Run Fast, My Love, page 9
“You look fine to me.”
Dan’s quiet words startled Taryn, and she turned her head to look at him. But he moved away and began sizing up racks of skis behind an opposite counter. “Just a few more necessities, and you’re all set.”
Taryn pulled her ski hat farther over her head and watched Dan talk with the employee behind the counter. Her thoughts went to the week-old article she’d read in one of seven identical newspapers she’d bought from the newspaper machine in the front lobby near the restaurant. The news hadn’t been good, but that was no surprise. It was that one quote from her uncle, when he was asked by a reporter if he suspected foul play, that bothered her above all else. Uncle Matt had stated, “Taryn will do the right thing. She’s always been a good kid and doesn’t like to see anyone suffer needlessly.”
“Ready?” Dan asked, breaking into her gloomy thoughts.
“If I must.”
Dan laughed. “You’ll love it. I promise. Here, you’ll need these.” He handed her a pair of tinted goggles, like his.
Thirty minutes later while Dan took her through warm-up exercises, taught her turns and how to walk uphill a short distance from the lift, Taryn reminded herself of his words to her in the ski rental shop. Her calves ached, as did muscles she didn’t even know she possessed in her legs, back, and shoulders. After she got the hang of turning while lifting her skis, he took her to a small hill and showed her how to snowplow, pointing the front tips of her skis inward to slow or stop on a downward slope.
He was patient. Funny. Helpful. The perfect instructor. Taryn surmised that in losing Dan, this lodge had lost a valuable employee. She’d never seen this easygoing side of him, and she liked it. A lot.
“Okay, time to hit the lifts,” he said once she’d successfully snowplowed to where he stood at the bottom of the tall mound, three times taller than she.
Taryn’s enthusiasm at her success chilled, and she gripped the poles harder. “What? You’re kidding, right? I’m nowhere near ready.”
He grinned. “You’re ready. You catch on quick.” With one hand, he brushed the damp hair from her eyes, and Taryn shivered at both the particles of snow clinging to his gloved fingers and the intimacy of the gesture. “Don’t worry,” he soothed. “The beginner’s slope will be as smooth as sliding on glass. The snow is great today. Perfect for skiing.”
“Hmph. Easy for you to say. And sliding on glass doesn’t sound all that appealing. It sounds painful.”
He let out a chuckle that sounded nice to her ears. “Terri Ross, have you always been such a chicken-liver?”
She cracked a smile. “I’m going with you, aren’t I? Just lead the way, Dan, and I’ll follow.”
The words, intended to be flippant, didn’t sound that way, and Taryn felt uneasy when she realized that she’d called him by his first name. He stared at her a moment longer, then turned toward the lifts. “The day isn’t getting any younger,” he said. “Let’s go!”
Relieved that he hadn’t commented on her hasty words, Taryn awkwardly trailed him to the line for the beginner’s lift. When their turn came, she did as Dan instructed and looked over her shoulder to spot the automated chair’s approach. The moment she felt it hit the back of her legs, she sat on the frozen metal bench and gripped the side safety bar, keeping the poles across her thighs while Dan did the same and lowered the safety bar over them.
From his place on the double bench chair beside her, he rewarded her with a smile. “You handled that like a real pro. Sure you haven’t done this before?”
“Positive,” she mumbled, staring down at the white expanse of ground and the people in their colorful winter garb, getting smaller and smaller. The treetops that towered above her minutes ago were almost beneath her feet. She closed her eyes.
“Afraid of heights?”
She sent him a wry glance. “A little late to be asking that, isn’t it?” She gripped her poles harder. “It’s not the heights I’m afraid of. Just rickety, open-air chair lifts, with only a thin bar between me and a plummet to the earth—which is getting farther away as we speak.” She quickly lifted her gaze from the ground and closed her eyes again.
His glove on her arm surprised her, and she looked at him. “Don’t worry, Terri. The first time at anything is always a little scary. Just don’t rock the chair, and you’ll be fine.”
“Oh, thanks. That’s the first thing I’ll probably do now, without even knowing I’m doing it.”
He answered with an amused smile and filled in the time by telling her about the variations in snow and how its consistency affected a ski run. Taryn had no idea there were so many types of snow. Wet snow, powdery snow, icy snow. . .
“Okay, now as we approach the platform, raise the tips of your skis,” Dan instructed. “When they touch the ground, stand up and push away with your poles—then slide out of the path quickly so you don’t get hit in the back of the head with the chair.”
Terrific. Something else to worry about. Taryn swallowed hard as the white earth rose up to greet them. When the moment came, she inhaled deeply and did as Dan said, grateful for the supportive hand he put to her elbow. Her legs felt unsteady, but she managed to follow him to the edge of a hill where one of the trails started.
“Good job,” he said. “We’ll make a skier out of you yet.”
She looked down the gradual slope of pristine white. Even the fact that widely spaced pines bordered both sides of the open run and the middle appeared smooth and clear didn’t do much to reassure her.
“Come on, you’ll love it,” Dan urged with a distracting grin.
“Why do those sound like famous last words?” Taryn mumbled.
His laugh warmed her heart. “Just remember everything I showed you, and you’ll do fine.”
Taryn gripped the ski poles and adopted the starting stance but only stared at the yawning slant of glistening ivory. She wondered what percentage of beginning skiers broke their legs in accidents on their first try.
“Need a push?”
“No!” She took a deep breath, stalling as long as she could. “Uh, any chance we can ride back down in the lift the same way we came up?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Come on, you can brave your Goliath. Just remember what I taught you.”
His words arrested her. “Brave my Goliath?”
“A saying of Gram’s. She says we all have a Goliath disturbing our lives. We can either face the giant down, like the shepherd David did, or we can stand paralyzed in fear, do nothing, and let him tramp us into the ground.”
The word picture brought her own giant to mind, the one she’d been trying to escape for weeks. Taryn forced herself not to think about it.
“All right, fine,” she said through stiff, numb lips. With a shaky breath, she anchored her poles to the ground on both sides and pushed off.
The arctic wind whizzed by, stinging her face and robbing her of breath. Icy pellets flew upward as her skis made tracks on the packed snow. She tried to make her legs obey and push her skis into a wedge, but they stubbornly wanted to remain parallel, increasing her speed. Worse, one leg seemed determined to beat the other in a downhill race.
“Balance yourself evenly on both feet!” Dan called from the top of the hill. “Don’t lean backward—and push the fronts of your skis together!”
“I’m trying!” Taryn cried before she lost all balance and fell, landing hard on her bottom near the back edge of one ski. She continued sliding. Anxious, she dug her gloved hands and forearms into the snow to halt her progress. Icy granules seeped under her gloves and jacket and stung her bare skin. The poles trailed behind, useless and still attached by the straps around her wrists. She fell back until she lay flat in the snow and came to a dead stop.
Groaning, she pushed her arms and elbows deeper into the snow and forced her upper body upright. One ski lay at a crooked angle, loose from her boot. The other was still clamped firmly to the sole of her boot.
She heard the shush-shushing of Dan’s skis as he glided downhill behind her. He came into her line of vision with a graceful twist of his body and skidded to an abrupt stop. A shower of snow rained down on her.
“That wasn’t so bad,” he said with a smile, pulling his goggles away from his eyes. “Ready to try again?”
She glared up at him.
“Come on, Terri. Falling is all part of learning. You just have to learn how to fall. Sitting down was a good maneuver to stop—but next time try to sit on both skis at once.”
Pulling her mouth into a tight line, she grabbed a handful of snow, crunched her fingers around it, and tossed the frozen lump toward his face. The pole’s strap attached to her wrist impeded her throw and the snowball only hit his pants leg.
“Tsk, tsk. Temper, temper.” He had the gall to smile again and jabbed both his poles into the packed snow. “Here, you look like you could use some help up.”
She took hold of both of his gloved hands, considered pulling hard on them to make him join her on the frozen ground, then realized if he did fall it would be on top of her. She already felt bruised enough for one day.
Once she was on her feet, he let go. The one ski still attached to her foot felt as if it would take off without her, and she grabbed his shoulders.
“Easy,” he murmured, putting his hands to her waist. “I’ve got you.”
A few rapid heartbeats passed before she lifted her gaze from his jacket. His green eyes were tender, mesmerizing. They stood so close that the fog of their breath in the chill air mingled.
“I’ll help you get your other ski on,” Dan said gruffly after several tense seconds elapsed.
He crouched beside her and clamped the clumsy boot back into the binding. They continued their slow downward trek, but the mood had changed. Gone was the easygoing banter of earlier. Now only Dan’s curt instructions filled the awkwardness between them.
Taryn got the hang of snowplowing to break her speed and finally made it to the bottom of the hill, which ended in a natural run-out. To her surprise, she found herself begging to go again. After a moment’s hesitation, Dan agreed.
After four more runs on the beginner’s slope, Dan said it was getting late. Taryn pleaded for one more run, thrilled that she’d stayed upright on her skis more often than she slid on her bottom—and she was actually having a good time.
“All right,” Dan said with a tolerant smile. “But this is the last one.”
As the chair lift took them to the drop-off point, Taryn eagerly peered over the mountainside at the majestic groupings of pines, each clothed in soft clumps of puffy sugar-white. The gray-blue of the evening sky painted the background. Over the treetops she caught glimpses of the picturesque town of Pinecrest. From this distance, the brown wooden buildings appeared like a miniature toy Christmas village, with their upright porch beams and slanted roofs garlanded in strings of cheery white lights.
Thwunk!
Above, the motorlike whir that accompanied the line of moving chairs ceased, as did the creaks and clicks of running machinery. Dead silence muted the air. Rocking slightly from its sudden stop, the chair lift dangled over what must have been more than fifty feet of space to the frozen earth.
❧
“Great!” Dan muttered. Feeling Terri’s anxious stare, he looked her way. “This happens every now and then. It should be fixed soon. Until then, all we can do is wait.”
Modifications were still being made to the old ski lift, and Dan wondered if Bob Grady shouldn’t have closed it for a season. On occasion, he suspected the man’s desire for wealth eclipsed his interest in the tourists’ safety. Still, Dan knew that the lift passed a recent inspection, so he assumed everything was in order.
Minutes trudged by, the weight of them seeming like hours. Dan had never been one for small talk, but anything would be better than this heavy, awkward silence that had fallen over them, since the moment on the slopes when he’d almost kissed her.
“How are things going with Paul?” he blurted, uncomfortable by the memory.
The silence broken, Terri jerked in surprise. She seemed hesitant to speak. “I wish I could say everything’s fine, but it’s not. He seems upset about something.” She paused. “I think it has to do with his mother.”
The words poured salt into wounds not yet healed. He stared straight ahead.
“Um, I was wondering,” she continued. “Do you have any idea why he should feel guilty about her death?”
At this, Dan looked at her sharply. “He told you that?”
“Not straight out, no. But after talking with him, I think he thinks it.”
Dan heaved a drawn-out sigh. He’d had no idea Paul felt that way. “To answer your question I’d have to tell you things I haven’t told anyone. Gram knows, of course, but few other people do.”
She fidgeted with the poles that lay across her thighs. “Oh, well, that’s okay. You don’t have to. . .I was just wondering how I could help Paul. He’s such a sweet boy, and I hate to see him upset.”
Dan studied her profile. Today, the spirals of her shining auburn hair were pulled back and fastened with an elastic band at the nape of her neck, and he could see her face clearly. Under the green nylon hat, her smooth brow clouded, as though she were disappointed with his answer.
And he wanted to tell her everything.
Stunned by the thought, he continued to watch her. He’d never talked about Gwen to anyone since her death, not even Gram. But perhaps here, hanging in a chairlift above a winter-hushed world, with this woman who’d proven to be the opposite of what Dan had first thought—perhaps now was the time to talk about it.
“My wife was mentally unstable,” Dan said before he could change his mind. “I didn’t realize it until after we married.”
Terri stared at him in surprise.
“Gwen and I met in college. Gram sensed something was wrong when I brought her home during spring break. She warned me then not to get involved with her. But Gwen was a knockout—she’d even won a few beauty contests in her area, and I was a fool in love. We married less than a month later. I haven’t always made wise decisions, and that was just another stupid one. Even when I hired you, I did so for all the wrong reasons,” Dan added as an afterthought.
Terri averted her eyes, evidently uncertain what to make of his confession. Dan quickly continued.
“Gwen met a guest at the inn and spent time talking to her. She began reading books on bizarre religions—cultish-type books. Crystals soon appeared in every room. She even wore one around her neck and never took it off. Fantasy for her became reality. She asked me to put up those wind chimes Paul showed us, and she asked me to put them in the middle of nowhere, because she said then the fairies would hear the tinkling sound and come out to play. She laughed when she said it, so I went along with her crazy idea, thinking it all a joke. At first maybe she was teasing, but later I wasn’t sure. It soon became apparent that something wasn’t quite right with her. After a while, I began turning down invitations from friends. We never went anywhere because her behavior grew more erratic.”
Dan focused on the upright poles of the ski lift ahead, laid out like a row of telephone posts. “After Paul was born, things got worse. Gwen’s perception of reality grew completely distorted. She was convinced his genius was a sign that her so-called spirit guides had sent him to her, and she tried to use him as her medium—having him point to things as a toddler, to help her make choices. When he could talk, she asked him questions outright. She often read her bizarre books to him, because she said the spirits told her she must prepare him for the next level he would ascend to.”
“Did you try to get help for her?” Terri asked softly.
Dan grimaced at the memory. “Twice. The first counselor was involved in the New Age ideology, too. She scolded me for bringing Gwen and said I was the one who needed to change. Then we took her to a Christian counselor, a friend of Gram’s. Five minutes in the room with him, and Gwen became violent, screaming and spitting at him like a wildcat. I couldn’t figure out what he’d said that made her so mad—I’d never seen her react that way. I had to physically restrain her. After we left his office, Gwen was hysterical. She cried and held me, begging me not to make her go back. She promised she’d be good and pleaded with me to let her stay at the inn, where she said she was happy. I figured with me keeping an eye on her that home was the best place for her, so I agreed.”
Dan hesitated and Terri remained quiet, probably having a hard time believing his fantastic story. It did sound bizarre. But living it had been even more of a nightmare.
“Soon, I began catching her at lies. Small ones at first, then bigger ones. She took things out of my office—important documents, prescription medication, my coin collection—all sorts of things—then lied about doing it, even when Gram caught her in the act. One night she left the inn and found a few local girls in town who shared her beliefs. She spent time with them, sometimes staying out all night. She made travel reservations for exotic locales on our credit card—places she never intended to go. When I discovered the damage, it was often too late to cancel and there would be a charge. I ended up locking away her credit cards and checkbook. Then she started taking money from my wallet, so I had to make sure I always carried it with me.
“She accused me of holding her hostage and started seeing the inn as a prison. At times, she was vindictive, nothing like the gentle girl I married. Other times, her sweet nature would surface. It was like being married to two different women.”
He swallowed hard, the next part the most difficult to say. “When Paul was four, Gwen became pregnant again. She wanted an abortion, but I said no. She shouted about her right to choose then days later appeared resigned and told me that she’d changed her mind about having the baby and was going in for a checkup. I offered to drop her off in town, but she told me a friend was picking her up. Later I discovered that Gwen caught a shuttle to the ski slopes and skied the expert run—one of the most difficult trails. They found her twisted body where she’d gone over a drop-off.” He swallowed over the tightness in his throat. “She left a note behind, saying that her spirit guide had told her the baby was a mistake, it was time for her to ascend to the next plane, and this was how she’d been instructed to do it.”
