Mail-Order Millionaire (18 page)

With Max the subject of weather or mountains always came up. His love of the outdoors and the challenge of his job was a part of him, so deeply ingrained she couldn’t imagine him without it. She wished she felt the same way about the farm. Did she really belong there? Could she ever make it pay? Would she miss it if she left?

Before she left Ariel’s, Miranda wait upstairs to say goodnight to the boys. “How’s school?” she asked, leaning against the ladder that connected the bunk beds in Scott’s room.

Scott looked down at her from the top bunk and wrinkled his nose. “Miss Wilson is mean.”

“Miss Wilson, is she still there?”

“Yeah, and she remembers you, Aunt Miranda. She says you were her best student.”

“She taught me everything I know.”

“You know that guy who we were having that snowball fight with at your party?” Brian asked from the doorway.

Miranda turned around. “Max? Yes, I know him.”

“We’re going up to his mountain to see him on Saturday. We might get snowed in like you did. Then we wouldn’t have to go to school anymore.”

“So that’s why you’re going.”

“Naaa. He’s got more snow up there than we’ve ever seen in our lives. Jillions of feet. We’re taking our sleds.”

“Also,” Scott added, “it’s the home of the world’s worst weather. The worst.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what I heard. Well, have a good time, if you get snowed in and I don’t see you again.”

She thanked her sister for the dinner and drove home to the empty farmhouse. Why it seemed emptier than ever these days she didn’t know. She knew she had to make a decision soon, but she could barely decide what to wear to work in the morning let alone a decision that would affect the rest of her life.

The week dragged by and Ariel never mentioned going up to Mount Henry. Not that it was any concern of Miranda’s what her sister did on the weekend. It was just that she’d expected her to pull some sort of stunt. Here it was Friday noon and she still hadn’t said anything. Miranda was lunching with the girls as usual at the steak house, discussing the latest gossip in town about the sheriff and the church organist and the Northwoods’ latest scheme to cut expenses. Finally they turned to Miranda.

“How’s that guy that stayed at your house bottling syrup?” Mavis asked.

“Fine, but he’s gone now. Gone for good.”

“I don’t get it, I thought he was someone special.” She licked her lips.

“He was just a customer with a complaint, that’s all. I had to follow up on him until he got everything he wanted.”

Mavis giggled. “You mean he finally got everything he wanted?”

Miranda blushed as her friends around the table erupted into laughter. “Look,” she said, “the man lives in another state and he’s married to his job. So there’s no point in discussing him any further.”

“Are you sure?” Donna asked. “Because I heard that Ariel’s going up there this weekend to fix things up.”

Miranda dropped her fork with a clatter. “What?”

Donna clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Time to go,” Lianne announced abruptly, putting a ten-dollar bill on the table.

Miranda told herself they couldn’t be serious. They were just trying to get a rise out of her. On the other hand, knowing her sister...

On Friday evening when the phone rang she knew it would be Ariel, but it was Howard telling her he’d match any offer by Mr. Northwood. “It must get lonely there all by yourself,” he noted.

She would never admit it, to Howard or to anyone else, but it was lonely. For the first time in her life she felt it, a bone-chilling loneliness that got worse every day. No one called and she called no one all weekend. She didn’t listen to the radio because she didn’t want to hear the weather report. More than once she pictured the boys sledding on Mount Henry, making snowmen or angels in the snow. And she imagined Ariel sitting in the weather station having coffee, talking to Max. About what? The weather? Her? For once she was glad to go back to work on Monday.

But Ariel didn’t come to work on Monday. They said she’d called in sick, but Miranda wondered if she was snowed in on Mount Henry. The thought sent a spear of envy through her. Snowbound with Max, alone on top of the world. The memories came flooding back. The snow in his hair, holding the underwear up to see if it fit, sharing the view of the mountains at daybreak.

At lunchtime she walked to Ariel’s house and knocked on the front door. Ariel came to the door and opened it just a crack. “Have you had chicken pox?” she asked.

“Of course I have. We had it at the same time, don’t you remember?”

“Then come in.”

Miranda walked into the living room and stepped over a vacuum cleaner. “What’s wrong, who’s got chicken pox?”

Ariel ran her hand through her hair distractedly. “Scott does and Brian will probably be next. So I’ll be out of work for a couple of weeks. I don’t know what old man Northwood’s going to say about that.”

“You’ll use up all your sick leave for the next two years.”

Ariel shrugged. “That’s the breaks.”

Miranda perched on the edge of the couch. “When did this happen?”

“He started itching and scratching yesterday when we got back from the mountain. This morning he woke up with little red dots all over his stomach. That’s when I realized what it was. And three other kids in his class have it. It’s very contagious.”

Scott’s mournful voice floated downstairs and Miranda and Ariel went up to take him a glass of apple juice. His litttle speckled face was flushed and Miranda sat on the edge of the bottom bunk bed to talk to him.

“Did you see any of the world’s worst weather while you were on the mountain?” she asked, taking the cold compress from Ariel and holding it against his forehead.

“Nope, but it’s a cool place where Max works.”

“How’d you get up there?”

“We got a ride in a big snow machine from a guy, then he came back and picked us up. He said when the snow melts we can bring the whole class on a field trip.”

Miranda took the compress off his head and looked at Ariel. They left Scott with a new comic book and went back downstairs.

“Max was great with the kids,” Ariel remarked. “He said he’s always wanted some of his own.”

Miranda looked out the front window. “Where would he keep them, in the storage shed?”

Ariel sank into the easy chair. “Come on, Miranda, he must live somewhere. He can’t just stay at the weather station all the time.”

“I guess he has an apartment somewhere.” Miranda swallowed her pride and asked her sister if he’d said anything else besides that he wanted to have children.

“He asked about you.”

Miranda’s heart fluttered, impossibly, unreasonably, encouraged.

“I told him you were pining away,” Ariel said.

“You didn’t.”

“No, I said you were fine, but are you?”

“Of course, why?”

“Because you look peaked, as Grandma would say. Have you been eating your oatmeal in the morning?” Ariel asked.

Miranda dismissed her concern with a wave of her hand. “Physically I’m fine. I just don’t know what to do next. I can’t bring myself to sell the farm. It’s too much a part of me, of our family.” She brushed back a wisp of hair that had escaped from her French braid.

Ariel nodded understandingly and Scott called again from upstairs.

Miranda went to the door. “I have to get back to work.”

“Thanks for coming. Has Max had chicken pox?”

“I have no idea. Why?”

“Adults can get it if they haven’t had it as a child, but if they do it can be serious. I’d better call and warn him, unless you...” Ariel’s voice trailed off. She had circles under her eyes as if she’d been up all night with Scott.

“All right, I’ll call him,” Miranda said.

When she returned to work she buried herself behind the walls of her cubbyhole to muffle her voice from her colleagues and punched in the number of the weather station.

The sound of his deep voice tinged with his Southern accent sent shivers up her spine. Her throat tightened and she couldn’t speak. She thought of hanging up and making Ariel call. It was her fault he’d been exposed to chicken pox.

“Hello,” he said. “Anyone there?”

“It’s me,” she said finally. “Miranda.”

“Miranda,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but you’ve been exposed to chicken pox.” There, she’d said it. Now she could hang up. But she didn’t. “One of my nephews just came down with it.”

“Don’t worry, I never catch anything.”

“Well, I just wanted to warn you.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine.”

“The incubation period is two weeks.”

“I’ll remember that.” There was an awkward silence. Then he said, “Your sister tells me you’re seeing some taxidermist.”

“What?” She shot up straight in her seat, forgetting her friends might hear her, forgetting everything but her indignation. “I saw him once... at her house. How could she?”

If Ariel had been there she would have choked her. “I’d hardly call that seeing someone,” she blurted.

“Oh.” There was relief in that one drawn-out word, relief and hope and maybe even a smile. For a brief moment Miranda basked in that smile as if it were a ray of sunshine on a gloomy March day. Then she came to her senses. “Good luck,” she said. “I hope you don’t catch the chicken pox.”

“Thanks.”

Max had no idea what chicken pox felt like, but he was pretty sure he didn’t have it. He didn’t have chicken pox, but he had something else. A mysterious disease that took the joy out of his life, that caused him to stare out into space without seeing the magnificent mountains or the reflection of the sunrise over the ocean. A strange malady that caused him to live in the past, back to the weekend he’d spent with Miranda.

He wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t leveled with her about his failed marriage, about his decision to chuck it all and bury himself in his work. Would he still be sitting here staring into an empty future? He told himself it wasn’t empty, that it was full of promise and opportunity for someone who could devote himself to it without distractions. He was always available to work an extra shift or put in extra hours. He had enough seniority that they’d never transfer him to an office. He could look forward to years of facing the world’s worst weather. Alone.

He thought he’d gotten over her. Then her sister had told him she was seeing someone special and it had hit him, knocked the breath out of him as if he’d been caught in a two-hundred mile-per-hour wind. Now that he knew it wasn’t true, he ought to feel better, but hearing her voice had made him feel worse. Made him want to see her, hold her, kiss her again. It was irrational. It was worse than that; it was irresponsible. He’d tried it and it hadn’t worked. It wasn’t fair to anyone to try again.

And so it went. Two weeks of arguing with himself. One week on and one week off. When he came back to the weather station he felt as if he’d been worked over in a prize fight with every muscle aching. When in reality he’d only been beating up on himself. Even Jake noticed.

“What did you do this week, run into a hurricane?” Jake asked from the front seat of the Sno-Cat.

“You’re close,” Max admitted, squinting into the bright sun. His eyes stung, and his head pounded even though he was used to the sun and accustomed to the altitude. “Anything I should know about?”