A Little Learning (19 page)

Again, she heard the teenager standing up, coming to the door. Lauren wasn’t someone who just called out an invitation to enter.

She looked at Rory.

Rory asked, “May I come in?”

Lauren shrugged and turned away.

Rory entered the room and sat down in a white leather chair. “This is comfortable,” she exclaimed in surprise.

“I like to sit in it when I study,” Lauren said.

“I want to know if you’ve been practicing with your staff.”

Lauren shook her head. “Not much.”

Rory said, “Remember how you said you’d like to be part of a troupe?”

Lauren looked as if she regretted the words and the thought. “You said I’m not ready.”

“Well, kind of. Not for lighting fire, yet. You really have to be good with your props before you add fire to what you’re doing. But while I was running the school for my dad I couldn’t teach dance anymore. I just didn’t have the time or energy. So Samantha started doing it. And she’s got two pretty enthusiastic beginning students. But we think five is a good number for a troupe. And you’re naturally graceful and a good athlete. You can do isolations. Your body works well for this. I just thought if you wanted to practice regularly...”

“You’re bribing me.”

Rory’s eyes shifted sideways, then back. “Well, let’s put it this way. If you hadn’t gotten mad at me for agreeing to marry your dad, I would have asked you, anyway. If you were going to be in Sultan.”

“What if we stay here?” Lauren asked.

“Then, I think we need to get some tribal fusion belly dance going in Telluride. Did you mean, by the way, that you like cabaret style?”

Lauren made a face. And didn’t answer.

Rory took that for
No.
As in,
I said that just to hurt you.

Lauren said, “Doesn’t it seem weird to you that my dad wanted to stay in this house?”

“He might have thought it was best for the four of you. So that you wouldn’t lose both your mom and your home.”

Lauren said, “I guess. I didn’t want to move. I just wanted my mom back.”

“I wish you had her back,” Rory said. “I didn’t know my mom, except when I was a baby. I don’t remember her at all.”

“Your mom died?” Lauren asked.

Rory nodded. “In a skiing accident. But it was when I was too little to remember anything.”

Lauren thought for a minute, and Rory could imagine what she was thinking. Was it better to have loved and lost...? Rory
did
love her mother, but that was an incomplete feeling. She didn’t have a single memory of her. Only an emptiness.

Rory said, “Will you please dance and do staff-twirling with me again? If I move here, I won’t have anyone to dance with, and dancing with other people is what’s the most fun for me.”

“Okay.” Lauren nodded.

“Have you tried on the stuff I gave you?”

Lauren shook her head.

“Maybe another day?” Rory asked.

“Or, like, tonight. If you stay tonight. You’re probably staying, right?”

Rory nodded. “Thank you, Lauren.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

O
N
J
UNE
FOURTH
,
Caleb’s birthday, Rory joined Lauren outside the house. The two of them were going to take Caleb downtown while Seamus put the finishing touches on his son’s present, a set of skateboard obstacles that could be used on the garage floor or outside in winter with Caleb’s snowskate.

Lauren’s attitude toward Rory had mellowed slightly. During the three dance practice sessions they’d fit into Rory’s work schedule, the teenager hadn’t exuded the warmth and enthusiasm she’d originally showed. Still, Rory thought that even if Lauren wasn’t
encouraging
marriage between her father and Rory, she was at least grudgingly accepting it.

Now, Lauren asked with her typical lack of enthusiasm, “Did you get Caleb anything?”

Rory nodded. In a low voice, she said, “Just this snowboard/skater sweatshirt he admired in Sultan. I hope he still likes it.”

“Is it pink?” Lauren asked. Her brother loved shocking pink and wore it with enthusiasm. He was a strong athlete and popular and he knew it. The bright pink was a reflection of that confidence.

“Black and pink. Yes.” Rory smiled.

“He’ll like it,” Lauren said.

“What about you?”

“I got him a CD. I already gave it to him. I hate his taste in music, but it’s his birthday. You know.”

“You’re a good sister,” Rory said. “You really take care of all of them.”

“Well...not Beau,” Lauren pointed out.

“That’s true.” Both Lauren and Beau had entered counseling, and Seamus had gone to one session on his own. Rory wanted to ask Lauren about her counselor, if she liked the woman, that kind of thing, but it felt too much like prying into something private.

“You spend more time with us than with Dad,” Lauren observed.

It wasn’t so, of course, because every time she came to Telluride, Rory spent the evening with Seamus, touching, laughing and making plans for the future. She said now, “I see plenty of him. I’ll be glad when my dad can be back at work all the time, though.” She’d cut her hours to four days a week, which left her more time to be with the Lees, but Kurt Gorenzi still had not regained his strength completely. Where he had previously seemed young and vital, suddenly he had aged.

Rory saw difficult choices ahead. He was going to have to find a partner in the Sultan Mountain School, or hire someone to take over as director for him. If family life allowed, Rory could be a partner in running the school. She did not want the directorship, however; not on her own.

Seamus had been looking at property in Sultan. He’d concluded that he could open a second work location in Sultan. The offices could send files via e-mail and by courier; it could work.

Rory found that, as sensitive as Seamus initially had been about her accepting the job her father had offered, now he was willing to compromise. He saw that her father’s health wasn’t good, and he was more willing to make it possible for her to help at the Sultan Mountain School. Lauren, too, seemed less adamant about remaining in Telluride. She and Beau and Caleb and Belle had accompanied Seamus on a tour of the K-12 Sultan school the previous week. Lauren had said it “seemed all right.”

Now, Rory asked her, “Lauren, would you like to be in the wedding?”

Lauren shook her head. “Not really.”

Samantha and one of Seamus’s employees would be maid of honor and best man, respectively. Rory had selected a fairly simple ivory dress. It was long-sleeved and should be warm enough for an outdoor ceremony, even at high altitude. She planned to wear a wreath on her head. Neither she nor Seamus wanted an elaborate ceremony. They’d invited family, his employees and a few close friends. A local minister in Sultan would perform the ceremony.

Caleb came out of the house with Seuss on a leash.

Lauren said, “We shouldn’t take him. He won’t be able to go in stores and stuff.”

“We can tie him up outside,” Caleb said.

Rory hesitated. While it was good for a dog to be able to wait courteously outside a building, it was also a good way for a dog to be stolen. She pointed this out to Caleb.

Caleb said, “I guess you’re right. C’mon boy.” He took the dog back inside, then ran out again to join his sister and Rory.

They climbed into Rory’s car and drove downtown. They’d promised to take Caleb to the Telluride Skate Park and also to a bookstore, so he could use the gift certificate Fiona had given him.

They parked the car and walked to the skate park, where Rory sat watching Caleb while Lauren walked across the grass to a friend’s house, which adjoined the park. The friend was named Cassidy and Rory had met her only once, briefly. Lauren promised to be back in half an hour.

Caleb had the park almost completely to himself. He came over to Rory’s bench to ask her to watch one trick or another and to time him crossing the big bowl and coming back. She was doing this when she heard what sounded like the report of a gun.

It had come from the houses near the park and terror immediately seized her. Where was Lauren?

“Caleb,” she called and waved him over as she stood up. She gazed toward the houses just as Lauren came out of her friend’s house. Lauren, too, was glancing around, looking for the source of the gunfire.

She crossed the lawn to Rory and Caleb, looking back over her shoulder.

“Probably someone cleaning a weapon,” Rory said uneasily.

Lauren hugged herself, and for a moment they all stood gazing toward the houses, waiting uneasily. Caleb stood on his skateboard and practiced ollies in place, until Rory said, “Let’s get on to the bookstore, Caleb.”

They walked back into town, and then to the bookstore. Lauren was uncharacteristically pale and quiet.

Rory said, “Was Cassidy there?”

“Oh. Yes.” Lauren nodded abruptly, seeming preoccupied.

“You okay?” Rory asked.

Lauren nodded again. “Fine.”

A sound on the street. Maybe it could have been a car backfiring. But Rory felt sure that Lauren’s thoughts had turned to handguns; to the possibility of an accident somewhere, an accident like her mother’s or with equally tragic consequences.

“Want to have a chai or something, while Caleb looks at books?”

“Yes,” Lauren said. “Maybe a frozen chai. It’s kind of warm out.” And yet she shivered, rubbing her arms.

In the bookstore, while Caleb wandered the kids’ section, then began looking at books of photos, Rory and Lauren sat at a table in the back, near the espresso counter. Rory ordered a latte and Lauren a frozen chai, and they sat together sipping them.

A siren cut through the sounds of the store, the sounds outside.

“Oh, no,” Lauren said.

Rory instinctively grasped her forearm. “It’s probably not related.”

“You’re thinking about it, too,” Lauren observed.

“Well...yes.”

The barista, overhearing them, said, “That’s a fire truck.”

“You’re sure?” Lauren looked toward her, anxious.

The woman nodded. “Yeah. I’m on the ambulance crew. You learn the different sirens. That’s the fire guys.”

“Not related,” Rory repeated.

Lauren nodded, then drew on her straw. She said, “I can do that whole fire staff routine three times in a row without a mistake.”

“Really?” Rory knew, as Lauren did, that this was the forerunner to being able to use a lighted staff. She said, “I’m willing to ask your dad if you can work with a lit staff, but you have to make me a few promises first.”

Lauren waited.

“Absolutely no alcohol or drugs and fire arts together,” Rory said. “I mean it, Lauren. We’re going to look at some pictures of the burns people get, so you appreciate this.”

“It would be really dumb,” Lauren said. “I don’t do that stuff, anyhow. I don’t like feeling out of control.”

“Me, either,” Rory agreed fervently. “And don’t get in cars with drunk people or people on drugs.”

“I know,” Lauren said.

“The other thing is, no fire arts unless I’m there. This isn’t something to, like, show your friends you can do. You need to be with other people who are part of your team and who have a lot of experience. Usually, I completely discourage people under eighteen from using fire. I would only do this because I know you very well and
trust
you to only do it when I’m there.”

Lauren nodded.

“There are all sorts of protocols for using fire,” Rory continued, “and we have to follow them precisely. Things like tying up your hair and getting it completely wet. Having a spotter with a fire blanket. Sometimes people think it’s just as safe to use a wet towel, but you can get really bad steam burns that way. And how you deal with fuels on the wicks takes experience. There’s no other way, or you can have lit drops of kerosene flying everywhere, burning people or starting fires.”

Lauren looked appropriately apprehensive.

“So, that rule of doing it only when I’m there with you, supervising, is absolute.”

“What about, say, Samantha?”

“Actually, no. Samantha
does
know what she’s doing, but she’s not a guardian for you. When I marry your dad, I will be.”

“Okay,” Lauren agreed.

Her eyes suddenly drifted away, looking in the direction of the skate park as if she could see through walls and buildings to the source of the gunshot they’d heard.

She said, “I’m not sure I want to do it with fire.”

“Good,” Rory answered. “I’m really happy to hear you say that.”

“Why?”

“It’s something to be afraid of. Fear isn’t bad. It keeps you alive and healthy.”

Lauren nodded, lowering her eyes.

Caleb came over to their table with a book called
Off the Map,
which showed objects on the earth photographed from space. “Found it,” he said. “Can I have a chai?”

* * *

T
HAT
EVENING
,
THEY
sat around the large-screen television upstairs to watch
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2
. Belle was already asleep, having accepted the fact that the movie had “scary parts.” Rory leaned against Seamus on the couch, and Lauren, Beau and Caleb flopped on big pillows on the floor.

Just after the opening credits, Lauren’s cell phone rang. She looked at the number, made a face and said, “Don’t pause it.” She stood up and walked into the other room.

Rory followed her with her eyes, and Seamus looked at Rory’s face. “Everything all right?”

It was one of those tingling feelings.

Lauren didn’t return for several minutes, and Seamus stood up to see if she was still on the phone. The light was on in her bathroom, and he heard her retching through the door.

He knocked. “Lauren?”

“Yes,” came through the door.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes,” again.

She was kneeling in front of the toilet, her eyes filled with tears.

“Are you sick?” Seamus asked.

She shook her head and seemed unable to speak. Her eyes were wide and stricken.

He crouched beside her. “What is it? Tell me.”

She only shook her head.

Rory came into the bathroom behind him. “What is it, Lauren?”

“The shot,” Lauren said to her.

Rory, too, crouched beside her. “What was it?”

“A guy shot an oil lamp in his wife’s house. Or ex-wife or something.”

Seamus frowned. He’d heard about this incident earlier in the day. The fire truck they’d heard had been responding to the fire that resulted. The estranged husband had been drunk and was violating a restraining order, but at least no one had been wounded. “No one was hurt, were they?” he said.

She shook her head, eyes wet.

Rory, on her knees beside her, hugged her. “That shot scared me, too, when I heard it,” she said.

Seamus said, “Do you want to call Simone, Lauren?” Lauren’s counselor.

Lauren shrugged. “Maybe.” She held onto Rory.

Seamus rubbed his daughter’s head. “Feel like watching the movie?”

Lauren nodded. She said, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

“Don’t be. None of this is your fault.”

“What I said.”

“When?” But he didn’t need to hear the answer. He knew what she was sorry for. She was sorry for arguing with him about Janine’s owning a handgun. She was sorry for loving her mother’s memory.

“Stuff.” She shook her head.

“Lauren,” he told her, “your mom was scared of people like that guy. And it’s pretty normal to be scared.”

She nodded and stood up slowly.

Rory, standing too, ran water in the sink. She suspected that Lauren’s nausea had come from fear at the thought of the firearm the man had wielded—from realization of what a gun could do.

Lauren splashed water on her face and grabbed her toothbrush and the tube of toothpaste. “I’ll be okay,” she said.

“You
are
okay,” Seamus told her. “You’re very okay, Lauren Lee.”