Tough Cookie

truck? A grinding crash of metal on metal thrust me forward. I gasped as the van skated back across the lanes. Another bang resounded. The van skidded inexorably toward the guardrail. I saw a fleeting image in my rearview mirror, a horrified face. I braked again. It was hopeless. Another car whacked me broadside. My van crashed through the guardrail and I was airborne.

CHAPTER 7

Down, down, down the snow-covered hill the van flew. I was sure I would die. An internal brain screen flashed images of my younger self on the Jersey shore with my mother. Then I was holding Arch as a newborn. Pain shot across my back. Warm liquid ran up my arm. I saw Tom slipping the wedding ring on my finger. I thought, But what will he have for dinner?

The van slammed into something hard, jolting me forward. A wave of shadowy whiteness obscured the windshield. The van again bounced onto something hard—a boulder?—and shuddered. My vehicle flipped over, then flipped back. I was screaming. Then, with a terrifying boom, the van hit another rock. The windshield shattered. A shock wave of icy snow hit me in the face.

Suddenly, everything went still. I had the confused thought: Arthur’s intake meeting. I won’t be able to cook this afternoon. It seemed terribly easy to lie still and sleep…. I’ll bake the librarians’ cookies tomorrow….

I don’t know how long I was unconscious. Suddenly, a distant voice called, “Hello?” My voice wouldn’t obey my brain. I shook my head; snow slithered from my hair. I felt very, very cold.

Pawing and scraping sounds were audible overhead. “Hello?” the voice called again. I groaned and called back, “Yes,” in a submerged voice. Actually, the rest of me was underwater, technically speaking. I wondered if I was frozen. I laughed weakly. Pain rippled through my chest and down my arm. Was there anyone else in the van with me, the voice asked.

“No,” I tried to howl but it came out like a sob.

I should not attempt to move, the voice cautioned. I didn’t want to move. I was breathing raggedly; my lungs hurt. Blood seeped down my arm. I squirmed: More snow fell away from my face. Suddenly, I was desperate to act. I reached up until my mittened hands were clear, waving in the blessed air. I called that I could get out on my own. Before I could do so, however, strong hands reached in and gently tugged me out of my prison.

The cold wind was a bitter shock. Something kept growling in my ear, like a huge mosquito. I was placed on a slanted stretcher. My head spun; my thoughts whirled. Always use unsalted butter in baking. Falling snow-flakes burned my eyes. I was on a sled, not a stretcher, attached to a puttering, exhaust-spewing snowmobile. The sled was set at an angle because of the slope. I coughed—which hurt—and blinked. I couldn’t see my van, but I could make out three men in uniforms. One of them was bent over my arm. I wrenched sideways on the sled to see what he was doing, but I was strapped in. The movement afforded me a look at my vehicle. The van looked like a squashed beer can—one that would never be recycled.

The men asked me my name and address. I almost giggled, thinking that this was the third time today uniformed people had come to my rescue. That had to be a record. I heard my rusty voice answering them, thanking them. I asked how my arm was, and heard: “Cut. Not too bad.” They said I needed to go to a hospital in Denver. I mentioned my clinic in Aspen Meadow. It had an X-ray machine, a doctor on duty, and was an hour closer than Denver to our present location. “It’s where I live,” I added, although I had just told them that. “My home.” Home. My home. Oh, Lord, when will Tom finish our kitchen? I started to sob, and the men clucked that I was lucky to be going anywhere.

Commotion on the roadway accompanied the arrival of two ambulances. Panicked, I asked if others had been in the accident. The officers looked at each other, then told me not to worry.

One fellow gently probed my neck. A lump of fear squeezed my throat shut as I peered down the hill. There was a smashed white pickup truck below my van. Its skewed, crushed cab was buried in snow. I couldn’t see if anyone was in the front. The slope was strewn with debris and snow chunks churned up by the collision.

A horrific worry sprang into my consciousness: Had it been the pickup truck, and not a boulder, that had cushioned my van’s landing? I said a silent prayer for the truck driver.

Two newly arrived paramedics checked my bones. In the swiftly falling snow, it was hard to get bearings, but from what the people around me were saying, it seemed the van and the pickup had landed on an outcropping that formed a cliff in the steep bank. Below us, the slope was precipitous, at least forty degrees, and formed a ravine with the high forested ridge running into the Divide. At the bottom of the deep gulch between the two hills, who knew how deep the snow was? Ten, fifteen, twenty feet? I shuddered.

Foul-smelling exhaust and the roar of the snowmobile engine announced we were about to go uphill. The snow was coming down so hard it seemed impossible to breathe. Glancing back at my wreck of a van, I thanked God that Arch had not been with me.

Crap, I thought crazily as the snowmobile hauled me up the hill, Tom’s damn skis are still in the van. Leave them, I thought just as quickly. They’ve caused enough trouble already.

Paramedics bustled me into the ambulance. One tended to me and monitored all my signs, while the other asked how I was doing.

“Not very well,” I said. “Not very well at all.”

Once we arrived at the clinic, my doctor checked for internal injuries and put a butterfly bandage on my arm. She told the ambulance driver to take me home. I should call her that night if I felt worse. I either thought or said, Welcome to Aspen Meadow, an old-fashioned kind of town.

This, then, was the scene that Marla told me she witnessed from the front seat of her Mercedes, parked in front of our house: an ambulance driving up—she knew I’d be in it, she said drily—followed by two handsome paramedics coaching me down onto our sidewalk. Me hollering that I was fine, to quit touching my arm. According to Marla, the hunky paramedics wisely declined to comment.

Beneath her fur coat, Marla’s bulky body featured one of her pre-Christmas outfits, a forest-green silk shift highlighted with silver and gold threads, plus matching suede boots. She clucked, fussed, tossed her brown curls, and asked how I’d hurt myself this time. She shook her head when I said I’d been fine when I left Killdeer, but then there’d been this pileup.…

She said I shouldn’t have been driving. My van hacked and sputtered just getting across town, she pointed out. Forget making it home from a mountainous ski area. In a blizzard, no less. I agreed with her—what else was I supposed to do?—while she fixed me tea. As I drank a cup of strong, delicious English Breakfast, Marla brought a merlot out of our pantry. It had been a gift from Arthur Wakefield, who’d commanded me to sample it only with roast beef. Because of her heart medication, she couldn’t have any. But she felt strongly that I should have some.

As I was finishing my first no-meat-accompaniment glass of wine, Tom called. I filled him in on my latest accident without too much detail, ignoring Marla’s smirks. Tom said he was bringing Arch home from Todd’s. My son was worried about me; he’d changed his mind about staying with Todd and wanted to be in his own place. Tom also said he’d called Julian. Julian was skipping his night of old films to join us for dinner—dinner that he would fix.

Marla told me to sit still while she set our oak kitchen table. She lamented that the library board was having a dinner meeting that evening, so she wouldn’t be joining us. I watched her work. No question about it, the glass of merlot was killing the pain in my arm. I’d have to suggest tea with it to Arthur instead of beef…. Marla hugged me gently and left, promising to call.

Two hours later, Tom, Julian, Arch, and I dug into Julian’s succulent, lemon-and-garlic-laced sauteed jumbo shrimp—his scrumptious version of scampi—served over spinach fettucine. I took a good look at Julian. His handsome, haggard face, dark-circled eyes, and ear-length brown hair gave him the look of a typical sleep-deprived college student.

He sensed my mood. “Don’t you like the shrimp?” he asked earnestly.

“It’s out of this world,” I replied, and meant it. But the events of the day had taken away my appetite. Arch and Tom, their mouths full, made mm-mm noises.

Julian put down his fork. “Goldy, now that your van’s totaled, I want you to take my Rover. If I stay in