Summer's End (19 page)

He nodded. “Right after high school.”

“Why did you quit?”

“It was a government bureaucracy. I'd rather be in a burning building than a government bureaucracy.”

“Have you ever done any disaster-relief work?” she heard herself ask.

“Disaster-relief work?” He looked up. The light was too dim for her to read his expression. She could see only the square lines of his cheekbones and the almost parallel set of his jaw. “What are you talking about?”

“I do some work for the American Red Cross. When there's a flood or a hurricane or an earthquake, sometimes they ask me to go in and get on the air, letting people know what kind of services are available and where funds are needed and—”

“You know about that stuff?”

“Someone hands me a piece of paper.” She didn't want to talk about herself. “Anyway, at disaster sites there are always these people who are there to get things working again. People who can figure out how to get electricity from that side of the causeway to this one or who can lay a clean water line across the San Andreas fault. It's very short-term work, very ‘let's just get this done before nightfall,' no worrying about permits or environmental-impact statements.”

“You don't have to worry about permits? That sounds like heaven to me.”

Amy had thought it would appeal to him. “I think the people who do it love it. They'd never admit it because of the disasters being so awful, but they always seem so alive when they're trying to get things working again.”

“And you're suggesting that I might like it too?”

“I don't know about that.” That was nearly a lie; she thought he would love it. “But when you were talking about laying dock sections across the swamp, it occurred to me that you would be good at it.” And if what his sister had said about his love life was even half true, he was at his best when helping other people.

“I probably would be reasonably adequate,” he acknowledged, “especially if they let me use duct tape.”

“They don't care what you use. They only care about results.”

Jack was still squatting like a baseball catcher, his elbows on his knees. “That's what people ought to care about, but the older I get, the more it seems like results are the one thing a lot of people
don't
care about. They think they do, but they don't. Either they want to control your process, or they want to know that you're feeling the right thing. You can completely screw up, but as long as you were feeling the right thing while you were screwing up, all is forgiven.”

“We're a sentimental people,” Amy said. You had to understand that all the way down to your toes if you ever wanted to be successful in American popular culture.

“I suppose,” he agreed. “But me…I don't want to be judged on what I say or how I feel, but on what I do. Talk's cheap; it's actions that count.”

Amy agreed with him on talk. “But feelings…they aren't cheap, they do count.”

“But they shouldn't be excuses.”

“No,” she agreed again.

“In fact, they—” He broke off. “Am I ever yammering on about myself. Let's talk about you.”

This time Amy did not agree with him. She wanted to go on talking about him. “I'm a professional figure skater.”

He looked up at her. “Guess what? I already knew that. And you live in Denver, and you train with two guys that I have actually heard of, and you are on TV a lot.”

“So what else do you want to know?”

He put the first log on the fire. Amy thought it looked too big, that its weight would smother the fire, but flames began curling up its sides. “You could start by telling me why you told me about that property of yours.”

Amy straightened. That was out of the blue. “Was I wrong to?” she asked carefully.

“I don't like secrets. I don't think families should have a lot of secrets from one another.”

But secrets are fun
. The figure-skating world was full of secrets—what music you were working on, what contracts you were about to sign. Most of the secrets were common knowledge, but still officially they were secrets and were the currency of friendship, how you let someone know you were pals.

He continued. “I worry when people start telling me secrets. They usually want something from me.”

“That's probably often true,” she said.

“So what do you want from me?”

What did she want from him? She let out a breath. She hadn't thought of herself as wanting anything from him. Yes, she wanted to have a good time at the lake. She wanted to feel that she had a friend up here, an ally.

But his sister was providing that. So why hadn't she told Holly about the property? Why had she told him? She didn't know.

He spoke again. “I don't want to be the boy at the camp down the road. If you want a wild summer romance, you need to look elsewhere.”

Amy felt her eyes widen. She quickly disciplined her expression…not that it mattered. It was too dark for him to see.

A wild summer romance? Was that what she wanted? She hadn't thought about it.

But the idea did have some merits. Physically Jack was attractive, there was no question about that. Even when he was wearing blue, he had a natural, earthy magnetism. He was interesting, he was generous, he was trustworthy. For a wild summer romance he probably was an ideal candidate…although if that had been her reason for telling him about the property, she certainly hadn't been conscious of it.

“First of all,” he continued, “I'm not a kid, and second, this isn't summer camp.”

“Okay.” What else could she say?

“Stop me if I am making a complete idiot of myself here. I'm not saying that I wouldn't be flattered or that if things were different, I wouldn't—oh, hell.” He broke off. “Would you please say something? I'm talking way too much.”

It was too late. He had already exposed himself, not in what he had said, but in what he hadn't said.
First of all
—this is what he could have said, should have said—
I don't think of you in that way
. But he hadn't said that. Clearly the issue was not
her
wanting a wild summer romance, but him doing so.

Amy was not often surprised by people. Her intuitive powers were strong enough that she usually at least half expected whatever happened. But all this was surprising. Jack, her father's new wife's son, her new friend's brother, was attracted to her.

“What would you like me to say?” she asked.

“You could be making violent gagging noises because me being even as close as the camp down the road makes you sick.”

“If I put my mind to it, I'm sure I'd decide that you on the other side of the fire circle was too far.”

He cursed. “Don't say things like that. It's stupid to say things like that. Try the violent, gagging noises.”

“You're really worried about this, aren't you?” Amy imagined that he was like herself, all instinct and intuition, trusting first impressions far more than orderly thought. But he had obviously been thinking about this for some time. He was attracted to her, but he was determined to resist the feeling.

“I wasn't worried about it at all because I was counting on you to be repelled at that idea.”

She was not. She quite liked the idea…in fact, the clarity of her feelings suggested that her subconscious had been addressing the matter for some time.

She didn't understand his reluctance. There was no privacy up here, she would admit that, but they could at least get to know each other better.

“I think I should go away for a couple of days,” he said.

“Go away?” Was this really such a problem that he had to run away? “Why? I don't want to be chasing you off. That's not fair to your mother.”

“You're not chasing me off…well, maybe you are, but I figure I can kill two birds with one stone. Mom told you about Nick's friend, didn't she? I don't see how he can think straight with so many people around. So I'm thinking I should take him away for a while. That will be fine with Mom. She'll want me to do what's right for Nick.”

Amy imagined that he was right. “But where would you go?”

“I don't know…there's not a lot of choices, but there is a whole bunch of federal land up by the Canadian border, National Parks and such, and the only way to get into it is by canoe. Maybe we could do that.”

“Do you like canoeing?” Amy had not seen him out in any of the boats. He tended to avoid the water.

“I haven't been in one since Boy Scout camp, but I can probably manage for a couple of days. He and I can go out in the wilderness, paint our faces blue, and march around the campfire howling until he feels a little better.”

Amy had to smile. He was joking about the face painting and the howling, of course, but the rest of it was so like him. All the other men up here would want Nick to talk—actually, Ian might just want Nick to listen—but Jack would want to act, to move. They might go the whole time without saying one word about Nick's friend, but Nick probably would come home feeling better.

“When would you go? How long would you be gone?”

“I don't know. I just had the idea about five seconds ago.”

That too was like him. “So I guess you haven't told Nick about it yet.”

He shook his head. “Haven't had a chance.”

The screen doors were banging, and voices were growing closer. In a moment the others joined them, the kids carrying bags of marshmallows and a jug of lemonade. Gwen followed with a metal dishpan full of the popcorn supplies. Phoebe was carrying a Coleman lantern. Jack took the dishpan from his mother, gave it to Holly, then drew Hal and Gwen aside. He said a few words. Gwen glanced at Hal, Hal nodded, and Gwen reached up, patted him on the cheek.

He didn't spend much longer with Nick. The boy started in surprise and then looked down, kicking a little trench in the sand with the side of his shoe. He shrugged
and nodded, still looking at the ground. Amy suspected that he liked the idea better than he was admitting.

Jack looked back at his mother. She nodded again. The whole thing was settled. How quickly they made decisions. It was amazing. Her family would have had to talk about it for a week. At the very minimum.

Of course, her father had been part of the decision. He had been able to decide as quickly as Gwen. He was changing. How odd to think of your parent as changing.

Gwen waited until Phoebe was done shaking the long-handled popcorn popper and the kids had roasted their first marshmallows. Then she spoke. “Nick and Jack are going on a canoe trip for a couple of days.”

The group exploded. “A canoe trip? Oh, Nick,” Ellie sighed, “you're so lucky.”

“Can I go?” seven-year-old Scott chirped.

“Me too,” piped up Alex. “I want to go too.”

“When did you make these plans?” Ian asked.

“Jack doesn't make plans,” Holly answered. “He just does things.”

“You'll need to plan this,” Ian said. “You need to get permits.”

“Permits?” Jack's head shot up. He did not like the sound of that. “From the government?”

“I think that's right,” Amy's father said. “I'm not sure that you can hop in a canoe and go anymore. They restrict access. You'll need to go into town and make arrangements for a permit.”

“The wilderness areas have gotten too crowded,” Ian explained. “It's a major issue in the management of our national park system. So they have had to limit access. Only so many people can launch a day.”

“Oh, well, a
day
.” Jack was clearly prepared to launch at night rather than go through permit application.

Amy saw her father start to laugh, but Ian missed Jack's point. “And I believe the permits can snapped up pretty fast. You probably can't get one for this year.”

“That may be true for weekend access,” Giles said. “Mid-week might be a different story.”

That made sense to Amy.

“But still,” Ian went on, “I think you'd be better advised to wait until next year.”

Amy looked at him. Didn't he ever listen to himself? Didn't he ever hear how pompous he sounded?
Don't you care what Gwen and Holly and Jack must think of us?

Maybe he hadn't cut his hair. Maybe his ponytail had just fallen off, unwilling to be a part of such pomposity.

“Obviously we don't have enough information.” Amy's father was speaking, sounding more like himself again. He loved to collect information. “I'll go into town tomorrow and make some calls.”

“Why don't I go?” Ian volunteered.

Amy could think of a thousand reasons why Ian shouldn't be the one to make the calls. He would make sure that the trip didn't happen this year.

“Oh, let's have Holly do it,” Gwen said lightly. “She's very good at finding things out on the phone.”

“Me?” Holly was startled. “I'm not going on a canoe trip.”

“I didn't ask you to,” Gwen answered. “I just want you to make the arrangements.”

“Arrangements I can make. I will do anything as long as you don't expect me to sleep in a tent.”

“But you were planning on including the rest of us,
weren't you?” Joyce asked. “We've never split up like that before.”

“This was something Nick and Jack had planned to do together,” Gwen said quietly.

“Is there a reason why others can't go with them?” Joyce persisted. “It doesn't seem fair.”

What did fairness have to do with it? Surely Joyce realized—

Amy stopped. She looked across the fire circle toward Gwen. She was standing at the picnic table, salting the popcorn, and the light from the Coleman lantern shone on her face. Her expression was tight.

She had not yet told Joyce and Ian about Nick's friend. Surely even they would have been cooperative if they had understood.