seems really nice.'
'Yeah, I like him. He'll be bringing a date to dinner next Sunday.
Janet's her name.' Heather smiled and seemed happier than at any time
since they had come to the ranch.
'Making friends.'
'I guess we are,' he said. As he got celery, tomatoes, and a head of
lettuce out of the refrigerator, he was relieved to note that neither
of the kitchen windows faced the cemetery.
The prolonged and subdued twilight was in its final minutes when Toby
rushed into the kitchen, the grinning dog at his heels, and cried
breathlessly, 'Snow!'
Heather looked up from the pot of bubbling water and roiling spaghetti,
turned to the window above the sink, and saw the first flakes spiraling
through the gloaming. They were huge and fluffy. The wind was in
abeyance for the moment, and the immense flakes descended in lazy
spirals. Toby hurried to the north window. The dog followed slapped
its forepaws onto the sill, stood beside him, and gazed out at the
miracle.
Jack put aside the knife with which he was slicing tomatoes and went to
the north window as well. He stood behind Toby, his hands on the boy's
shoulders.
'Your first snow.'
'But not my last!' Toby enthused. Heather stirred the sauce in the
smaller pot to be sure it was not going to stick, and then she squeezed
in with her family at the window. She put her right arm around Jack
and, with her left hand, idly scratched the back of Falstaff's head.
For the first time in longer than she could remember, she felt at
peace. With no more financial worries, having settled into their new
home in less than a week, with Jack fully recovered, with the dangers
of the city schools and streets no longer a threat to Toby, Heather was
finally able to put the negativity of Los Angeles behind her. They had
a dog. They were making new friends. She was confident that the
peculiar anxiety attacks that had afflicted her since their arrival at
Quartermass Ranch would trouble her no more. She had lived with fear
so long in the city that she had become an anxiety junkie. In rural
Montana, she wouldn't have to worry about drive-by gang shootings,
carjackings, ATM robberies that frequently involved casual murder, drug
dealers peddling crack cocaine on every corner, follow-home
stickups--or child molesters who slipped off freeways, cruised
residential neighborhods, trolled for prey, and then disappeared with
their Wlch into the anonymous urban sprawl. Consequently, habitual
need to be afraid of something had given rise to the unfocused dreads
and phantom enemies that marked her first few days in these more
pacific regions. That was over now.
Chapter closed.
Heavy wet snowflakes descended in battalions, in armies, swiftly
conquering the dark ground, an occasional outrider finding the glass,
melting. The kitchen was comfortably warm, fragrant with the aromas of
cooking pasta and tomato sauce.
Nothing was quite so likely to induce feelings of contentment and
