Wild Ice (4 page)

Lauren started a new life list of all the birds she saw around the cottage.
She jotted down the name of the Anna’s hummingbird she saw sipping at the feeder in the window and the common yellowthroat eating a grasshopper out in the yard.

That afternoon, w
hen the phone rang, Lauren nearly jumped out of her skin. The ringer sounded out of place in a place where the sounds of nature dominated. Her mother’s clinical voice snapped her from her birdwatching euphoria. Alicia Bennett barely said hello before she started questioning her daughter’s choices.

“
Mom, I’m not running away,” Lauren insisted. “We’ve gone over this a million times.”

“Then what do you call moving to a cottage in the middle of nowhere?”

“I call it paradise. The bird activity is incredible here.” She proceeded to describe all the birds she’d seen since arriving and rattled off the names already on her life list. She knew her mother couldn’t care less if she’d seen four different types of sparrows since arriving, but she told her about it anyway, just to annoy her.

“Lauren, you need to face reality. Traipsing around the swamplands isn’t going to do you any good.”

Quite the contrary. Being near the refuge was
exactly
what Lauren needed. This
was
reality. It might be wrapped up in nature and topped off with seclusion, but it was as close to reality as she wanted to get.

“Mom!”
Lauren let out an exacerbated breath. “I love this place.”

“I don’t know what
Crazy Aunt Cora saw in that old cottage anyway. It’s out in the middle of god-knows-where surrounded by wild animals. Just come back home and we’ll figure everything out, okay? I promise this whole thing with Daniel has boiled over by now.”

“
Aunt Cora wasn’t crazy, Mom. And you can’t make that promise. Everywhere I go there’s whispers and pointing. I can’t deal with all that.
This
is where I want to be. Please respect that.”

Alicia made a pained noise. It was virtually impossible for her to respect anything about her daughter’s personal boundaries.

“I want to at least stay the summer to see the orioles and flycatchers arrive.” Then in fall, Lauren thought to herself, the pintails would arrive followed by white-fronted geese and snow geese signaling the beginning of their winter migration. Then in winter, the duck and geese numbers peaked. Lauren knew her mother would throw a hissy fit if she decided to stay that long. Ah, what the heck. Maybe she would. Until she had a reason to leave, Lauren just might stay as long as she wanted.

“This i
s a classic case of avoidance.”

Lauren rolled her eyes.
“I’m not a
case
, mother. And it’s not like I have a job waiting for me there anyway.”

“Honey, you’ll find something.
A colleague of mine is looking for an intern for the summer. Why don’t you come back and I’ll line up an interview for you?”

“
No thanks.” Lauren wasn’t cut out for the concrete jungle. Besides, she had her own ideas about how to solve her job situation.

“Well, okay,” her mother finally gave up the ghost.
For now. “You have a sharp mind, Lauren. I just wish you’d use it to help
people
and not
birds
.” She emphasized the word
birds
like they were something heinous. There were worse things Lauren could be interested in. Right. Just try telling that to Alicia Bennett. In her opinion, the sciences of medicine and psychology were the only way to go. The fact that Lauren’s brother was an architect only added fuel to Alicia’s disappointment fire and gave Lauren a twinge of enjoyment.

“Ooh, my appointment is here. We’ll talk more about this later...”

“Bye Mom.”

After speaking with her mother, Lauren decided she had
more than enough energy to tackle the yard work outside. Taking her frustration out on the vegetation would be a good way to clear her head of her mother’s nagging voice. Alicia could preach about boundaries and gobble-d-goop about respect to her clients, but somehow those principals didn’t apply to her only daughter. Lauren’s father wasn’t any help either. He just nodded in agreement with his wife and avoided conversation altogether. Psychologists were just as messed up as their clients, Lauren thought with a huff as she grabbed what tools she needed out of the shed. The only difference was the fancy certificates and diplomas hanging on their walls and the extra letters at the end of their names.

Lauren
made quick work of trimming the hedge along the driveway by listening to the birds and identifying them from their songs. She’d have a few more names to add to her list: a ring-billed gull, an oak titmouse and a black phoebe, to name a few.

By the time she reached the mailbox at the end of the driveway
, she’d identified a half dozen of different birds just by sound. After trimming back the bushes around the bright blue mailbox, she ran her hand over the hand-painted hawk. Aunt Cora would never have criticized Lauren for taking some time to regroup after what she’d been through. Why were some people taken from us so much sooner than others? Lauren wondered.

Before she could ponder the mysteries of life and death any further, she
heard a car zooming down the dirt road and turned to see who it was. The road didn’t get much traffic, so it must be someone on their way to the refuge. Lauren looked forward to meeting some fellow birders in the area. Maybe they’d stop to chat and exchange stories about their sightings.

The
fancy black SUV had dark tinted windows and looked ominous barreling down the road the way it was. Tires gritted through the gravel kicking up dust behind it. It wasn’t someone who worked at the refuge because they drove pea green pick-up trucks.

Lauren gave a friendly wave
, but the SUV kept moving without even slowing down.

Dark sunglasses shielded the
driver’s eyes—a male by the looks of his athletic build—and he barely lifted two fingers from the steering wheel in response.

Lauren chuckled to herself.
The man was probably lost and too stubborn to ask for directions. She shrugged and turned back around to assess her work.

Men.
You couldn’t live with them and you couldn’t move to the middle of nowhere and escape them.

Chapter Four

The Man of Teal Manor

When JD walked into his state-of-the-art modern kitchen, he heard a sad cooing coming from outside. Great. Some bird had really dialed in on the sound of grief. It was just the sort of eerie, melancholy sound he needed to start off his day.

Just like every other day,
JD spent the morning on autopilot. He made coffee, fed Mel, and then worked out in his home gym. He didn’t exercise because he needed to maintain the physique of a professional athlete anymore, but because it was something to do to pass the time. Immersing himself in exercise was the only way to get through the pain. Or so he told himself. The pain he inflicted on his body with his brutal exercise regimen was nothing compared to the pain that ate away at his soul these days.

For the past year and a half, JD had
rigorously kept himself in game-day ready shape. Not because he was ready to play, but because it was really the only thing there was to do besides watch TV. It would be easy to go a little batty if it wasn’t for his weight room. He could run dozens of mindless miles on the treadmill without a single thought crossing his mind. It was easy to watch the numbers tick by on the display.

After his morning run, JD would zone out and focus on the dumbbells in his hands or do ten more push-ups or twenty more crunches.
Every day he pushed his body harder and harder. Out of spite or as punishment or just because he had something he needed to prove. He did all of the workouts he used to do with a personal trainer, now he just did them on his own. The thoughts in his head were drowned out with a voice pushing him harder.

When his workout was done, he
parked himself in front of the TV and caught up on the day’s news and watched old action movies. The uncomplicated plots and plentiful action kept his mind off his grief. Then he’d eat some boxed mac and cheese and drift off to sleep.

Waking up alone every morning was tough. When he played
hockey for the Red Valley Razors, he was used to sleeping alone on road trips, but the team would eventually return home and Darla would be back in his bed. This wasn’t a road trip. This was his new (and unimproved) life where he slept alone every single night, week after week, month after agonizing month.

To avoid that empty bed, JD stayed up late watching
TV and usually fell asleep in his recliner. It was comfortable enough and it solved the problem of waking up alone altogether. Mel didn’t seem too bothered by JD’s sleeping arrangement. He slept at JD’s feet with his chin on his paws or snuggled into his dog bed in the corner and snored like a moose. They both had their own routines, each one aware of the other and careful not to get in each other’s way.

If it weren’t for
his big oaf of a dog, JD would have gone weeks without speaking to anyone. He ignored the calls on his cell phone and didn’t even have a landline hooked up. They were completely and utterly alone in Hayley’s Point, just the way JD wanted it to be.

Cody Lambert, team captain of the Razors, still
came by every few months to check on JD and to give him an update on Cody’s twin boys and little girl. Even though JD told Cody he didn’t have to keep dropping by for visits, he secretly enjoyed the company of his old team captain. When Cody wasn’t telling some story about his kids, they mostly talked about hockey. JD had already missed an entire season and lived vicariously through his TV. Cody would try to talk JD into coming back to the Razors and JD would say he needed more time. It was a dance they’d been doing for months.

Outside the kitchen window, the bird cooed again and JD grumbled.
Even if he wanted to stay in bed all day and feel sorry for himself he couldn’t because of the damn birds squawking outside. So, he dragged himself out of the recliner and attempted to function like a normal human being. He shuffled into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, fed Mel and gave him fresh water and then disappeared into the weight room for a few hours. Then, he’d take a long hot shower, settle back into the overstuffed recliner and watch movies for the rest of the day. For dinner, he’d scrounge up something that didn’t take too much effort to cook, watch some more TV, fall asleep during a late night show and do it all over again the next day.

JD wasn’t proud of his new life. It was monotonous and empty and completely meaningless. In a matter of months he lost the two things he loved most.
Darla and hockey.

Darla
didn’t want him to retire because she knew how much the sport meant to him. But he couldn’t travel around the country playing hockey while she was fighting for her life. She was the realistic one, volunteering and doing charity work while he played a game for a living, but when she got sick, reality hit him like a body check into the boards. Given the choice between his wife and the game, he chose Darla. It was the easiest decision he ever made and the one decision he didn’t regret. Even now.

“
Retired” was the technical term. It wasn’t a decision he announced with a press conference or with a bunch of hoopla like most guys did. He just quietly slipped away from the sport and took his place next to Darla where she so desperately needed him.

Retired.
Was that what he was? JD had always dreamed of playing his entire career with one team—the Red Valley Razors—and then retiring his jersey when he was too old and decrepit to lace up his skates anymore. He knew good and well he was far too young to be in retirement. What was he doing out here in no man’s land, wasting away the best years of his career?

He was protecting himself. Yeah, that’s what he was doing.
He didn’t bother to go back to playing hockey because someone or something would come along and find a way to take that away from him, too. So he just didn’t go back. It was better to avoid everything from his old life altogether. Avoid it and look back on it from afar.

Sure, he could
eventually go back to it if he wanted to. He could play and travel and have no one to come home to. The emptiness would still be there as ripe and painful as ever. No. No sport was worth that.

JD had lost a part of himself. It was gone and buried with Darla and he didn’t know how to get it back.

Chapter Five

Buddy

Early the next morning, a
s a reward for working so hard at cleaning up the cottage, Lauren set out on the trail. She knew she needed a hat to protect her fair skin from the harsh California sun, so she grabbed her Aunt Cora’s old sun hat from the hook by the door. The backpack she wore was full of granola bars, her journal and field guide, a bottle of water, and her camera.

The thick trees around the cottage opened
up to a clearing in the field of tall grass behind the mansion next door. If she remembered correctly, there should be a creek not too far from the edge of the property and Lauren was determined to find it. She just might get lucky and find a heron or egret fishing there.

As soon as the sun came up over the mountains, its heat warmed the cool morning air until it was balmy. The heat in Red Valley was much different than South Oakdale. Here, the sun baked the earth so violently that Lauren feared the wetlands would catch fire. But they never did. The tall swamp grass swayed gently in the summer breeze and the trees wilted from the sun’s intensity but they never burst into
actual flames.

Bright white puffy clouds dotted the sky
and the smell of Bermuda grass and pepperweed filled Lauren’s nostrils. The beauty of this place was overwhelming and made her want to frolic through the meadow and have a
The Sound of Music
moment.

Aunt Cora was always
happy living on her own slice of the refuge, where the land was untouched by visitors and cars. Lauren still couldn’t believe that she was now the proud owner of that same little slice of paradise.

When Lauren was little,
Aunt Cora would lead her and her brother, Scott, down the trail and point out the wildlife along the way. She knew the difference between a California gray squirrel and a mottled ground squirrel and she knew every species of bird on the refuge. Cora was kind and patient and oh-so-knowledgeable of the area. She would have made a wonderful mother. Lauren always thought it was a shame that Aunt Cora never had children of her own. She’d never asked her aunt why she didn’t marry or have a family; Lauren was young and the question would have been inappropriate. But now, as the sun illuminated the wetlands and cast a glow over the sycamore trees, Lauren wondered if the beauty of this place was enough to fill that kind of void.

Lauren
cut across the field behind the mansion and followed the trail. The mansion’s windows shimmered in the sunlight bringing it to life despite its dilapidated state. It didn’t look any less imposing from the back. A large covered patio ran the length of the house and the empty field acted as a barrier between it and the refuge. What a pity for such a magnificent house to sit empty! The view must be insanely stunning from inside. Especially from the upstairs. You could probably see the entire refuge from way up there.

The trail
cut east and Lauren left the mansion behind her to follow the pathway through the clearing until she reached the trees. The path was narrow, created long ago by Aunt Cora’s diligent footsteps. Sure enough, there was the creek, running parallel to the path. The trail forked with one direction leading north and the other going south. Lauren chose the path to the right and walked south.

A
marsh wren sang from its perch between the cattails before dipping back into the cover of thick vegetation. A flock of tree swallows glided gracefully across the sky. Up ahead she saw the ears of a black-tailed deer bobbing up and down in the tall reeds as he fled her approach. Although the refuge was managed mainly for waterfowl, it also supported a diversity of wildlife.

A few feet up the trail
, a twig snapped behind her. Slowly, Lauren turned around, not sure what she’d find. It wasn’t uncommon to see deer and jackrabbits grazing in the grasslands and on the edges of the wetlands.

Lauren held her breath and scanned the trail behind her.
Suddenly, a giant yellow dog bounded through the brush and Lauren gasped in surprise. A dog was the last thing she’d expected to see way out here.

The dog
licked her hand and looked up at her as if to ask “Where are we going, Boss?”

“Well, hello there
,” she greeted the overly friendly canine.

His thick tail wagged and his pink tongue lolled out of his
smiling mouth.

“Have you been following
me?”

He whined his answer and she patted him on the head. “
Who do you belong to, Buddy?”

She waited and listened for his owner
to come walking down the path behind him, but no one came. The public walking trails at the refuge were on the other side of the creek and a fence separated the wetlands from the mansion and cottage.

Lauren bent down and checked
the dog for ID, but the leather collar around his neck didn’t have a tag on it. Hmmm. He didn’t look like a stray. In fact, he looked well taken care of and extremely well fed.

“You should go back home
,” she told him. “Someone is probably looking for you.” She didn’t know who though. There wasn’t another house for miles and it was at least a forty-five minute walk to the refuge welcome center from here.

The dog
sat down on his rump and she laughed at his defiance. “Okay, well, I guess you can tag along as long as you don’t scare the birds away.”

He stood up and nuzzled her hand with his nose.

“You have to be very, very quiet,” she said softly and his ears perked up to listen.

Lauren had never had a dog before, but this one seemed eager to please and willing to share an adventure with her. So, she
continued down the trail with the dog trotting happily next to her.

Up ahead, the creek gurgled
where it flowed over some rocks and Lauren knew this was the place she’d been hoping to find. Aunt Cora used to take her here to watch the egrets fish.

The dog’s velvety ears pricked u
p and he stared intently ahead.

“Be very still, Buddy
,” Lauren whispered. Even the slightest movement would scare an egret away.

Obediently,
the dog waited until she took a step and then he took a step forward too. Slowly and cautiously, they approached the mini waterfall at the creek. Lauren peered through the trees and immediately saw the white feathers of a great egret. “There he is,” she said softly.

Buddy let out a little whine
and she put her finger to her lips. “Ssh. We don’t want to scare him away. He’s fishing,” she explained.

The
great egret waded through the water, foraging for aquatic insects and snails, and Lauren was able to snap a few pictures before it flew away.

“Good boy!” she told
Buddy when the egret was gone. The dog had sat next to her without moving a muscle the entire time.

The friendly dog turned out to be an excellent bird
ing companion. He was quiet and mellow enough not to scare away the birds. He was also very obedient and stayed still when she told him to and was a surprisingly good listener.

When Lauren started
back toward the cottage, Buddy took off down the trail in front of her and disappeared. When she turned west and came out into the clearing, he was nowhere to be seen. Lauren looked around and scanned the tall grass for movement.

Nothing.
Huh. He must have decided to head home after all.

Lauren continued down the trail and couldn’t help but notice how lonely it was without him.

* * *

JD woke up with an overwhelming sense of panic. Pressure in his chest squeezed until he had to fight to take a breath. His worst fears had indeed come to fruition. Darla was gone and she was never coming back.

He looked around and was surprised to find himself in bed.
Late last night he must have given up on falling asleep in the recliner and climbed upstairs without thinking about the consequences.

Before JD made the move to Teal Manor, Darla had been
alive and well in his dreams. When he drifted off into a restless sleep, he dreamt of her. She was always waiting in his subconscious, hair long and flowing again and eyes clear and bright. He saw her as she used to be, before cancer had stolen her from him. Most of the time, the dreams didn’t make sense, but at least she was there with him, if only for a short time.

Now
the dreams were gone and JD just had flashbacks of their time together. Flashbacks that were triggered by random things and felt too real for comfort. Several months ago, when JD cut himself shaving, he had a flashback of a time when he’d cut himself when Darla was still alive. He could hear her breathing, smell her perfume and feel the warmth of her body behind him. It felt like she was right there in the bathroom with him and it took him days to shake off the eerie feeling. Now he only shaved when the scratchiness of stubble bothered him and forced him to pick up a razor. Then there was the time when Mel’s tail almost knocked over a vase in the entryway. It instantly reminded JD of a time when Mel was a puppy and his tail knocked over Darla’s expensive vase. She’d pretended to be mad at him for days. But she wasn’t here now. It was just his mind playing tricks on him.

Last night,
JD must have left the light on inside the closet because the flashback hit him square in the chest, transporting him into the past again…

JD tossed and tu
rned in bed. The sheets tangled around his legs and it felt like he was being pulled under by an invisible riptide. He came awake with a start and found the bed empty. The 1200 thread count sheets felt hot and scratchy on his skin. There was light beyond his closed eyelids and he blinked them open and squinted. The light came from the adjacent walk-in closet.

“Darla?” he called out. She was too weak and frail to be out of bed
, but she didn’t care. She was on a mission to make her last days count.

JD
kicked free of the suffocating sheets and stumbled out of bed. Wearing only his boxers, he padded on bare feet toward the stream of light.

Darla’s closet was the kind of closet that would bring Carrie Bradshaw to her knees. Custom shelving,
designer clothes, handbags, shoes and accessories organized to perfection. A glittery crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, a velvet chaise lounge sat in the corner. The closet smelled like a mix of leather and Darla’s expensive perfume. JD’s wardrobe hung on one wall, paltry in comparison to his wife’s. Even though she’d bought him suits and shirts and enough shoes to clothe an army, it still paled in comparison to her extensive designer wardrobe. Between the two of them, they were the best dressed couple in the United National Hockey League and that suited him just fine.

They’d bought their dream home
in Red Valley—complete with a dream closet—in hopes of one day filling it with children…

JD shook away the thought and w
alked into the closet where Darla sat hunched over her shoes. He went to her and gently laid his hands on her bony shoulders. Watching her wither away was excruciating. She’d become so frail and shaky that JD was afraid to touch her most of the time. Her skin was cold through the thin silk robe she wore. She was always cold nowadays. The radiation treatments sucked the warmth and life right out of her.

JD
grabbed a furry throw blanket from the nearby chaise lounge and wrapped it around her. “Darla, honey, what are you doing?” he asked gently.

“Going through my closet,” she
answered, her voice barely a whisper. She looked up at him and her red-rimmed eyes were tired and glassy from the cocktail of medications she took every day to manage the pain.

Carefully, he pulled her to her feet. She was so brittle, he was afraid he’d break her every time he touched her. He pulled her close, offering his body heat to warm her
, but she pushed away. The throw fell from her shoulders leaving the robe to hang on her skeleton-like frame.

The designer scarf on her head slid down, revealing her fuzzy, bald head. She was too proud to go without it
, even in front of her husband at two o’clock in the morning. She’d gone from a standing appointment at the salon every six weeks to…to
this
.

JD still thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Even as the chemo and the cancer battled each other inside her cells, she was as beautiful as the day he proposed to her
five years ago. When she lost her hair from the chemo, if anything, she became even more beautiful to him. It wasn’t her hair that attracted him to her all these years, it was the woman. JD’s own hair had gained him the nickname Hollywood, but he promptly shaved it all off as a tribute to Darla’s bravery.

Darla
pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and shoved it at JD. Her once elegant handwriting scribbled illegibly across the monogrammed stationery. “I need to make sure my things are given to the right people.”

JD opened his mouth to speak
, but Darla kept talking. “I want Sloan to have my jewelry and shoes. The ruby necklace should go to my cousin in Seattle. And the women’s shelter should get my clothes. Except for the blue gown,” she said thoughtfully. “Sloan will want that one. On second thought, she’ll probably want
all
of the dresses. Oh…my wedding dress. What will happen to my wedding dress?” she choked out.