See Jane Fall (29 page)

Jane smiled at Paul then giggled nervously.
“So, right now, up there is the, um, the first time they’re,
um—whew. Well. I have to go wash my brain so I stop thinking about
other people doing…um,
that
.”

Paul chuckled, shaking his head. “Wow, the
Lindstroms are going to be in a tizzy this weekend…if they find
out.”

“Well, I’m certainly not telling anyone.”
Jane put her elbows on the table, cupping her chin in her palms,
leaning toward Paul. “What’s this weekend?”

“Big doings. Erik and Kat’s twins are being
christened.”

“Too bad Lars won’t be here for it.”

Paul took a deep breath and sighed. “I don’t
know where you’re getting your information, Jane, but Nils was
right. It’s not good.”

“He’s going to Jackson Hole with my
cousin.”

“No chance, Jane. Not with the whole clan
coming into town. That’s just not Lars. He wouldn’t miss it. Not
for anything.”

“Well, Sara’s not just
anything
. She
asked him this morning, and he said he’d consider it. Then she told
me later that he was going with her.”

“Time will tell, I guess.” Paul shrugged. “I
know you said you don’t want to talk about it, Jane, but you and
Lars…”

“Lars and I aren’t…”

“Yeah, Jane. Yeah, you are. I saw you two
together.”

“He made out with her, Paul,” Jane whispered
this, looking down at the table, eyes burning all over again.

“What?”

“Yeah. Someone else saw and told me. It
happened.”

Paul stared at her hard, and then looked
down at the table. “Doesn’t add up, Jane. I
know
him and it
doesn’t add up.”

“Please don’t give me hope,” she murmured,
raising her glassy eyes to him.

“Aw, Jane.” Paul took her hand and squeezed
it, smiling at her gently. “‘
Her hope is treacherous only whose
love dies with beauty, which is varying every hour.
’”

“What does that mean?” she asked sadly,
shaking her head back and forth in misery.

“It means hope can only hurt you if you
affix a huge feeling like love to something fickle like beauty.
But, Lars isn’t fickle. No matter what you’ve been told. No matter
what you think you know. No matter what someone claims to have
seen. I’ve known him for years, and he’s solid. I care about you
and I’m telling you: I think it’s okay for you to hope.”

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek then
leaned back with a gentle smile.

Jane squeezed his hand back and sighed,
wondering how he could possibly be right.

“You know, it’s probably selfish of me to
say so, Janie, but I hate to think of you leaving Gardiner. Sure
wish you could find a reason to stay here with us.”

Me too, Paul
, she thought wistfully,
thinking of Maggie’s Aunt Lily, thinking Gardiner would be the
perfect place for a fresh start if she had a good reason to stay.
Me too.

CHAPTER 10

By the time Lars had finally showered,
changed and walked to Jane’s motel room last night, she was gone,
so he had walked up the street to the Prairie Dawn to see if she
was there. Looking in the window, he’d seen her at a far table with
Paul, with her back to the door, and Lars had placed his hand
eagerly on the door handle to go inside and talk to her.

But then something stopped him: he realized
that Maggie and Nils weren’t there and there was no trace they
had
been there.

He moved back to the window next to the
door, trying to get a better view. Two people, two coffee cups, a
neat pile of playing cards. Leaning forward and cupping the glass
with his hands, he realized that Paul was holding Jane’s hand. He
swallowed, cringing against a sick feeling in his gut, watching
with dread as Paul leaned in toward Jane’s face. When he leaned
back, he smiled at her gently, like a man who really cared about a
woman.

Lars turned away, nauseous and limp, backing
down the steps of the café onto the sidewalk, turning in a daze
toward home.

Holding hands? Kissing?

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Paul wouldn’t
do that to him. He’d seen them at the park together on Monday,
right? Paul
knew
that he was into Jane. He stumbled along,
feeling blindsided and confused, when something awful occurred to
him; Jane was under the assumption that he and Samara were hooking
up. If she’d shared that information with Paul, it was fair for
Paul to assume that Jane was now…available.

He clenched his fists at his sides and his
pace picked up from a bewildered stumble to a walk and then to a
run, until his lungs burned and he was home in half the time it
usually took to get there. His eyes burned as he unlocked his front
door, but he blamed it on the run and the chill of the evening.
Nils’s upper floor of the house was dark and quiet, and although
baring his heart to his older brother wasn’t something Lars had
ever done, he would have considered doing so tonight.

She had rejected him and turned to Paul.

And it hurt like crazy, because he’d
thought—he’d desperately
hoped
that he and Jane would have
another chance.

Goddamn it!

Lars’s life has been pretty uncomplicated up
to now. A childhood spent mostly outdoors with his father and older
brother. Weekdays at school, weekends in Yeller or skiing up at Big
Sky. His mother always made a big splash over birthdays, and
holidays—especially Scandinavian holidays like
Midsommardagen
—were highlights of the year. Lars had a
fairly uneventful high school life, heavy into athletics and
hiking, less illustrious at academics, not because he wasn’t
bright, but because academia didn’t seem especially relevant and
useful to a person claimed, physically and mentally, by the great
outdoors at a very early age. He had graduated high school with
decent, if average, grades, skipped college and went to work for
his father right away, proficiently leading tours, well-respected
by most of the industry veterans as someone who could hold his own.
The business he shared with his father and brothers modestly
thrived, and he shared a two-family house with his brother, which
they jointly owned in full, in addition to three other houses in
town that they rented for ancillary income.

His feelings had never confused him or
otherwise disrupted the solid contentment that pervaded his life.
He felt love—real, deep, true affection—for his family and close
friends, and he was generally well-liked by folks in Gardiner. He
was a good son and brother, a hard worker, a loyal friend, and a
trusted guide. The most important thing in Lars’s life was his
family, and second to that was the earth inside of Yeller, and
after that was everything else, which balanced out fine for a
complete, uncomplicated life that felt good and full.

Until now.

Meeting Jane had changed things for him in
myriad ways.

Mostly because if he walked away from Jane,
or otherwise lost her, his life wouldn’t be complicated, nor would
it ever again feel full.

Jane
was complicated. She was
distrustful, skittish and insecure on one hand, and a sassy, witty,
smart-ass on the other. She had lost her parents and a man she
thought she loved, which had only compounded her flaws, and she
lived her life in the shadow of a cousin who was neither gentle nor
loving when Jane required gentleness and love. She was good at her
job but didn’t like it, and while she liked photography, she had
relegated it to a hobby. He sensed there was a deep well of love in
her heart to give, a warmth and playfulness he had seen and felt.
But, if she wouldn’t take the risk of opening her heart, it could
never be shared.

And yet without his permission or blessing
hers was the face the earth had turned to him, to whom he felt
bundled and bound, as surely as he did to Yeller, as surely as he
was a Lindstrom, and he didn’t know what to do if he couldn’t have
her—if she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, belong to him. He longed for the
good and full, uncomplicated life he had always known, but after
knowing her—the twinkle in her mossy, earthy eyes, the rasp of her
deep voice, the unexpected way she made him laugh out loud, how the
mere touch of her hand made his blood boil and rush—that satisfying
life would be forever elusive without Jane Mays in it.

All of these thoughts floated round and
round in his head all night long, invading his dreams, stealing his
peace, complicating his heretofore uncomplicated life, and leaving
him utterly exhausted in the morning.

And so, after the worst night’s sleep of his
life, during which his subconscious and ego ran laps and his
conscious mind woke up swearing off women forever, Lars woke up
alone in his bed. He showered and dressed, and with his truck in
the shop for another day, he started his walk back into town to get
the van and do his pickup at the Best. Although there was nothing
he would like less, though little else he longed for more, he would
have to start his day seeing Jane.

***

Friday had finally arrived, and Jane woke up
for the last day of the shoot feeling a mix of emotions. This
evening she would have her first weekend vacation in years, which
should have made her feel as light as a feather, yet her mind was
heavy with thoughts of Lars. It was impossible to discount what
Maggie, Nils and Paul had each said last night, in their own way,
about Lars. She liked them and felt the good intentions behind
their words as they all insisted that Lars had genuine feelings for
her…and further, Paul, whom Jane realized she had even grown to
trust in the short time she’d known him, had gone so far as to say
her heart would be safe with Lars.

Despite her feelings for Lars, which grew
deeper and more intense hour by hour, she didn’t know how to
reconcile her friends’ gentle and encouraging advice with Margot’s
grudging admission about what she’d seen. Jane’s
feelings—inconvenient and unwanted though they were—dominated her
heart to the point of intense distraction. Her heart demanded she
reconcile these accounts today. She would need to muster the
courage to talk to him,
regardless
of Margot’s confession,
because
of her friends’ insistence on his constancy.

After showering, she pulled all of her curls
back into a pert little ponytail and secured the stray wisps with
some bobby pins, briefly admiring its cuteness before getting
dressed. One thing Jane had learned during her week in Gardiner was
that fall came quickly to Montana. September morning temperatures
hovered in the low 60s, so she opted for the slim-fit jeans she had
picked up at the only clothing shop in Gardiner and the same black
camisole and green cardigan sweater she had worn on Monday
night.

Jane had an hour to get to Samara’s place,
get her up and pack her bags for Jackson Hole. She stopped at the
lobby coffee kiosk, pouring herself a to-go cup before heading out
onto the misty, quiet, early morning sidewalks of Gardiner.

As she walked along, she turned her thoughts
to the end of the conversation she had with Paul last night. She
hadn’t consciously thought about staying in Gardiner, but after
Paul mentioned it, she couldn’t get it out of her head.
Stay in
Gardiner.
She had to admit, the thought was compelling. Leave
New York and Sara behind. Leave her mediocre relatives and a job
she hated. Stay in Gardiner, which fit Jane like a glove, with
people whom she’d come to treasure over the course of the past
week; people who she thought could be real, lasting friends to her.
She had substantial savings from working for Sara and would easily
be able to set herself up for a couple of years at least,
especially if she lived modestly. She could take pictures of the
park and send them to magazines and galleries back east to see if
she could establish herself as a reputable nature photographer,
maybe even finance her own coffee table book of Yellowstone
photography.

Just stay. Just stay like Maggie’s Aunt Lily
and make Gardiner her home.

But when she thought of Lars, she realized
it wasn’t that simple. She couldn’t just stay; things were
complicated by their…their…whatever it was or had been, between
them. He’d think she was staying for him, chasing after him, after
he had rejected her. They’d want to avoid each other, almost
impossible in a very small town, meanwhile placing people they both
cared about in the middle of their awkwardness. No, it was
impossible. No matter how fine a fit Jane and Gardiner might be,
there was really only one invitation that mattered for her to
consider staying, and despite their previously scalding chemistry,
she sure didn’t imagine seeing that invitation in her immediate
future.

The misty morning, no doubt resulting from
the longer, cooler nights that signaled the coming fall, gave her
walk a little extra atmosphere as dreamy swirls of cloudy air
veiled everything in mystery. The streets were mostly empty, so she
couldn’t have missed the tall figure who approached her
purposefully, mostly concealed by the misty morning.

She froze in her tracks, gasping softly,
bewildered by his sudden appearance, as if it should be impossible
that Lars Lindstrom was suddenly standing before her, actualized
from nothing but vapor.

She heard, rather than felt, her coffee cup
slip from her slackened fingers and crash to the ground beside her
in an ungraceful splatter.

He stopped, breaking stride, gazing into her
eyes with disbelief as he continued toward her with slower, though
no less deliberate, intent.

Jane sighed with involuntary pleasure
watching him. He was so beautiful, materializing out of the mist
like magic, so familiar, and yet so devastatingly impossible, her
heart wouldn’t let her look away even though her mind acknowledged
the sharp and shredding certainty that he didn’t belong to her.
Surely he would walk by her, without a glance, without a word,
vanish into the otherworldly gauze of mist behind her, elusive and
unobtainable.