“A pro?” Lisa asked, brightening somewhat.
“Sure. Hank Sanderson will give you lessons if I ask him.”
“Who's he?”
“He owns Pine Knoll Lodge, and he gives skiing lessons, but only to a handful of favored students.”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
Jenny smiled, remembering what it was like to be fourteen years old. At that age, most girls were obsessively concerned about boys, boys above all else. “No, Hank isn't my boyfriend. I've known him for two years, ever since I came to Snowfield, but we're just good friends.”
They passed a green sign with white lettering: SNOWFIELD 3 MILES.
“I'll bet there'll be lots of really neat guys my age.”
“Snowfield's not a very big town,” Jenny cautioned, “But I suppose you'll find a couple of guys who're neat enough.”
“Oh, but during the ski season, there'll be dozens!”
“Whoa, kid! You won't be dating out-of-towners — at least not for a few years.”
“Why won't I?”
“Because I said so.”
“But why not?”
“Before you date a boy, you should know where he comes from, what he's like, what his family is like.”
“Oh, I'm a terrific judge of character,” Lisa said. “My first impressions are completely reliable. You don't have to worry about me. I'm not going to hook up with an ax murderer or a mad rapist.”
“I'm sure you won't,” Jenny said, slowing the Trans Am as the road curved sharply, “because you're only going to date local boys.”
Lisa sighed and shook her head in a theatrical display of frustration. “In case you haven't noticed, Jenny, I passed through puberty while you've been gone.”
“Oh, that hasn't escaped my attention.”
They rounded the curve. Another straightaway lay ahead, and Jenny accelerated again.
Lisa said, “I've even got boobs now.”
“I've noticed that, too,” Jenny said, refusing to be rattled by the girl's blunt approach.
“I'm not a child any more.”
“But you're not an adult, either. You're an adolescent.”
“I'm a young woman.”
“Young? Yes. Woman? Not yet.”
“Jeez.”
“Listen, I'm your legal guardian. I'm responsible for you. Besides, I'm your sister, and I love you. I'm going to do what I think — what I know — is best for you.”
Lisa sighed noisily.
“Because I love you,” Jenny stressed.
Scowling, Lisa said, “You're going to be just as strict as Mom was.” Jenny nodded. “Maybe worse.”
“Jeez.”
Jenny glanced at Lisa. The girl was staring out the passenger-side window. Her face was only partly visible, but she didn't appear to be angry; she wasn't pouting. In fact, her lips seemed to be gently curved in a vague smile.
Whether they realize it or not, Jenny thought, all kids want to have rules put down for them. Discipline is an expression of concern and love. The trick is not to be too heavy-handed about it.
Looking at the road again, flexing her hands on the steering wheel, Jenny said, “I'll tell you what I
“What?”
“I'll let you tie your own shoes.”
Lisa blinked. “Huh?”
“And I'll let you go to the bathroom whenever you want.”
Unable to maintain a pose of injured dignity any longer, Lisa giggled, “Will you let me eat when I'm hungry?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Jenny grinned, “I'll even let you make your own bed every morning.”
“Positively permissive!” Lisa said.
At that moment the girl seemed even younger than she was.
In tennis shoes, jeans, and a Western-style blouse, unable to stifle her giggles, Lisa looked sweet, tender, and terribly vulnerable.
“Friends?” Jenny asked.
“Friends.”
Jenny was surprised and pleased by the ease with which she and Lisa had been relating to each other during the long drive north from Newport Beach. After all, in spite of their blood tie, they were virtually strangers. At thirty-one, Jenny was seventeen years older than Lisa. She had left home before Lisa's second birthday, six months before their father had died. Throughout her years in medical school and during her internship at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York, Jenny had been too over-worked and too far from home to see either her mother or Lisa with any regularity. Then, after completing her residency, she returned to California to open an office in Snowfield. For the past two years, she had worked extremely hard to establish a viable medical practice that served Snowfield and a few other small towns in the mountains. Recently, her mother had died, and only then had Jenny begun to miss not having had a closer relationship with Lisa. Perhaps they could begin to make up for all the lost years — now that there were only the two of them left.
The county lane rose steadily, and the twilight temporarily grew brighter as the Trans Am ascended out of the shadowed mountain valley.
“My ears feel like they're stuffed full of cotton,” Lisa said, yawning to equalize the pressure.
They rounded a sharp bend, and Jenny slowed the car. Ahead lay a long, up-sloping straightaway, and the county lane became Skyline Road, the main street of Snowfield.
Lisa peered intently through the streaked windshield, studying the town with obvious delight. “It's not at all what I thought it would be!”
“What did you expect?”
“Oh, you know, lots of ugly little motels with neon signs, too many gas stations, that sort of thing. But this place is really, really neat!”
“We have strict building codes,” Jenny said, “Neon isn't acceptable. Plastic signs aren't allowed. No garish colors, no coffee shops shaped like coffee pots.”
“It's super,” Lisa said, gawking as they drove slowly into town.
Exterior advertising was restricted to rustic wooden signs bearing each store's name and line of business. The architecture was somewhat eclectic — Norwegian, Swiss, Bavarian, Alpine French, Alpine — Italian — but every building was designed in one mountain-country style or another, making liberal use of stone, slate, bricks, wood, exposed beams and timbers, mullioned windows, stained and leaded glass. The private homes along the upper end of Skyline Road were also graced by flower-filled window boxes, balconies, and front porches with ornate railings.
“Really pretty,” Lisa said as they drove up the long hill toward the ski lifts at the high end of the town. “But is it always this quiet?”
“Oh, no,” Jenny said, “During the winter, the place really comes alive and…”
She left the sentence unfinished as she realized that the town was not merely quiet. It looked
On any other mild Sunday afternoon in September, at least a few residents would have been strolling along the cobblestone sidewalks and sitting on the porches and balconies that overlooked Skyline Road.
Winter was coming, and these last days of good weather were to be treasured. But today, as afternoon faded into evening, the sidewalks, balconies, and porches were deserted. Even in those shops and houses where there were lights burning, there was no sign of life. Jenny's Trans Am was the only moving car on the long street.
