchy subjects—for now.

  Gavin looked tired. Frighteningly tired. And she could see, hidden in the folds of his robe… something.

  “It’s a sac of dialysis fluid,” he said.

  Her cheeks heated. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

  “Not to worry. I don’t have much dignity left since I got sick.” He smiled, but there was a hardness in his face that gave away his fury and frustration. “The stuff in the sac flows through an abdominal shunt. Want to see?”

  “Dad, please.”

  “Okay, I apologize. I stare at it too, sometimes, like it belongs to someone else. Can’t believe my own body’s turned traitor on me.”

  They sat for long moments, sipping their drinks and watching the fire, not speaking. The silenc
e swelled. Only in the mountains in winter, Michelle reflected, did the quiet have this all-pervasive quality.

  Suddenly she realized what she and Gavin were doing. Another battle of wills. Who would admit to being tired first? Who would make the first move?

  No more games. She yawned elaborately, stretching her arms behind her head. “The Booker’s did the trick.”

  “Guess I’ll hit the hay, too.” Gavin got to his feet. He was too good an actor to look relieved, but she figured he was. “You sleep in, now, Michelle. Since I didn’t expect you until tomorrow, I didn’t make any plans.”

  “Plans?”

  He cleared his throat. “You know… appointments.”

  “Oh.” The impending procedure was becoming more grimly real to her with each passing moment. “We can talk about that tomorrow.”

  “You got everything you need in the guesthouse?”

  “It’s fine.” She stood, feeling awkward. “Thanks for stocking the fridge.” She wondered if she should kiss him good night. Self-consciously, she lifted up on tiptoe, gave him a peck on the cheek, and let herself out the front door.

  As she crossed the silent, starlit compound, she knew she wouldn’t be sleeping in tomorrow. She had to take Cody to work at Sam’s place. She had to figure out how to tell her son who Sam was without destroying him, without destroying them all.

  Sunday

  Chapter 6

  At 8:45, Sam heard the growl of a motor and the grind of tires over snow. Out in the yard, Scout, the Border collie who ruled the ranch, launched into a barking frenzy.

  Sam had taken Loretta Sweeney home early last night. He’d been up since six, and felt all jumpy in his gut; didn’t even want his morning coffee. Damn it, he was a grown man. The last thing in the world he should be doing was getting nervous over seeing an old girlfriend.

  Except that the words “old” and “girlfriend” didn’t seem to apply to Michelle. Though their love affair had burned like a forest fire half a lifetime ago, she didn’t seem old at all. Just… different. He remembered a girl with yellow hair and a quicksilver smile. Now she seemed far away and sort of fragile. But still so damned beautiful. And as for the girlfriend part—you didn’t call your first grand passion a “girlfriend.” The term was too inadequate to cover the delirium, the ecstasy, the sweaty palms and fevered dreams of that lost, intense season.