and the one, shockingly vivid flashback, he had enjoyed
being around her students. Somehow they’d managed
to take him back to a time when hideous dreams didn’t
await every time he slept, when a Friday night date or
an exam had filled his world and the tragedies happening in other parts of the world had been headlines on Yahoo and not a landscape he couldn’t seem to escape.
He’d be sorry to see them go. But not as sorry as he’d
be that Fiona would be leaving as well, robbing him of the
anticipation he’d begun to feel on waking in the morning,
the erection he had to quell when he went to bed at night,
the color and life in between that had replaced his previous
days of nonstop work meant to keep him from thinking.
He wondered whether maybe it wasn’t just her. He’d
come to Thunder Mountain for quiet, hard physical
labor, unspoiled beauty and peace, believing they’d
work better than the drugs Army doctors wanted to prescribe. Maybe they had worked.
But he didn’t believe it. Fiona had awakened something nearly forgotten inside him. He would give almost anything to keep seeing her.
He could take a trip to Portland in a week or two.
Stay at his parents’ or his sister’s, give Fiona a call.
Good idea, John thought, ignoring the unease that had
him rolling over and punching the pillow into a new
shape. Yeah. He could do that. Just a short trip. His
parents would be thrilled to have him there for Thanksgiving. He could kill two birds with one stone.
Bad analogy. Not just words. Small frail bones.
Blood. Stillness.
Don’t think of it that way. He’d make his parents
happy, and get to see Fiona. Yeah. That’d work.
He finally slept, not dreamlessly but without throat-
clogging nightmares, and awakened in the early hours
of morning still aroused. Or, aroused again. A wisp of
memory suggested he’d had at least one good dream—
an erotic one.
He took coffee out onto the porch as he often did,
cupping his mug to keep his hands warm, watching the
forest around him gradually come into focus as the sky
lightened at first imperceptibly until finally it became
a pearl-gray shade that allowed the trees to acquire
sharp definition. And finally came color: a hint of pink,
as pearls sometimes had, then richer and richer colors
until they nearly hurt his eyes with their incandescence.
The blue of the sky leached the vivid colors away as
quickly as they’d been born, and morning had arrived.
For once, the spectacle failed to lift the heaviness in
his chest. More aware of the biting cold than usual,
John went back in.
The snowplows would come today. He realized he’d
been half-listening for the roar even though he knew the
highway department didn’t start work this early except
in emergencies.
He should get the kids out there right after breakfast,
shoveling in front of the shed so he could pull open a
door and get out the aluminum snowshoes he kept for
guests. He needed to go up and see how they’d left the
van and what kind of work was needed to get it back
on the road. The boys could come with him.
As first a couple of the kids and then Fiona came
downstairs for breakfast, John hid his regret.
She smiled at him, her gaze shy.
“Yeah, I’ll be surprised if the plow doesn’t make
it up here today,” he agreed with Troy. He half-
listened to the kids’ excited chatter and watched Fiona
to see whether she rejoiced, too, at the idea of making
it home or whether she shared any of his regret. She
nodded and smiled at things her students said, her ex
pression pensive, but he couldn’t decide how she felt
about the idea of finally continuing the interrupted
trip.
The boys were intrigued by the snowshoes, a smaller,
lighter-weight version of the old standard, and did well
once they got the hang of lifting each foot.
The van was standard white, with the name and logo
of the school on each door. The snow hadn’t fallen as
heavily up here, deep under the trees, but that was the
only good news. The first problem was that the van
faced downhill on a steep curve, the second that it
canted to one side where a front wheel had gone off the
narrow road. If the road crew couldn’t help, they might