Until the End of Time (10 page)

“You may want to rethink your lifestyle at some point,” her doctor told her. “You’re working awfully hard. It’s difficult to get pregnant and maintain a pregnancy with those kinds of demands on your body and time. People do it, but it’s not easy. And before you get pregnant again, this may be a good time to slow down.” She had
gone to the appointment alone, and she didn’t say anything to Bill when he got home. But as soon as she opened the door, she saw him hunched over a stack of letters on his desk, with the same beaten expression he had worn for months. He felt defeated by his inability to find a church, and all she wanted to do as she looked at him was take him in her arms and comfort him. She walked quietly across the room and sat down across from his desk. It was one of those defining moments in life when you throw everything you believe out the window and caution to the winds.

“Tell them yes,” she said in a single breath, feeling like she had just boarded a roller coaster for the wildest ride of her life. She hadn’t planned it. What she had just done was totally spur of the moment.

“Tell who yes?” He looked up in surprise, wondering if she meant his father and brothers. He had had lunch with Tom that week and had a serious discussion with him about going back to the firm. He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t want to be out of work for years. “My father?”

“Of course not.” She looked incensed at the idea. She would let him do anything but that. They would eat him alive. “The people in Wyoming. I think we’ve got to do it. You’re not going to find anything here, and they’ve been begging you for months.” There was even a small cozy house for them near the church. Bill stared at her as though she had lost her mind, and for a minute she felt like she had. The words had come out of her mouth before she had time to measure them or even think about it. But she knew in her gut it was right.

“Are you serious? But what about you?” Suddenly he looked panicked, wondering if she was leaving him. “Would you come with me?”

“Are you crazy? Of course. What would I do here without you?”

“Work in fashion, maybe,” he teased her with a slow smile.

She sighed as she looked at him. “I love my job, and the work I do. But you’re my whole life.” She had realized it more than ever when she almost died. His brother Tom had been horrified when Bill told him about it. They had never accepted Jenny as a suitable spouse for him, but no one wanted her to die. Tom felt sorry for them both, and was glad that she’d survived. He knew how much Bill loved her and how devastated he would have been if she hadn’t.

“You can’t just move to Wyoming, Jenny. That’s not fair to you. I won’t let you do that. You’ve invested fourteen years in your career. You can’t just throw that away.”

“Maybe I could take a year off, while you see how it goes, and we decide if we like it there.” They both knew she’d probably lose some clients and some momentum in her business. Most of her clients wanted more attention than she could give them from a distance. But others would come back to her if she returned. “It’s worth a try. What have we got to lose? And it might be a better place to be pregnant and have a baby than running my ass off here. Maybe we just have to do this, and take our chances on Moose, Wyoming.” Her eyes filled with tears as she said it, but she was smiling. It was a huge sacrifice for her to make, but she loved him and she felt as though she owed it to him. He had tried valiantly to do the right thing for her. Now she felt like it was her turn. And she wanted to do this for him.

“I want you to think about this,” he said sternly, “before I say anything
to them. You can claim insanity for what you just said to me, and I won’t hold you to it. Maybe you just had a bad day.” She laughed and put her arms around his neck.

“I have a great husband. That’s more important than any bad day. I want you to be happy, and have a shot at the life you want. And who knows, maybe we’ll love it.” She couldn’t imagine it, but she was willing to try. For him. It was the greatest gesture of love she had ever made in her life, and he was deeply cognizant of it. But he didn’t want to ruin her life and career in the process.

“Just think about it, Jen. We don’t have to rush into this. Take your time. And it’s okay if you change your mind and decide you want to stay.”

She kissed him again, and Jenny told her mother about it the next day. Helene sounded instantly worried. It sounded all too familiar to her.

“That’s how I felt when I agreed to go to Pittston with your father. I thought I was doing the right thing for him. And when we got there, it was so much worse than I’d imagined. If he had lived, we would have had a horrible, horrible life. We did for the three years we were there until he died. I felt like I was buried alive.” And she couldn’t imagine her daughter in Moose, Wyoming. She had been part of a sophisticated scene in New York, in the fashion industry, for fourteen years, including her three years at Parsons. What could she possibly do in Moose, other than cry?

“Bill says we can do it for a year, and if I hate it, we’ll come back.” Jenny tried to sound confident, but she was scared too. And her mother was echoing her own fears, and fanning the flames of panic. But Jenny had made up her mind.

“In your business, you can’t just come and go like that. People will find other consultants quickly. It could hurt your business badly if you left.”

Jenny sounded serious when she answered. “Maybe it could hurt my marriage if we stay. Bill really needs a break. He’s been thinking about going back to the law firm, if he doesn’t find a church by the end of the year. He would hate that. I don’t want that to happen to him. And this church sounds like exactly what he wanted. It’s just in the wrong place. But who knows, maybe it’s the right one.” Her mother couldn’t believe how brave she was being, and how kind to her husband. It was a huge sacrifice for her to make. And Bill knew it too. Jenny talked to Azaya about it in the ensuing days, and Azaya said she would try to do her best to keep Jenny’s business alive, though in a somewhat reduced way. And Azaya was sure that Nelson would help too. There was no way that Jenny could provide the full services she had while she was in New York. But she could consult with them on the phone and they could send her fabric samples and drawings to look at. It would keep her hand in, and for some it might be enough. And she could come back for Fashion Week in February, and again in September, if they hadn’t moved back by then.

Azaya agreed to service their clients to the best of her abilities, for a year anyway, and she and Jenny could talk by phone every day. It wouldn’t be enough to make some clients happy, but it would work for others. And it was only for a year. After that Jenny could come back and take over the reins again, or maybe they’d stay in Wyoming. For the moment, Jenny was open to anything.

Azaya was stunned, just as Helene had been. Jenny was planning
to go with her whole heart and an open mind. It had been a week since she and Bill had first discussed it, and she brought it up with him that night.

“So when are we moving to Wyoming?” she said casually, as she cleared away their dinner plates. Bill had brought home Chinese takeout. He looked at her in surprise.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. I’m serious. If it’s okay with you, I’d rather not sublet the apartment, just so we know it’s here, as a kind of security blanket in case something goes wrong. Azaya says she’ll babysit my clients, the ones who don’t dump me flat. And I’d probably need about a month to get them ready.” It was the first week in October. “I think I could do it in early November. What about you? I think we’ve got to give it a try,” she said, and her voice sounded stronger, when she talked about it, than it had the week before.

“Are you just doing this for me?” he asked, with a look of astonishment. He had fully expected her to change her mind, and wouldn’t have been angry at her if she had.

“I’m doing it for us,” she said simply. “And who knows, maybe we’ll have better luck having a baby there. It’s worth a shot. And most of all, I want you to have a church. You deserve one, and if that’s the one you want, I’m game.” She was smiling at him, and he hugged her so hard, he nearly knocked the wind out of her.

“Remember, if you hate it, we’ll come back in a year. Less, if you want.” He thought it was a good idea to keep the apartment. For the moment he thought it wiser to keep a foothold in New York. “I will never, ever forget what you’re doing for me, Jenny,” Bill said gratefully. They talked about it all night. And he called the head of the
church board in Moose, Wyoming, the next day. They asked Bill to come out in a week, and he said yes. And Jenny would follow him in a month, after she tied up all the loose ends in New York. She and Bill agreed to buy simple furniture locally for the house that came with the ministry. She wanted to leave all their things in the New York apartment and not disrupt their home there, which Bill thought wise too. And it would be nice to start fresh with simple furnishings. Their lives were about to change radically. For better or worse, they were on their way to Moose, Wyoming.

His brother Tom nearly fell out of his seat when Bill called to tell him before he left.

“Are you serious? I thought we almost had you convinced to come back to the firm. Dad will be crushed.” Tom sounded disappointed.

“You nearly did. My wife talked me into going to Moose.”

Tom laughed at the idea. “You’re either a lunatic or a saint, I’m not sure which. That is one hell of a change for both of you. What’s Jenny going to do about her business?” He knew how important it was to her, and she couldn’t take it with her.

“She’s leaving her assistant to run it for a year. And she’ll do what she can by phone and mail. And she’ll come back a couple of times. She expects to slow down, though. She’s been an incredibly good sport about it. She’s the saint. I’m the lunatic.”

“I think I have to agree. When are you leaving?”

“In two days.”

“Stay in touch,” Tom reminded his little brother. He had to admire him for his perseverance and guts. And one thing was for sure, he
had a wife who loved him more than anything in the world. Tom had no illusions that his own wife would have done the same for him. It was a huge sacrifice to make, as Bill was well aware.

“Come and visit us in Moose,” Bill said, sounding happy and excited about what they were about to do. This was what he had been waiting for, through all his years of seminary, and the four months since.

Tom laughed. He was still laughing when he hung up the phone, as Peter walked into his office.

“Who was that?” Peter asked in his usual querulous tone.

“Our baby brother Bill,” Tom said, still smiling.

“Is he coming back in?” Peter asked, bored.

“No, he isn’t,” Tom answered him. “He is going to Moose, Wyoming, to be a minister. I have to hand it to him.” And to Jenny. And for a fraction of a minute, he envied them for what they shared, even if he thought they were crazy for moving to Moose.

“Moose, Wyoming?” Peter said to Tom, stunned. “You’re not kidding?”

“No, I’m not,” Tom said with an amused glance in his brother’s direction. “I almost wish I were going with him,” he confessed. It suddenly sounded like a lot more fun than his own life in New York.

Chapter 6

Bill flew to Salt Lake City, and from there he took a small plane to Jackson Hole. It was snowing when they landed. Winter had already set in, and a tall man with gray hair, in cowboy boots and a Stetson, was waiting for him in the small airport. He was the head of the church board, who had been corresponding with Bill since June, hoping to convince him to take their offer. He had a serious face, with deep weathered lines and electric blue eyes. And he smiled as soon as he saw Bill, in jeans, hiking boots, and a parka, and somehow he still looked like New York, compared to Clay Roberts, who looked like he should have been riding a horse, and most of the time he was. He owned a ranch in the same county as the church. He was a widower and had lost his wife ten years before. He had a big black truck with the insignia of his ranch on the door, and he had come to drive Bill to fifteen miles outside Moose, to Sts. Peter and Paul Church, which was about to become Bill’s new home.

Clay explained to him about the district and the ranches, some for cattle, others for horses. He mentioned a few of the ranchers by
name, although he said they hardly ever came to church. And he explained that the area around the church was populated by several hundred people, most of whom knew each other. There was a school, a main street with two restaurants, a general store, a post office, a drug store, a laundromat, and two motels for people passing through town. He said there was a very respectable library, a movie theater twenty miles away, and a supermarket a little closer. And they were less than an hour from Jackson Hole, where the rich and famous were starting to gather and it was slowly becoming a tourist town. And in the summer there was a rodeo. He asked Bill if he liked to ride.

“Not lately. But I enjoyed it a lot as a kid.” He and his brothers had ridden at camp every summer and had gone to a dude ranch in Montana several times with their parents. He was a competent rider, which Clay said would be useful, since in the spring when the snows melted, and even in the winter, there were areas you could only reach by horseback, if he needed to visit members of the congregation who were sick or elderly or shut in for some reason. He said that the church had been built with a capacity of two hundred, which had been optimistic, but considering the size of the community, there had been a fairly decent turnout on Sundays, of somewhere around a hundred people. And there was a Catholic church in the next town, Our Lady of the Mountains.

As they drove toward Moose, avoiding Jackson Hole on the highway, Bill could see the Grand Tetons in the distance. They were breathtaking, and looked as though they had been painted shades of violet and dark blue, with pale blue sky above them, and a pink light in the sky at sunset. The view was dazzling, and the mountains
looked powerful and mysterious. Bill thought he had never seen anything as beautiful, and Clay was easy to talk to as they drove along.