She watched in fascination as one of the girls fairly flew past on thin silver blades, the hat snatched off her head by an eager young man who raced off with it. The shrieking girl chased after him, her long auburn hair trailing behind her like a veil, her face flushed with the chase. Overcome with a sense of nostalgia, Quinn sighed. Hadn't she once been the girl who had streaked determinedly across the lake in pursuit of the boy who had challenged her to ignore him, knowing full well she would chase him until he permitted himself to be caught? And would not the chase end in one of the more remote spots where the boy could steal a hurried kiss, branding her with cold lips before leading, her back to the chain that was reforming, where they would replay the same scene over and over until dark? Oh yes, Quinn knew the drill quite well.
Quinn wondered where her old skates might be, and if she could possibly talk her sisters into joining her on the lake one afternoon over the holiday week. It would be fun to soar across the ice again, she thought, as she dug into her jacket pocket and fished out a crumpled dollar bill. She walked the rock-hard ground to the little refreshment stand, where an acne- pocked girl sold hot chocolate under a green and white painted wooden sign that announced All Sales Benefit Larkspur Youth Groups. Quinn held up one finger and the girl poured a cup of steaming liquid, the top of which she zapped with a fat dollop of whipped cream before slapping a lid on and nudging it across the narrow counter to Quinn.
Late afternoon was rapidly fading into dusk, and several of the skaters had come to the edge of the lake to take those first awkward steps onto the snow- packed ground. It was getting near time for the young skaters to head home before dark. Several of the teenage girls called to their younger siblings, bending over to untie skates or to help the small ones with their boots. The girl whose hat had earlier been snatched, who had laughed and flirted while retrieving it, now leaned down to assist her little sister. The scene was so achingly familiar. It could have been Quinn there, leaning over to help a struggling Liza, so many years ago...
There were some things that never seemed to change.
It was time for Quinn to head home, too, and she turned her back on the lake and walked the short distance to her car, her hands warmed by the hot drink. She shivered as she got into the car and turned on the heater. It was a cold day, and the temperature was dropping rapidly along with the failing sun. She made a U-turn onto Russell's Lake Road and paused briefly, her eyes locked on the little green house that was set back from the road. That same little green house she'd been trying to ignore since she had decided to stop at the lake.
The shabby garage that had once stood at the end of the gravel driveway was gone, as was the family that had once lived there, the boy and the girl and their grandmother, and sometimes their father, when he remembered where he had left them. Quinn had been to the house only once, when the grandmother had died. Sixteen years old and totally in love with the boy, Quinn had arrived with flowers and a cake, much as she had seen her mother do when there had been a death in a neighbor's family. She had stood on the cracked front steps and knocked on the door feeling very grown up. The boy had opened the door just enough for Quinn to see that the house held little furniture, and that his father had passed out in the one old chair in the dingy living room. The boy had seemed embarrassed that she had come, and had not invited her in. Later, at the old woman's funeral, Quinn had stood between her father and mother, watching the boy's face twist with loss, with pain, as the light coffin was lowered into the ground, all the while aching to put her arms around him and comfort him.
Well, Quinn reminded herself brusquely, that boy is long gone, and so is the girl I was when I loved him.
Quinn completed her turn crisply and headed back toward town and the road that would take her home.
The Land Rover crunched effortlessly over the occasional patch of dirty, compacted snow that covered the five miles of narrow gravel road leading toward the Big Snowy range. Just to the left of the slight bluff about half a mile ahead Quinn could see the lights from the ranch house burning yellow against the snow-covered hills. She could almost smell the pot roast her mother had promised to make for dinner, the cranberry-raisin pie there would be for dessert. Her mouth watering, she headed for home.
Chapter Two
Caleb McKenzie stood on the porch of the cabin that had been built by a great-great-uncle over a hundred years ago, and stared out into the stillness of the night. From somewhere in the pines beyond the cabin there was a dense rustling, and he wondered what manner of beast might be lurking in the darkness. There had been a time, once upon a time, when he would have recognized the night moves of the creatures who shared the mountain, but not anymore. He'd been gone too long, had spent too many years in the cities of the East. He wasn't even sure that he knew what inhabited the mountain these days, what had been driven out or endangered during the years since he had left Larkspur.
From across the rugged distance of the hills he could see the amber lights from the Hollister ranch, tiny bright candles in the night, down in the valley below. For a split second he had considered stopping there when he had driven past two days earlier. Hap and Catherine Hollister would have welcomed him, he felt certain. As the local Little League coach, it had been Hap who taught Cale how to hit and how to throw, how to field. Cale and Sky Hollister had been best friends back then, had played on the same baseball team, and had spent endless hours practicing on the makeshift playing fieldkbehind the Hollisters' barn.
They could have played on the field down in Larkspur--as a town boy, it had been a long, dusty bike ride out to the ranch in the merciless heat of those Montana summers--but Sky's home had all the warmth that Cale's had lacked. With a truck driver father who spent his infrequent sober times on the road, and a mother who had walked out on all of them years ago, Cale and his younger sister, Valerie, had spent more time in the homes of their friends growing up than they had in their own. Mrs. Hollister had always welcomed Cale to their table, and Coach Hollister, who had seen the extraordinary athletic ability latent in the boy, had spent endless hours coaching him, teaching him. By the time Cale was in high school, he knew that, barring injury, a career playing professional baseball awaited him. He wondered where he would have been had it not been for Coach Hollister's tutoring. Probably not, he reckoned, playing in the majors.