Saturday morning began with sunshine. A cold breeze swept out of the
northwest, and periodic flocks of dark birds wheeled across the sky
from the forested Rockies toward the descending land in the east, as if
fleeing a predator. The radio weatherman on a station in Butte--to
which Heather and Jack listened as they showered and dressed--predicted
snow by nightfall. This was, he said, one of the earliest storms in
years, and the total accumulation might reach ten inches. Judging by
the tone of the report, a ten-inch snowfall was not regarded as a
blizzard in these northern climes. There was no talk of anticipated
road closures, no references to rural areas that might be snowbound. A
second storm was rolling toward them in the wake of the first, though
expected to arrive early Monday, it was apparently a weaker front than
the one that would hit by evening.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, bending forward to tie the laces of her
Nikes, Heather said, 'Hey, we've gotta get a couple of sleds.' Jack
was at his open closet, removing a red-and brown-checkered flannel
shirt from a hanger.
'You sound like a little kid.'
'Well, it is my first snow.'
'That's right. I forgot.'
In Los Angeles in the winter, when the smog cleared enough to expose
them, white-capped mountains served s a distant backdrop to the city,
and that was the closest she had ever gotten to snow. She wasn't a
skier. She'd never been to Arrowhead or Big Bear except in the summer,
and she was as excited as a kid about the oncoming storm.
Finishing with her shoelaces, she said, 'We've got to make an
appointment with Parker's Garage to get that plow on the Explorer
before the real winter gets here.'
'Already did,' Jack said. 'Ten o'clock Thursday morning.'
As he buttoned his shirt, he moved to the bedroom window to look out at
the eastern woods and southern lowlands. 'This view keeps hypnotizing
me. I'm doing something, very busy, then I look up, catch a glimpse of
it through a window, from the porch, and I just stand and stare.'
Heather moved behind him, put her arms around him, and looked past him
at the striking panorama of woods and fields and wide blue sky. 'Is it
going to be good?' she asked after a while. 'It's going to be
great.
This is where we belong. Don't you feel that way?' -- 'Yes,' she
said, with only the briefest hesitation.
In daylight, the events of the previous night seemed immeasurably less
threatening and more surely the work of an overactive imagination. She
had seen nothing, after all, and didn't even know quite what she had
expected to see.
Lingering city jitters complicated by a nightmare. Nothing more.
'This is where we belong.' He turned, embraced her, and they kissed.
She moved her hands in lazy circles on his back, gently massaging his
muscles, which his exercise program had toned and rebuilt. He felt so
good. Exhausted from traveling and from settling in, they had not made
love since the night before they'd left Los Angeles. As soon as they
made the house their own in that way, it would be theirs in every way,
