Aspen Gold (27 page)

Your mother and I have to talk to you."

"This sounds serious," she mocked and glanced at her mother. She sat on the sofa, as always very stiff and straight, her face expressionless like a porcelain doll with blue eyes and rich brown hair. Her lips were pressed in that firm line Kit knew so well, a look that invariably preceded a lecture in something. "Don't tell me." Kit plunked herself down on the chair with her mittens. "Mrs. Westcott called to complain--"

"This isn't about Mrs. Westcott," her father broke in again, that strange, terse edge in his voice startling her. This time Kit waited for him to explain what it was about. "Your mother's leaving. She's going to her cousin's in California."

"California! Mother, that's fabulous. When are you going? How long will you be gone? God, I'd love to go. It will be so sunny and warm there. When are you coming back?"

"I'm not."

Kit opened her mouth, but she was too stunned to get anything to come out. "What do you mean you're not?" she finally protested in disbelief. "What are you talking about?"

She looked from one to the other, trying to figure out what was going on and refusing to let that little suspicion in the back of her mind take form.

"Your mother's ... going to live there." Her father faltered and stared at his hands, linking his fingers together and curling them tight. "There's no easy way to say this, Kit--"

"For God's sake, Clint, just tell her,"

her mother said and rose to her feet.

"Tell me what?" Kit demanded, already afraid of the answer.

"Your father and I are getting a divorce," she replied.

"No," Kit whispered the word, then repeated it more stridently as she jumped to her feet, fighting back tears. "No, you can't. You can't do this. You can't leave!" But she saw her mother was deaf to her appeals and she swung around to her father. "Dad, talk to her. Make her change her mind. Make her stay."

"Kit, stop it," her mother said harshly.

"Nothing can be said that will change my mind. Not by you or your father. This was not an easy decision, but it's made. Please try to accept it."

"No," she sobbed, then turned and ran blindly from the house.

She made it as far as the porch steps and leaned against the post, sobbing uncontrollably. It couldn't be true. It couldn't be happening. They couldn't get a divorce. They couldn't.

Her legs buckled and she sank to the steps, an arm wrapped around the post, her body shaking with the horrible pain of her crumbling world. She didn't hear the front door open and close, or the footsteps crossing the porch. But she felt the weight of a hand on her shoulder and looked up at her father's tear-streaked face, mirroring the anguish of her own.

"I'm sorry, kitten," he whispered and lowered himself onto the steps beside her.

"It's all my fault, isn't it?" She tried to sniffle back the tears.

"No. No, it isn't."

"Yes, it is." She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. "She didn't want me to quit dance class. The piano, I haven't been practicing the way I should. My room's always a mess. I'll sell Sundance.

I'll help around the house, keep my room clean, do the dishes. I won't tie up the phone talking to Angie. I promise, I'll--"

"Don't, Kit. Don't do this to yourself." He dragged her to him and pressed her face against the wool of his shirt, his arms hugging her tight and rocking her against him. "It's not you. I swear this has nothing to do with you. It's a problem between your mother and me, one that started before you were even born."

"I don't understand," she protested. "There's got to be something you can do about it."

"We've tried, Kit. We've both tried."

She hated the defeat in his voice, and pulled back to glare at him.

"Don't you love her anymore?"

His eyes filled up with tears. "Yes," he murmured thickly. "Yes, I love her. I love her so much it hurts." His hand trembled as it touched the tears on her cheeks. Then gently he brushed the hair back from her face.

"Then there's got to be something you can do," she insisted. "Some way to make her stay. Maybe if you'd promise to quit drinking, if you'd stop seeing Bonnie Blaisdell--"

He blanched. "You know about her?"

She looked down at the front of his shirt, feeling sick, ashamed, embarrassed. "When Bannon brought me home from the game last week, I saw your truck parked behind her house.

I knew it wasn't the first time," she admitted, her voice tight. "Kids talk, Dad."

"Oh, God, I'm sorry, Kit." He turned his head away, his arms loosening.

"Why, Dad? Why do you see her if you love Mom so much?"

For a moment, he just shook his head as if there was no answer. Then he lifted it to look at her.

"How old are you now--sixteen?" She nodded, although he didn't seem to notice. "I guess maybe you're old enough to understand." He turned his gaze to the mountains and stared off into the distance. "Your mother is a beautiful woman, Kit. The most beautiful woman I've ever seen. When I was your age, our class went on a school trip. We went to a museum in Denver. There was a vase there. An incredibly beautiful vase, centuries old. The blues and greens and gold in it were so vivid, so rich," he murmured, as if seeing it again in his mind's eye.

"They had it displayed in a case, enclosed in glass. You couldn't touch it. All you could do was look at it." He paused and glanced sideways at Kit. "That's never been enough for me. When I see something beautiful, I want to touch it, hold it in my hands--in my arms. Your mother ... she never could stand that. She tried but ..."

Awkwardly Kit wrapped her fingers around his hand, letting him know he didn't have to say any more; she understood now why he saw Bonnie Blaisdell. "Either way, Mom's hurt."

He didn't reply. He just squeezed her hand tightly and held on.

"Kit." Paula had repeated her name a second time before Kit heard her.

"Sorry." She blinked once to rid herself of those vivid recollections of the past, then met Paula's faintly amused gaze. "I wasn't listening. What did you say?"

"Nothing important really. I merely remarked that I thought it was unusual that you stayed with your father. Most daughters go with their mothers when their parents divorce."

"They left the choice to me. At the time, I thought my father needed me more. Maybe he did.

I'm not sure anymore." She lifted her shoulders, indicating her uncertainty.

"Anyway, Dad and I were so much alike I'd always been closer to him. And I think I blamed my mother for not being the kind of woman he needed--and for hurting him so much. I never considered that maybe she couldn't help it."

It was something she'd wondered about lately, since her father died. At sixteen, there'd been so much she didn't know. Maturity and experience now told her that counseling might have helped her mother overcome her aversion to sex, although Kit suspected Elaine Masters was too proud and too private a person to have sought help. Now it would never be known whether the cause was psychological or an early symptom of multiple sclerosis.

However, Kit did know that, like her father, she'd never be satisfied to love at a distance either. She needed to touch, to kiss, to hold, to give her love the same as he had.

And like him, she'd learned that love could bring immense joy--and it could bring immense pain. It could make you hurt so much that you started to believe it was possible for a heart to literally break.

The past. She was thinking too much about the past.

Paula's cup clinked in its saucer, providing a much-needed distraction. "What I wouldn't give for a maid to unpack those suitcases," she said on a sigh.

"Dream on." In one long swallow, Kit drained the tea from her cup, then set it and the saucer aside. "Unfortunately neither dreaming nor sitting here will accomplish that--or all the other things I have to do."

As she pushed out of the chair, her glance fell on the old rolltop desk in the corner next to her father's gun case. With the entire afternoon ahead of her, Kit decided that after she called Maggie to check on her mother, she'd make it her first project to go through all the papers and records in the desk. Hopefully she'd run across something that would give her a realistic idea of the ranch's worth. For the life of her, she didn't understand how John's figure and Bannon's could be so far apart.

The sun sank lower behind the mountains, tinting the high, thin clouds into gossamer veils of amethyst, fuchsia, and vermillion. The chill of a high mountain night was already in the air when Kit carried her coffee onto the front porch.

Paula strolled over to the swing and draped herself over the length of its seat in a graceful sprawl, making a sleek and elegant picture in her quilted lounging pajamas of dark cocoa velvet, the deep color contrasting perfectly with the vibrant red of her hair.

Delicately she smothered a yawn and took a sip of her coffee, then snuggled deeper in the swing. "I have a feeling I'll have absolutely no trouble at all sleeping tonight."

"You're becoming acclimatized to the high altitude," Kit observed, then gave in to a surging restlessness and moved to the porch rail.

Perching on it, she hooked a denim-clad leg over the rail for balance and gazed across the valley's empty pastures.

"Maybe I am. My headache's almost gone." Sighing, Paula curled both hands around her cup and tilted her head back to rest it against the swing's chains. "It feels like it's been an incredibly long day."

"It was definitely a long afternoon." With a kick of her leg, Kit swung off the rail and crossed to stand at the top of the steps. "After sitting at the desk, sorting through Dad's papers all afternoon, I know I could never stand to work in an office every day."

She felt some satisfaction in knowing she'd accomplished the task, even though she hadn't found anything that could give her a clearer idea of the ranch's value. But that didn't compensate for the feeling she'd been caged all day, left with a lot of excess energy and no outlet for it.

A breeze curled down from the mountains and rustled through the aspen grove, the leaves shimmering with this new movement of air. Paula shivered a little. "It's getting cold out."

Kit lifted her face to the invigorating bite of the breeze. "It feels good," she said, recalling that she'd never minded the cold.

"Your blood is obviously thicker than mine."

"Probably." She wandered over to one of the chairs and gave the back of it a push, sending it swaying to and fro on its rockers. It didn't help, and she turned, facing the barn. The chestnut gelding stood in the corral, contentedly munching on the hay that had been thrown out to him. In that instant, the thought formed in her head.

"As beautiful as the sunset is," Paula said, rising from the swing, "I'm going to drink the rest of my coffee inside--where it's warm. Are you coming?"

"No," she said, the decision made. "I'm going for a ride. Want to come? Sundance will carry double."

Paula stopped halfway to the front door and stared at her with widened eyes. "You're going to ride a horse? It's almost dark."

"I love riding at night. It's my favorite time."

"Not mine. In fact, I'm not that fond of horseback riding at any time. I'll just stay here and read or watch television," she said, then hesitated, concern rising in her expression. "You will be all right?"

"Of course." Kit grinned. "Leave the porch light on for me. I might be late."

"You're crazy."

Aware that when the sun went down so did the temperature, Kit grabbed a jacket and gloves from the house and headed for the barn.

The light had faded to a ruby char in the west when she rode the gelding out of the corral, leaving the gate open. The mountains cut a black, cardboard outline against the purpling sky. The gelding was fresh and eager to travel. At a canter, they crossed the ranch yard and Kit pointed the chestnut at the aspen grove and the narrow trail leading into the mountains.

The ermine-barked trunks of the aspen trees stood out like slender white poles amid the deepening shadows. Kit found the old game trail and swung the chestnut onto it, dry leaves crackling beneath its hooves. Recognizing the path, the gelding pulled eagerly at the bit.

Kit knew the trail as well as her mount and let the horse travel along it at an unchecked pace.

Beyond the stand of aspens, the trail began to climb, winding up the ridge. Darkness swallowed them as they passed into the shadowed aisle walled by towering pines. Here, a carpet of pine needles, made by a hundred years of falling, muffled almost completely the sound of the chestnut's strides.

For a time Kit could hear only the gelding's snorting breaths, the jangle of bit and creak of saddle leather. Gradually her senses became attuned to the night and she caught the sigh of the wind in the trees, the fragmented murmurings of a distant stream, the whir of a bird's wings, and the rustling of night creatures in the brush.

Leaving the pines, the trail became rougher, steeper. She gave the surefooted gelding its head, letting it pick its own way and its own pace. Never once did she feel any apprehension, not of the trail or the cloaking darkness.

At the crest of the ridge, she pulled the chestnut in and let it have a good blow while she took in the view. A crescent moon cast a pale light at the earth, letting the deep indigo sky sparkle with its dusting of stars--stars that looked close enough to reach out and touch. She could make out the jagged peaks of the surrounding mountains, the valley below and the quicksilver gleam of a stream running through it.

She smiled. This view from the heights was her kind of country, and she loved it. The isolation, the long distances, and the mystery of the star-swept sky overhead, she'd been born into it and she could conceive no other land as satisfying. She felt the wildness of the mountains flow around her, seeping into her bones and her mind, easing her tension. In the night, there was a timeless swing, a vast rhythm that caught her and carried her away from the little things.

In the night there was an undertone of life that was without pause, without end.

She breathed in the chill air, her sharpened senses savoring the wind's keen edge, the great silence of the mountains, and the deep, deep glitter of the stars. The chestnut gelding nickered softly and swung its head toward the trail, pricking its ears in the direction of the winks of light two miles distant, the ranch lights of Stone Creek. Smiling, Kit touched a heel to the horse and the gelding moved out eagerly toward them.