Snowbound Summer (14 page)

“I think your mother is really going to leave me this time,” Howard said. “She's furious! She didn't want you kids to know how we came by you.”

Ron shrugged. “Maybe that's a good idea. You two have hated each other for years. No one understands why you're still together.”

Howard sighed. “After all of these years, I doubt we'd know how to be apart.”

“Dad, if she's cheated on you, you have a right to leave,” Ron told him. “No one should have to put up with that.”

Kara hoped she concealed her surprise at Ron siding with his father. She certainly agreed with the sentiment, but she was used to thinking of her boyfriend as Mama's boy.

She was even more surprised when Howard came to Hanna's defense. “It's not all her fault,” he said. “She really wanted kids.”

There were so many things wrong with that statement, but what fascinated Kara was that Howard—the unapologetic misogynist—would defend Hanna at all.

She knew that she should stay out of this, but she just couldn't keep her mouth shut. “Why didn't you try artificial insemination?”

Howard shrugged. “We did,” he said. “But it was more than thirty-five years ago when we started and, well, I gather the doctors are much better at these things now then they were back then.”

“I'm first!” Brett shouted triumphantly.

Marcie was only half a foot behind him. Together they pumped their fists toward the snowy sky, then secured their ice axes and belayed back down the cliff face looking like two soldiers in an army recruiting commercial.

“Did you see that?” Brett asked as his feet hit the ground.

“That is so awesome, Uncle Ron!” Marcie added. “You have to try this!”

Ron exchanged high fives with his niece and nephew, then turned to Kara. “Do you want to try this?” he asked.

“Truthfully?” Kara asked. She looked up at the ice wall in front of them. The snow was falling so heavily she couldn't see the top.

“You don't have to if you don't want to,” Ron told Kara.

“Here you are!” Hanna Miller announced. “I've been looking all over for you!”

Ron's eyes tightened with concern as his mother suddenly strode into their midst. Howard frowned and Kara resisted the impulse to step back away from Hanna. There was something very confrontational in the older woman's body language and Kara really didn't want to become entangled in an argument with her.

“So this is where you've been hiding!” Hanna said.

“No one is hiding, Mom,” Ron told her. “We're ice climbing.”

Hanna harrumphed. If there was any lingering doubt she was in a bad mood, it evaporated right then. “Do you have to climb now?” she asked Ron. “I've been alone all day.”

Kara suppressed the urge to remind Hanna of her hangover and just who was to blame for her missing the last morning of her trip.

Ron seemed uncharacteristically defiant. “Yes, Mom, we have to climb now. In case you didn't notice, it's snowing pretty hard and we're not going to be here tomorrow.”

Hanna harrumphed again. “I can't believe that Kara thinks she's going to climb this cliff face.”

If there was a better way to resolve Kara's doubts as to whether or not she wanted to make the climb, she couldn't imagine what it was.

“Of course I want to try the climb,” Kara told Hanna. “Ron and I have been talking about it the whole trip.”

“You go, Kara!” Marcie told her. “We girls can do anything we set our minds too!”

“Marcie!” Hanna snapped. “You shouldn't be encouraging Kara. She's not as young as you are. She's going to get hurt.”

What was with the Millers and her age? Kara wondered. They were even more obsessed with it than her family was.

“She's not
that
old,” Marcie retorted. “Not like you and Grandpa.”

“I am not old!” Hanna snarled.

“Why can't you just let the kids have their fun?” Howard asked.

Hanna wheeled on him, fury overpowering the normally attractive features of her face. “Don't you speak to me you hateful old bastard!”

“No, Mom,” Ron said, his voice quieter and sadder than Kara ever remembered hearing it. “I'm the bastard, remember. You fooled around—not Dad.”

Hanna whirled on him. If Kara had thought she was angry before, that was nothing compared to the rage radiating from her now. “How dare—”

Hanna's booted foot came down on a slippery patch of snow-covered ice and slipped out from beneath her. The look of anger disappeared, instantly replaced by an expression of shock and fear. She twisted horribly, vainly trying to catch herself and landed hard on her hip with the audible cracking of bone.

Hanna's scream of pain wrenched through the afternoon snowstorm.

* * * *

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Chapter Thirteen

For a moment, everyone stood paralyzed, then scrambled forward
en masse
to the injured woman's side.

“Mom!”

“Grandma!”

"Hanna!"

Howard Miller elbowed his own son out of the way as he dropped to his knees in front of his wife. “Hanna! What happened? Are you okay?”

Hanna continued screaming, clutching at her shattered hip, trying unsuccessfully not to writhe in agony.

All four Millers huddled around the injured woman while the two young ski lodge personnel operating the ice-climbing wall stood open mouthed in horror.

Kara overcame her own shock and took control of the situation. She pointed one gloved finger at the nearest employee. “You call 911—now!” She swiveled her arm around to point at the other employee. “And you get on your cell phone to the lodge. They have to have some sort of emergency services. Get them up here!”

She hurried around to crouch near Hanna's head. Everyone had their hands on her trying to calm her and they only seemed to be driving her into a greater frenzy.

Kara reached deep inside of herself to tap all the frustration and anger she'd been feeling this weekend. “Everyone get back!” she shouted.

Startled everyone looked up at her—even Hanna.

“Give the woman some air!” Kara ordered.

The twins were the first to do as she said. Rebellious teenagers or not, they understood the voice of adult authority and responded to it on an almost unconscious level. Ron didn't back up, but he did straighten up, taking his hands off his mother. Howard proved to be a bigger problem. There were tears welling in his eyes and an expression of genuine fright on his face. He had his hands on his wife's shoulders and left off looking at Kara to return to begging her to be okay. “You're going to be all right, Hanna,” he told her. “Kara has the doctors coming. Try not to move! It's only going to make things worse.”

Ron put his arm around his father's shoulders. “Dad, give Kara a little room, okay. She knows what she's doing.”

Where Ron had gotten that last idea, Kara didn't know, but she'd seen enough cop shows in her life, not mention rescue shows dating back to
Emergency!
in the seventies that she wasn't completely adrift regarding what to do. She took her ski vest off and placed it over Ron's mother.

“Hanna, I fear your hip is broken,” she said. “Help is on the way. What we need to do now is keep you warm and try not to move you until the professionals get here.”

As she spoke, Ron pulled off his own vest and laid it over the lower half of his mother. Hanna continued to lie on the ground, crying more or less quietly.

“How did she fall?” Brett asked. “One moment she was fine and the next...”

One of the attendants came forward. “The lodge is sending a team to help,” he said. “They should be here in a few minutes.”

Those few minutes crawled by at seemingly glacial rates.

Howard crept forward again. “You're going to be just fine,” he told Hanna. “You're a strong woman! You'll be up and fighting with me again in no time.”

Hanna overcame her agony sufficiently to spit a few words between her clenched teeth. “You told the kids they weren't your children.”

“Kitten doesn't think I love her,” Howard defended himself. “All three of them need to understand I do care.”

“Most people,” Hanna told him, “would have accomplished that by being nice to them. You didn't have to rip their worlds apart. You didn't have to tell them!”

She spat the last sentence much more forcefully than the others.

“Why keep it secret?” Ron asked. “Shouldn't Anne and Kitten have known they're adopted? They might have needed that information, if only for the medical histories.”

Hanna tried to twist about to glare at him, but the movement spiked the pain in her broken hip, causing her to scream again.

“Ron, stop upsetting your mother!” Kara told him. She really wanted to hear the answers to his questions, but this clearly wasn't the time.

Ron edged back a little, clearly chagrinned to have caused his mother further pain. Surprisingly, Howard stepped up again to fill in the blanks. “We had always intended to tell Anne and Kitten they were adopted,” he said. “But then you came along and your mother was worried that if we told them they were adopted, we'd end up having to explain that I was sterile. Her cheating embarrassed her. She didn't want anyone to know.”

“Howard, can't you ever shut up?” Hanna asked.

“It hurt,” Howard continued as if his wife hadn't spoken. “But I always wanted kids and, well, you hadn't done anything.” He glanced down at his wife. “I was even able to forgive Hanna at first.”

“Just stop talking!” Hanna growled.

“But she...”

Howard's voice trailed off as if some part of him recognized that Hanna was right. Talking about it
was
too painful.

“We know,” Kara told Ron's father. “Hanna explained it to me last night.”

Howard shook his head as if he were still amazed at what happened twenty-five years ago, but then, according to Hanna it hadn't stopped then, had it? Cheating for her hadn't proven to be a onetime fling.

“So why didn't you two just get divorced?” Marcie asked. “I mean, no offense, but it's not like you like each other anymore.”

“She threatened to keep me from my kids,” Howard said.

“Can we please stop talking about this?” Hanna asked. From the look on her face, she must have been in agony. The two lodge employees were standing back, completely unclear how to treat her injury.

No one was listening to her. “So what's your excuse now?” Brett asked. “Uncle Ron's a man. Mom and Aunt Anne are women. Why don't you divorce her now?”

“I'm Catholic,” Howard reminded them. “We swore vows.” His expression, which had been so concerned five minutes ago, turned hostile. “I haven't broken mine.”

“That's a load of crap, Dad!” Ron told him. “You may not have broken your fidelity vows, but what happened to
cherish and hold in sickness and in health
? Actively trying to make Mom miserable for the past twenty-five years is probably worse than her cheating all of this time. And extending your hatred to all women? That's sick in and of itself. Why didn't the two of you get counseling? Why didn't you get some help?”

“Ron, I swear if you don't shut up,” his mother said, “I'm going to get up off the ground and tan your hide like I should have done when you were a child.”

For the first time since Hanna had fallen, Ron smiled. “Mom was too liberal to spank me,” he told Kara. “I think it was a
Dr. Spock
kind of thing, although why she would think that Vulcan child rearing techniques should have anything in common with earth children, I don't know.”

Kara found the corners of her mouth threatening to turn upward. Even Hanna seemed to find Ron's absurd statement humorous. “Don't make me laugh,” she told him. “This already hurts bad enough! I can't imagine what laughing would do to my hip.”

“Hey, I think I see someone coming with a stretcher,” Marcie announced.

Everyone followed her gaze to see two apparent paramedics running toward them through the snow with an orange plastic stretcher. The view sort of reminded Kara of the old TV show,
Baywatch
, if David Hasslehoff had been bundled up for winter and running through the snow.

The two paramedics quickly took over the scene, effectively ending any further conversation and giving Kara time to think about what had been said, and remember how cold it was in the storm without her vest. Fortunately, the paramedics had blankets and Ron and she got their vests back. They watched the man and woman check Hanna's vital signs, brace her back and hip, and make her scream again when they moved her onto the stretcher out of the snow.

Then they talked on their phone to the lodge again before reporting back to the group standing around Hanna. “We need to take her to the hospital, but Emergency Services can't get a helicopter in during this storm. There's also a lot of flooding down the mountain so we don't know how long it will be until an ambulance can reach us. We're going to transport Mrs. Miller back to the lodge where she'll be warm and do our best to make her comfortable until we can move her to the hospital.”

* * * *

* * * *

Back at the lodge, Ron got on the phone to his sisters. Kitten was already in the air so there was no way that she and Eric could do anything but fly home. She sounded upset about it, as if the confusion of feelings that had caused her to run away from their parents were now making her feel guilty that she wasn't with them.