Stony River (74 page)

She opened it without thought, then realized what it was by the gilt-edged card. A chill fell over her the way a cloud eclipses a sunny day.
Joel Wilder and Chantal Rycroft request the honor of your presence…June 27…Vancouver, B.C…
She read it in a blur, a tightness constricting her chest. There was no accompanying note. The only personalization was the handwritten envelope itself, addressed to Sevana in a fluid script.

She looked at her hand. It was shaking. Last night she had been on some kind of cloud, but this was real life staring her in the face. And she had known it was coming. It was just hard to see it written down, the embossed script on satin paper driving home the fact it was really going to happen.

She tried to sort out the implications. Joel must be back, to give Chantal the go-ahead for a date—unless he had been in contact with her from the Yukon. And he must have given her his guest list, because Chantal would not invite her on her own…unless this was her way of announcing she had won?

She hurled the card across the room and stood up pretending she didn’t care. She’d been having trouble getting up enthusiasm for this move, but now she had all the motivation she needed. Surely in the years to come she would cease to think about that dark-eyed woodsman, and to feel at times he was thinking about her, too—so she could almost swear their thoughts touched over the miles. She started jamming kitchenware into a box.

There was a thump—she thought some precarious item had fallen over in the clutter. But no, it was someone at the entry. She stepped around a heap of boxes to open the door to Fenn’s boss. “Mr. Sutter!” She stared at his homely round face, quite without the ability to account for him there. “It’s a surprise to see you here!”

“Hello there, Sevana,” Henry Sutter said affably enough, but looking ill-at-ease as he hooked his thumbs through his suspenders.

“Come in! I’m sorry about the mess—I’m in the middle of a move. How are you?”

“Fine, fine.” His heartiness sounded a bit hollow, and he didn’t move from where he stood. “Came over this way on business, and thought I’d stop by. Heard you were living at the art shop, and there was only one in the phone book.” He scuffed at the threshold with his logging boot. “You—haven’t heard from Fenn lately, have you?”

Suddenly she was terribly concerned by his presence there. “No, why?” she asked quickly.

“Guess you haven’t heard, then. He had an accident last week, hit by a rolling log.”

As she gasped and took hold of the edge of the door, the color draining from her face, he hurried to add, “He’s okay—just a few broken ribs and so on. Could’ve been a lot worse. Doc taped him up and sent him home to mend. Guess he won’t be logging for a while, though.”

Sevana still felt weak from the fright. “I didn’t know anything about it. Are you sure he’s all right?”

“I’ve been out to check on him myself. He’s on the mend, but having a hard time getting around. He needs someone to stay with him, but you know how he is—he’d never ask for help. He’d die doing it himself first.”

“I could go,” she said quickly.

“That’s what I figured.” He nodded in ready agreement. “Figured you’d be the one to ask. Came by to see if you could. ’Course I was over this way anyway,” he reiterated, not wanting her to feel under obligation. “I didn’t say anything to Fenn. This here was just my idea.”

“Of course I’ll go.” Her thoughts were in a whirl. “All this can wait.” With a bare look and a flutter of the hand she dismissed the entirety of her possessions. “I can go with you now.” She appeared poised to fly out the door without further notice.

“Take your time, pack what you need,” he said easily. “I’ll wait in the truck.” Looking gratified and much relieved, he turned for the stairs.

As Sevana stuffed a satchel with clothes, her thoughts were all for Fenn. She wondered how bad off he really was, and what his reaction would be when she showed up at his door. Would he be grateful or resentful?—she couldn’t decide.

Then she ran down to call Willy on the shop phone to tell him what had happened. How swiftly one’s life could change—in an instant! Willy was not pleased, but admitted he could get along without her for a little while. She apologized for throwing a hitch into his well-ordered plans and said she’d move later on her own. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promised. In the background she could hear Ralf and Len arguing over the best way to move the ponderous cherry bookcase they had inherited when Willy realized the bay window took up too much of his new living room.

“Call me every night,” Willy ordered.

“Fenn doesn’t have a phone. I’ll write. Good luck with the shop, Willy.”

“Come back soon, or I’ll come get you myself. How do you get there?” he asked after additional thought.

“It’s forty-seven miles up the river from Cragmont,” she told him as she hung up.

Riding west with Mr. Sutter, she listened as he described the accident, and shuddered to think of it. Fenn and Mr. Sutter had been working below a log deck when the tree holding it snapped, and the whole deck had cut loose and started rolling down the hill toward them. “We both heard it,” said Mr. Sutter, “but when Fenn looked up and saw it coming, he stopped dead in his tracks. I yelled at him, but he didn’t move a muscle. I ran back and grabbed him and pulled him along until he came to his senses, and then he ran like hell. We cleared the main deck, but a couple of the logs bounced and went rolling off a different direction. The end of one caught Fenn and knocked him flat. ’Fraid he was a goner there for a while. He was knocked out cold, but he came around. We got him to the doc and he fixed him up. Five cracked ribs, and a knock on the head to boot.”

Sevana was gripping her hands together so tightly her knuckles showed white. “Oh Mr. Sutter,” she breathed thankfully, “you saved his life!”

“Well now,” he rubbed a hand over his stubbly whiskers, “guess maybe I did. My first instinct was just to get the hell out of there—but a man can’t leave somebody in a pinch like that, just to save his own skin. I took him home and saw to it he was fixed for groceries, but that’s about all I could do. Looked in on him a few times, and he’s not making out too well.”

“How does he seem?” she asked. “I mean, his attitude?”

“Well, that’s one thing. He’s less cantankerous since it happened. Maybe he’s had some time to think.”

They drove straight through Cragmont and soon the Stony was meeting her eyes. It was high and turbulent, its surging jade waves breaking into wild white foam—in no way the hostage river of her winter trip. The brush and deciduous trees were almost fully leafed-out, sap-green among the towering conifers. And the air!—that inimitable smell of cedar trees and cool river moisture and leafy plants overwhelmed her with a poignant familiarity, causing all the feelings of last summer to come flooding over her, as if she was in those very days again.

They turned up the side road, rutted from the spring mud, and jostled uphill to the clearing shining plushly in the evening sun. Sevana’s hands were clasped tightly in her lap again. It was all just as it had been a year ago, when she’d laid eyes on it the first time.

Mr. Sutter pulled in beside Fenn’s truck, leaving the engine running. He walked with Sevana to the house and energetically knocked.

There was a long wait, then finally a sound within. Fenn slowly opened the door. His eyes, too blue in a washed-out face, went from Mr. Sutter to Sevana. “Fenn,” Mr. Sutter said heartily, “I got you a housekeeper.”

“I’m getting along,” Fenn said, but held the door wider by way of invitation. Sevana stepped inside.

“Gotta go,” Mr. Sutter said, handing Sevana her bag over the threshold. “Anything you’re needing from town?”

“Doing okay,” said Fenn. “Thanks.”

With a look that wished Sevana luck, Mr. Sutter took his leave.

Fenn closed the door. As he made his way back to the leather chair and eased into it, Sevana saw how it hurt him to move. “I’m sorry you’re laid up,” she said.

He shrugged his good shoulder. “Hazard of the job. What are you up to these days?”

How could she tell him of the things that lived a life of their own in her heart, and would sound so foolish if expressed aloud? “I’m leaving Lethbridge to work in Willy’s new shop and take classes at the University of Calgary,” she said. “But first, I’m going to take care of you…long as you need me.” She took in the disorder of the kitchen—the counter heaped with unwashed dishes, the empty woodbox and water bucket, the cup of cold coffee and bread crumbs on the table. “I wish you’d let me know,” she scolded. “I could have come sooner. You shouldn’t be looking after yourself. I’ll start the stove and make you some dinner.”

He smiled weakly. “Guess I can’t stop you,” he said.

CHAPTER 52

At dinner Fenn ate hungrily, and Sevana wondered how long it’d been since he’d had a good meal. There was plenty of food in the cupboard, but she doubted he’d been able to do much cooking. It seemed to cause him great pain to stand, and he walked with slow, shuffling steps. He’d always been stocky and strong, but now he was thin and gaunt, and his face was pale. It hurt her to see him in such condition, and threw herself into the work that had to be done with zeal.

Fenn went out on the porch after dinner. He was sitting bowed in reflections of his own, but looked up when Sevana came out. “Could you look after Trapper?” he asked. “I’ve not been caring for him as I should.” So Sevana filled Trapper’s feedbox and watering trough, and curried him at the barn.

Fenn thanked her when she returned. “Maybe you could ride him tomorrow. It’s been too long since he was ridden.”

She was noticing something about him. There was pain in his eyes, and maybe sadness, but not the cold hardness when he looked at her anymore.

“I’d like to,” she said, taking a seat on the other end of the bench. The pine-rich air was still and dreamlike. After a while she added, “I’d like to ride up to Joel’s place and see the mountains again.”

“Mountains are still there,” he answered laconically. “But you won’t be finding Joel.”

It was only then, when her heart plunged so peculiarly at his words, that she realized she’d secretly been hoping when she climbed the mountain again, she would find Joel back home in his cabin where he belonged. She had almost trusted that magic to be stronger than anything else. “I know. I meant Mr. Radnor’s place.”

“Randall isn’t there, either,” remarked Fenn. “His fish project is keeping him longer than he was told. And the boys at camp are ecstatic to know they’re not currently being watched by the Eye of God.”

There was a long silence between them, in which the low sun spilled yellow-gold over the feathery green forests as Sevana had seen so many times before. A thrush shrilled a single plaintive note, piercing the quiet. A love for the place swept her powerfully. Everything in her rose up in resistance for not being able to call it her own. In her heart it was hers, it always had been; it was impossible to deny the sense of belonging.

“What’s this about Calgary?” Fenn asked suddenly. “What’s wrong with Lethbridge?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it. But Willy moved the art shop to Calgary, and I’m moving with it.”

“Well, it’s worth it for a dream, isn’t it?” he asked—but remarkably, there was no sarcasm in the words. “Painting has always been your dream, hasn’t it, Sevana?”

Her eyes were on his face, wondering at how much he had changed. “Yes, it has,” she replied slowly. “One of them, anyway.”

Soon Fenn went upstairs, for the unrelenting pain took his stamina from him. Sevana went upstairs, too, and made up her old bed on the windowbench. But then she went out and sat on the porch again, while the line of shadow crept slowly up the timbered wall opposite and the valley echoed with the river’s windlike rushing. And Sevana was remembering, and her heart was full. When dusk slowly deepened into night, she stole up to bed and soon slept peacefully—for if only for a little while, yet for now she was home.

In the morning she was overjoyed to wake to the hand-hewn logs and rafter beams with their old-timbered look and smell. She slipped down to the river first thing while Fenn slept on. The whole bank was submerged, the whitewater dashing past with unbridled song and unstoppable force. Even the sitting rock was engulfed, the old cedar standing up to its feet in water. All that water going by so continuously! She tried to comprehend that it was the snow that had buried the high country all winter. She tested it with a finger—icy water hurrying, racing down from the wilderness. Winter had never gone by so fast.

She began on the housework in earnest when she returned, and by the time Fenn came down for a late breakfast, things were in good order. “Sevana, what did you do to this place?” he exclaimed, sitting down to the hot oatmeal she brought him. “I’m not going to be able to find anything.”

After breakfast she helped him locate his boots and his book. When he was settled in the leather chair, he told her to get on up the mountain—he didn’t need her waiting on him hand and foot. She smiled at him happily and went to get Trapper. She liked very much the man she saw in him now, not much hidden by his gruff exterior.

She rode away eagerly, flying on Trapper like old times through the shaded wood. She remembered how that enclosed forest had intimidated her the first time she’d ventured into it, but now she loved its viridian depths, its valuable peace. A raven cawed, and she joyfully felt like answering it back. But her spirits fell when the road opened up to the empty turnaround. It was hard to let go that ridiculous, stubbornly established hope that the black truck would be parked there, just as it always had been.