‘How come you guys are so dumb?’
Julia shrugged.
‘Anyhow,’ Amy went on, with great deliberation, ‘I’m going to the sleepover. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay.’
Julia called Connor that same evening and asked him bluntly what he was doing Friday night.
‘Well, I’ve got a date.’
‘Oh.’ Julia was floored.
‘With you and Amy. Aren’t you coming over this weekend? ’
‘Amy’s got a birthday party.’ She swallowed. ‘It’s one of those sleepover deals, you know.’
‘Oh.’
‘So, I just wondered if you’d like to come over and I could cook us something nice to eat. Maybe cook outside if it stays dry.’
‘Just the two of us.’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. Was he teasing her? She couldn’t tell.
‘I mean, you don’t have to,’ she went on. ‘It was just, you know, an idea. Maybe you’ve got something else to do.’
‘What time?’
‘I have to drop her off at six.’
‘I’ll be there at seven.’
Friday was slow in coming, but at last it did and Julia spent most of it feeling like a high school kid preparing for a prom and trying to look nonchalant in front of Amy. She changed the sheets and put flowers on one of the bedside tables. On the other one were some framed family photographs of her and Amy and Ed; Julia made a mental note to remove them when old eagle eyes had gone off to her party. She went into town to buy the food and to get her legs waxed and her hair cut. When she came back Amy said how nice she looked and Julia tried to act all casual and said, well, you know, it was summer and all and short hair was cooler. Amy gave her a knowing smile and said the flowers in the bedroom looked nice too.
Earlier in the week Julia had gone shopping for a new dress but everything she saw was either too smart or too fussy. So she dug into the back of the closet and found the old pale blue dress that she had bought all those years ago for Connor’s surprise homecoming party. She took it to the cleaners and it came back looking like new.
She dropped Amy at Molly’s house in Missoula ten minutes early and nearly got caught speeding on the way home. The weather was clear and warm and so she had decided that they would eat outside. She had already set the table and put candles all around the rail of the deck and in the trees. They were going to have tuna steaks and salad and new potatoes and then raspberries and cream. Connor would probably want a beer, but she put wine and champagne in the refrigerator just in case. She lit the barbecue and hurried inside and upstairs.
She showered and dried off and stood in front of the mirror, smoothing herself all over with some fifty-dollar moisturizer that Linda had given her. Allowing for the first effects of gravity, for a woman in her mid-thirties (okay, mid-to-late thirties if you had to be picky about it), although she said it herself, she looked pretty darned fine. She spent an unseemly amount of time deciding what underwear to put on, all the while telling herself what a fool she was being and trying to calm her racing heart and succeeding only in making it race faster. Her shoulders and arms were tanned from the recent good weather, so she ended up choosing a plain cream satin bra and panties to match.
The dress looked great. A little eyeshadow and mascara, no lipstick. Well, maybe a little. No, better without. Turn on the bedside lamp. Would that look too calculating? Dear Lord, after the candles and flowers and champagne, if he hadn’t got the message by the time they got up here, they were in big trouble. What would Linda do? Maybe she should call her. No. Leave the lamp off. On. What the hell.
She went downstairs and put a Spencer Lewis CD on the stereo. It was called
A Sense of Place.
She remembered Connor commenting on it at the christening, at least she hoped that was the one. Whatever, the music was light and airy and somehow seemed right.
It was five after seven when she heard his truck turn into the driveway. She took a last look at herself in the hallway mirror, then stood perfectly still for a moment with her eyes closed.
‘Ed?’ she whispered. ‘It’s okay. Isn’t it? Tell me it’s okay.’
She took his silence as a yes.
Connor was wearing a salmon-colored denim shirt with white snap buttons and his old blue jeans looked as if they’d come straight from the laundry. He had on his best boots too and his best hat which he removed as he walked toward her across the gravel, never once taking his eyes off her. In his other hand he had a bottle of champagne and there was a bunch of blue cornflowers tucked under his arm. When he was still a short way off he stopped and stood looking at her, smiling his slow smile.
‘I remember that dress.’
‘Yeah. Well, you know, they’re all back there inside, Chuck Hamer and the boys, all ready to surprise you again. Just thought I’d warn you this time.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘You look so darn beautiful, I don’t know where else to look.’
Julia swallowed and smiled and held his gaze.
‘Well, why don’t you just keep on looking.’
He stepped toward her and handed her the flowers. ‘Thank you.’
Her voice was so small she could hardly hear it herself. She tried to stop herself trembling but couldn’t. He stepped still closer until they were almost touching and she could smell his clean soapy smell and saw him take a deep breath of her scent and lower his eyes to her lips. She opened her mouth a little, and moved it slowly up toward his and as their lips touched everything went still as if the world had stopped turning.
Their hands were too full of flowers and hats and bottles so all that touched were their mouths. Then, without a word, she turned and led him into the house. And though it wasn’t what she’d planned, it honestly wasn’t, she led him up the stairs and into her bedroom. She dropped the flowers on the bedside table beneath the others and to her horror saw that she had forgotten to remove the photos from the other table. God almighty, what an idiot she was. She thought about doing it now, but it didn’t seem like a good idea. If he had already noticed, he didn’t seem bothered.
He laid the champagne and his hat on the chair and turned to face her and they stood close, looking into each other’s eyes. He traced down the outside of her arms with his fingertips and then traced up along the insides too and then took her by the shoulders and bent his head and kissed her neck and beneath her chin and along the line of her jaw.
He turned her around and kissed the birthmark on the back of her neck and slowly unzipped her dress and let it slide down her body to the floor and smoothed his hands down her back and onto her hips and thighs. She turned and kissed him and he lifted his hand and brushed the tops of her breasts and then kissed them. As he reached behind and tried to unhook her bra she felt his body quake a little and she had to help him do it and watched him watching her as she slipped it from her shoulders.
She saw his eyes flicker beyond her to the photographs.
‘Connor, it’s okay.’ She kissed him gently. ‘It’s us now. We’re allowed.’
He nodded and she kissed him more deeply and soon she felt him loosen and the worry or guilt or whatever troubled him dissolve. He stroked the undersides of her breasts and then her nipples and then he lowered his head and did the same with his tongue and lips. She lifted his head and kissed him again while she unbuttoned his shirt and reached down and felt him already hard inside his pants.
‘Oh, Connor, I’ve wanted you for so long.’
‘I’ve wanted you too. I dreamed of you like this. A thousand times.’
‘I dreamed of you.’
He lowered her to the bed and she lay there and watched him taking off his boots and his clothes, his eyes fixed on her all the while without shame or shyness. The evening sun was angling in on him and she was struck by how very thin he was and how his pale skin bore many scars whose stories one day she would ask him to relate. When he was naked he knelt before her and ran his hands and then his lips all along the insides of her thighs and then he slowly slid off her panties and kissed her belly and opened her legs and kissed her there too.
She came almost as soon as he entered her, came in great spasms and waves that made her cry out and cry again and again. Then she felt him come too, deep inside her, as though at last he had found his place at the very center of her being, where he should always have been and where he now would be forever. And she started to sob and couldn’t stop, her whole body shuddering and the tears flooding and he lowered his head and kissed them and softly rolled his face in them to mingle them with his own.
‘Promise,’ she at last managed to whisper. ‘Promise you’ll never go away again.’
‘I promise.’
There was almost a foot of new snow and it scrunched and squeaked beneath her boots. The collies ran ahead, chasing each other in flurried circles among the trees, coming back every so often to check that she was still with them. The banks of the creek were plated with jutting overhangs of ice and the water between them curled with steam and ran slow and viscous as though of half a mind to turn into ice itself.
She followed the dogs through the willow scrub and the chokecherry along the bank, past the tangled wreckage of abandoned beaver pools and on and up and around the bend until the land flattened and opened and she could see all the way up the valley. And there they were, still a good half-mile away, coming at an easy walk along the creek toward her.
They were too wrapped up in their talking to have spotted her and she stood at the edge of the cottonwoods and watched them ride slowly toward her. Amy was wearing an old red woolen blanket coat and some battered leather chaps that Connor’s mother had given her. Her cowboy hat was an old one of Connor’s that he’d padded inside to fit her. It was almost as stained as the one he was wearing now with his old tan canvas Carhartt jacket. His horse was a pale buckskin and a little taller than the pretty brown and white paint he’d given Amy for Christmas. Riding side by side now with the mountains behind them they looked a regular pair of desperadoes.
The dogs blew Julia’s cover. They went racing away toward the horses and as soon as Connor saw them he looked beyond them and saw her and waved and so did Amy. Julia waved back and watched them quicken the horses to a trot and then to a lope, kicking snow over the dogs at their heels.
They slowed the horses as they drew near and reined them to a halt.
‘Mommy! We saw wolf tracks!’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah, way up past the old homestead.’
‘Well, you sure better be careful, dressed up in that red coat.’
They both laughed. Connor climbed down and walked toward her, leading his horse.
‘Hey, Mrs Ford, I thought you were supposed to stay tucked up in bed.’
‘On a day like this? Give me a break.’
He put his hand on the great dome of her stomach and kissed her on the lips.
‘Do you want to ride?’ Connor said. ‘I can lift you. You can ride sidesaddle.’
‘Sure, if you want me to have the baby right here and now.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Amy said.
Julia was eight months pregnant. They already knew it was a girl. They even knew what they were going to call her. Her first name would be Emily and the middle name Skye.
Amy rode on ahead now, letting the little horse splash through the icy shallows. Connor put his arm around Julia and walked her back beside the creek and up through the cottonwoods toward the house with the horse blowing softly behind.
She wondered sometimes what would or wouldn’t have happened if Amy hadn’t taken the initiative and gone to that sleepover party. The important things in life never happened by accident. But even with those things that were meant to be, sometimes you had to wait awhile and then maybe give them a little nudge.