Until Spring (34 page)

No doubt the package was the dress that Duncan had picked up to bring back to Mary Kate. Jane had assumed that he had already given it to her.

"Duncan," she called when he passed the door of the room. "I thought you'd already given this to Mary Kate."

He stopped, leaned against the door, and looked down at the floor. "Well, I didn't," he said sheepishly after a moment or two. "I thought it would be best if you did. When you came back."

"How did you know I would?" she asked in surprise.

"I didn't. But I was hoping," he said. He crossed the floor and kissed the top of her head.

She turned and circled her arms around his torso. How well they fitted! She was still glorying in their physical proximity when he said, "Look out the window. You're going to have a chance to give Mary Kate the present right away."

Outside, Mary Kate was working her way along the tamped-down snow path from Rooney's house. Only this wasn't a bright-eyed, exuberant Mary Kate. It was a Mary Kate on whose sagging shoulders the world had settled.

"Oh, she looks so unhappy," Jane said, going to the window so that she could wave if Mary Kate looked up. But Mary Kate didn't. She kept her head down and dragged her feet when she walked.

Jane ran downstairs and met Mary Kate at the back door. When she threw the door open, she said, "Surprise!" and a startled Mary Kate's mouth fell wide open.

"You came back," Mary Kate said flatly.

"Yes, and I've been wanting to see you," Jane said, overjoyed to see her young friend again.

"Well, you didn't come over."

Mary Kate's cool welcome deflated Jane only momentarily. She was determined to make the child feel loved. With so much love in her heart now, there was plenty left for Mary Kate.

"I would have stopped over at your house in a few minutes, but you've beaten me to it. Come in, Mary Kate, you're so cold that you're turning blue."

"I think I'll go home," Mary Kate said, still resisting her overtures.

"But Mary Kate—"

"You're here, but you might not stay. And then I'll be all by myself again. Without Dearling. Or you," she said pointedly, her face shut against the world.

Jane refused to assign importance or credibility to this statement. "I'm going to bake something special for Duncan's lunch," she said. "It's gingerbread. A good friend of mine, the one I was visiting in Indiana, gave me her recipe. I was counting on you to help."

"Gingerbread?" Mary Kate asked. Jane detected a note of interest.

"Yes, and it'll be the best you ever tasted, I promise. Hurry inside, Mary Kate, or you'll freeze out there."

Mary Kate reluctantly came inside and tossed her coat over a kitchen chair.

"The coat goes in the closet," Jane pointed out as she busied herself finding pans, measuring cups and flour sifter. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Mary Kate grudgingly carried her coat to the closet and hung it lopsided on a hanger.

"I made an F on my geography test yesterday," Mary Kate announced as though it was something to brag about. "What do you think about that?"

Jane saw the challenge but rose to it. "I think it's awful. You should have studied."

"Ha! I don't care about dumb old Africa or dumb old Asia. I don't care about my dumb old teacher, either. He says he's going to have to ask Grandpa to come in for a conference." Mary Kate energetically greased the cake pan, dropping a wad of Crisco on the floor in the process.

Jane quietly cleaned up the Crisco with a paper towel, then washed her hands again. "Well," she said while drying her hands, "maybe that's what you want."

Mary Kate slanted a grudgingly respectful look in her direction. "Maybe," she said.

"All right, now we have to sift the flour. Would you like to do the honors?" Jane asked, and Mary Kate nodded. She managed the chore without spilling much, and Jane began to measure out the other ingredients.

"I don't think Grandpa has ever gone to a parent-teacher conference," Mary Kate volunteered as she swung on a cabinet door.

"Why not?"

"Never had to, I guess. Maybe he'll have to now. He'll have to go get the teacher out of the teachers' lounge, I'll bet. That's where he stays all the time."

Jane privately thought that if she had a student like Mary Kate in any classroom where she was in charge, she'd probably take up permanent residence in the teachers' lounge, but she thought it might be better to change the subject.

She handed the bowl with the batter in it to Mary Kate and said, "How about stirring that for me? Seventy-five stirs, and try to keep the batter in the bowl," she cautioned before running upstairs to get the present.

When she returned, Mary Kate was counting, "Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three," and Jane let her count all the way to seventy-five before she produced the beautifully wrapped package from behind her back. Mary Kate was so surprised to see it that she almost dropped the bowl.

"Wow! Is that for
me?"
she gasped. Jane deftly removed the bowl of batter from Mary Kate's hands before slipping the box into them.

Mary Kate's eyes were as wide as saucers as she unceremoniously tore the ribbon and paper off the box.

"Oh!" she exclaimed as the dress spilled from the box in a flutter of pink organdy. "It's my pink dress!" She held it up and danced a madcap dance from one end of the kitchen to the other.

"Do you like it?" Jane asked anxiously. Mentally she was running up darts in the bodice and shortening the skirt to fit Mary Kate.

"Do I! It's the most beautiful dress in the world, Jane. The
very
most beautiful. It has sleeves you can see through and everything."

"I'll have to alter it to fit you," Jane said, holding the dress up to Mary Kate's bony shoulders.

"That's okay. You're a good sewer. When can you do it?"

"After we put the gingerbread in the oven," Jane said.

"I'll go show Amos my dress," Mary Kate said, and ran to rout Amos from his napping place on the living-room couch.

Duncan came downstairs and watched Mary Kate as she twisted and turned in front of the mirror beside the front door. "I take it from the squeals that Mary Kate likes the dress," he said.

"She loves it," Jane said as she tucked the pan of gingerbread into the oven. "It only needs a few alterations here and there to fit her perfectly."

"I was thinking," Duncan told her, planting a kiss on her cheek. "Since the loom you owned is presumably waterlogged after spending a year and a half under water inside your blue van, we'll have to get another loom for you. Why don't you order it?"

"I will. And do you know that I received three more requests for my llama wool from hand knitters back East? Not only that, Moonglow says she wants to try it. If I get some of the fiber artists at Shanti Village interested in llama wool, that's a good, steady market."

"Duncan, look at my dress," Mary Kate demanded as she twirled by.

"Mmm. You'll look like a fairy-tale princess in it, no doubt about it. Would you mind telling me where you're going to wear such a gorgeous outfit?"

"For my birthday party next month. Grandpa said I could have one.
If
he doesn't change his mind," she said with a frown.

"Tell you what, Mary Kate. If he changes his mind, you come to see me. Jane and I will change it right back again," Duncan told her. He had already extracted the admission from Rooney that he wished he could get Dearling back but could think of no way to do it.

"Let's go upstairs and get started fitting that dress," Jane suggested, and as she ushered Mary Kate out of the kitchen, she turned and mouthed silently to Duncan, "Ask Rooney when Mary Kate's birthday is." She knew he understood when he answered with a wink.

* * *

"I want to do something really special for Mary Kate's birthday," Jane told Duncan that night as they were lying in bed.

He traced idle circles on her shoulder. "Like what?" he asked sleepily, his chest vibrating as he spoke.

"Like doing something with the llamas. The other kids will love it."

"Like doing
what
with the llamas?" Duncan asked, slightly more awake now.

"Oh, maybe a pack trip. And didn't Mary Kate say something about llamas pulling a cart? Couldn't we give the kids rides or something?"

Duncan hooted. "Her birthday is only a few weeks away, sweetheart. On April 25, in fact. And we still have snowstorms here at that time of the year."

"Snowstorms? In April?"

"This is Wyoming, Jane. Not Chicago. Why, Chicago's weather can be
tropical
compared to Wyoming's. So I don't think we should plan a pack trip, and as for pulling a cart, Mary Kate was going to train Dearling to do it. But Dearling, unfortunately, is gone."

Jane sighed. "She misses Dearling terribly. I walked out to the barn to get more llama wool out of the closet today, and do you know what I found in there? Mary Kate, sobbing her heart out. How could Rooney have been so heartless?"

"He thought he was doing the right thing at the time. He'd like to atone for his mistake, which is why I think he'll agree to throw this big birthday party for Mary Kate. He wants to make it up to her."

"Nothing can ever make up for the loss of Dearling," Jane said with great certainty. "Nothing. Not even a party."

"You're right, of course. Now don't you think it's time to go to sleep?"

She thought about her own feeling of loss when she was separated from him, but they had come together again in the end, and she was glad. She reached out to him, marveling at the tautness of his muscles, the warmth of his skin.

"Of course I think it's time to go to sleep," she said as he responded to her touch. "But not just yet."

* * *

Jane set up her new loom in the bedroom that had once been hers, and she began to weave llama wool into blankets. Llama wool was less elastic than sheep's wool, and she experimented with mixing in ten percent sheep's wool as she spun her yarn. She was pleased with the results, and after providing samples, Moonglow asked her to send more. She also sent a check representing the proceeds from the sale of Jane's creations.

Jane put away the check, biding her time before mentioning it to Duncan. Once the money would have paid her way to California, but now she wasn't sure what the future held. Her dream of a new life there seemed unnecessary at this point. It had served her well when she needed it, but now she knew that she had no desire for job training. She was well able to provide for herself through her spinning and weaving. She had proven it.

But what about the future? Duncan had said nothing about his expectations, and she didn't want to bring it up. She was happy. So was he. Right now it suited their purpose to live one day at a time, enjoying their new relationship.

It was Jane who answered the telephone when Dearling's new owner called. She was tying up the treadling sequence on her new loom one day when the trill of the phone interrupted her, and she didn't want to answer it. But Duncan and Rooney had both gone into town and Mary Kate was at school, so there was no one else. She rushed to pick up the phone and was out of breath when she answered.

"No, Duncan Tate isn't here right now," she said, pushing Amos away when he tried to nudge the phone out of her hand. "May I take a message?"

When she started to write down what the man was saying, she realized with a jolt that she was talking to Dearling's new owner.

"Like I say, the llama looks like she's ailing. Nothing major, you know, but I thought I'd call."

"Is she eating? Drinking?" Jane asked in alarm.

"I can't say. I travel a lot, and I got her for my boy. He's kind of lost interest in her. She stays in the barn and well, my son's an average boy. Interested in baseball and girls. The llama's a novelty, but he doesn't pay much attention to it."

"I'll ask Duncan to call you," she told the man, and hung up feeling dismayed.

When she told Duncan about the call, he appeared concerned. After phoning the man and talking with him, he seemed even more so.

"It doesn't sound good," he told Jane. "In fact, it sounds like the worst way to treat a llama. Llamas are herd animals, and they like to have others around. I suggested that he get another llama to keep Dearling company, but he scoffed at that. He said that he wasn't about to go out and buy another one when his son didn't pay attention to the one he already had."

"Dearling was such a tame llama, used to a lot of petting. She's probably pining away from lack of love."

"I gave him some suggestions. All I can do is call at the end of the week and see how Dearling is doing," Duncan said on a note of apprehension.

They waited out the week but didn't mention Dearling's troubles to Mary Kate, who would have been even more heartbroken to know that Dearling's new owners didn't appreciate her. After the next time Duncan called the new owner to check on Dearling, his lips were set in a grim line.

"It's worse," he said. "In fact, he wants to get rid of Dearling."

"You mean sell her?" Jane asked. She was stunned.

"I guess so. He says he's got money tied up in her that could be used for better things."