Promises to Keep (12 page)

"I went through the motions of contacting car rental agencies, taxicab companies, and the airport. It never occurred to me to check the bus lines, and it wasn't till I'd arrived home the next morning that I thought to look in your suitcases. Sure enough, you'd left another note in one of them but it wasn't terribly informative. All you'd written was 'Forgive me.'"

Garth laughed sardonically and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Although he was wearing no sweater, he appeared not to notice the iciness of the wind, even when a stronger gust outlined the powerful length of his thighs and plastered his shirt against his back.

"I didn't file a missing persons report right away," he said flatly. "After all, you'd left under your own steam and of your own volition. It wasn't till you hadn't shown up here and I'd had no word from you for a couple of weeks that I got around to that. The police weren't very enthusiastic about following up on the complaint, but they had to put out routine inquiries, and they struck pay dirt. The rest you know."

There was a silence that remained unbroken until Garth swiveled around to look at her. His expression was guarded.

"Well?" he challenged. "No questions? Don't you want to make some rebuttal to that long sad story?"

Julie shook her head and blinked back tears. "Only that I still hope you'll forgive me," she said.

This was not entirely truthful, for she badly wanted to know whether anything other than his pride had been wounded by her precipitate actions. Had he loved her? she wondered, but she hadn't the courage to ask.

Garth's eyes glinted gray-green with disbelief. "You've no desire to indulge in angry countercharges?"

"No," she replied huskily.

"Not one little insult?" he prompted. "No sarcasm?"

Again she shook her head. She had never seen Garth unsure of himself, but he was now.

"I think you've lost more than your memory," he muttered. "You're the lady who always lived by the rule that the best defense was a strong offense. Either you've undergone a radical change or you're putting on one helluva good act!"

"I don't understand. Would you prefer that I do those things?"

"No, Julie, far from it. I'm basically a peaceloving man."

Garth's eyes crinkled at the corners as he said this and when he tried to suppress his laughter so he could don his version of a serene expression, he failed miserably. Her frankly skeptical look only made him laugh all the harder, but when he noticed she was trembling, he sobered and held out his hands to pull her to her feet.

"You're cold," he observed gently. "You should have told me."

He chafed her icy hands with his, blew softly on them to warm them, dropped a quick kiss on the cleft in her chin, and planted another on the tip of her nose. Although the day was still cloudy and the wind had the feel of snow in it, Julie no longer felt cold.

Just across the hall from the kitchen was a formal dining room, but Dan and Jessie preferred to have their meals at a round oak table in a little ell at one end of the kitchen. The alcove had a picture window that looked directly into the woods; a pair of binoculars at the ready on the windowsill attested to the fact that they enjoyed watching the birds and animals and the changing seasons from this ringside seat.

As Julie helped Jessie prepare lunch later that day she noticed what a pleasant room the kitchen was. Its decor was a cheerful blend of dark-stained cabinetry, used brick, and gleaming copper utensils. Part of Dan's collection of Indian baskets was displayed here as were Jessie's wildlife prints.

Garth and Dan came in just as she and Jessie were putting the food on the table. When the men entered the dining alcove, Jessie called to Garth, "You're just the person I wanted to see." She held out a jar of olives. "Would you open this for me?"

"Sure thing," Garth said. After opening the jar easily, he handed it back to her.

Dan made his slow way to the table, his steps accompanied by the steady thump of his crutches. "I'll give you a little tip, Garth." He laughed and seated himself. "If you want to make your marriage last, there are three things you should never let Julie bring across the threshold of your house. One of them is a hairpin, another is a metal nail file, and the last is one of those little gizmos that clamps onto a jar lid to open it."

Garth was puzzled. "I'm afraid I miss the point."

"A good-looking woman can always find a man to warm her bed and father her children," Daniel theorized solemnly, "and she can repair anything that's broken with a nail file and a hairpin. If she figures out some way to open jars too—well, what does she want a husband for? He's obsolete!"

Jessie laughed with Dan. "You sure walked into that one, Garth."

"How about it, Julie?" Garth asked. "Do you agree with Dan's philosophy?"

"I can open jars myself, thank you," she replied absently as she carried the tureen of soup to the table.

Garth held Julie's chair for her and smiled wryly at Dan above her head. "She can too. Don't be fooled by her fragile appearance. She can practically bend steel bars with her bare hands."

Dan was suddenly sober. "I'd forgotten about that," he said.

"Me too," Jessie concurred thoughtfully. She turned to Garth. "You know how she got to be so strong, don't you?"

"No, I don't," Garth answered shortly. "Did she used to lift weights or something?"

Jessie sniffed disgustedly. "She used to lift Elizabeth. Heaven knows she was a dead weight on the poor girl."

"Now, Jessie," Dan murmured soothingly.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry," Jessie apologized brusquely. "What I actually had in mind is that Julie was once a fine gymnast. She used to be able to do all sorts of acrobatics on those funny uneven bars and everything."

Dan nodded. "That's right, Garth. Her coach thought she showed enough potential that he arranged for her to have a scholarship to attend a special school where she'd get concentrated training in gymnastics. He'd coached champions before, so I guess he knew what he was talking about."

"So what happened?" Garth asked.

"Her grandmother's stroke," Jessie replied. "Julie was all set to go, but when Elizabeth got sick, she wouldn't think of leaving her."

Garth looked at Julie as if he were seeing her anew. "I didn't know," he said slowly. "Julie never told me about that."

"I can't say I'm surprised to hear it." Dan smiled gently at the younger man. "I get the impression that you don't really know Julie very well."

"No," Garth admitted. "I'm beginning to realize that fact more every day."

Dan eyed his vegetarian fare with distaste and cast an envious glance at the lamb chops the rest of them were having. Because he was troubled by gout, he was allowed a very limited amount of meat. He sighed resignedly and sampled his spinach soufflé before he set about filling in the gaps in Garth's knowledge. "As I told you last night," he said, "Julie's grandmother wasn't the motherly type. She was too inflexible."

"That's putting it mildly," Jessie interjected.

"At the same time," Dan continued as if he hadn't been interrupted, "she was a perfectionist, and the upshot of this was that she overcompensated. Her way of dealing with any failure on Julie's part to live up to her expectations was to clamp down even harder."

"What Dan's trying to say is she would have made a great drill instructor," Jessie contributed. "But a five-year-old girl who's just lost her parents is not a Marine recruit."

"Now, Jessie," Dan said, repeating his mild reproach. "Elizabeth wanted to do the right thing." Jessie opened her mouth to make another comment and Dan said firmly, "I admit that because of her kindness to me when I was a boy, I don't see her in as unflattering a light as you, but please try to remember it's Julie's grandmother we're discussing."

Jessie speared a bite of salad with her fork and chewed it in thoughtful silence. "You're right, Dan," she agreed. "For all that woman's shortcomings Julie loved her."

Dan nodded. "She tried to please Elizabeth," he said to Garth, "but it was like trying to make water run uphill. Like most children, Julie was naturally inquisitive. She wanted to try new things, and the more Elizabeth restricted her, the harder she fought it. Elizabeth never recognized that it was her own overprotectiveness that incited Julie to become more and more reckless."

"Julie's coach believed one reason she showed such promise in gymnastics was a result of her willingness to try anything, and that was largely because she'd been forced into taking that attitude. She had to climb higher, run faster, swim farther—"

"I think I understand," Garth remarked. "Not long after Julie and I met, we happened to go to a beach that was popular with the hang-gliding crowd. By the end of the day, Julie had advanced from the beginner's level to the intermediate's, and she'd have attempted a flight from the highest one if I hadn't talked her out of it."

This can't be me they're talking about, Julie thought. Her feeling of unreality grew as Dan told Garth about some of the deceptions she'd practiced in order to circumvent her grandmother's rules without resorting to actual lies.

"She'd observe the letter of Elizabeth's laws, but not the spirit of them," Dan revealed. "She was about as resourceful as they come."

"How do you mean?" Garth probed.

"Well, for example there was a gully near the grade school where the local kids made what they called a pig swing. What it consisted of was a length of rope with a board tied on at one end in a sort of bosun's-chair arrangement. They'd tie the other end to a big spruce and swing out over the gully on it." Dan chuckled. "The pig part referred to the fact that if they happened to fall off after a rain, they'd get so danged muddy."

"Elizabeth was horrified when she came to pick Julie up after school one day and found her taking a turn on it. I guess she had some justification because the gully was pretty deep, but kids being what they are, they were all doing it. Nevertheless, she ordered Julie not to swing on it, and Julie gave her word she wouldn't. And she didn't. What she did instead was far more hazardous. She took on the chore of shinnying up to the top of the tree to tie the rope!"

He paused to help himself to another corn muffin before he went on. "There was another occasion when Elizabeth forbade Julie's taking part in a class outing that involved rafting down the Grand Canyon of the Snake River. Julie promised she wouldn't set foot in the excursion raft, but she tried to make the trip in a jerry-built rig she'd put together with baling wire. The doggone thing started breaking up almost immediately, and by the time she'd gone through the first stretch of white water, she was clinging to a single piece of driftwood."

Everyone laughed, including Dan, but when their laughter had abated, he said, "It's funny now, but I don't mind telling you it was hair-raising at the time. And even more dangerous than that was the time when Elizabeth refused to give Julie permission to sign up for a course at the mountaineering school and she set about teaching herself the rudiments of rock-climbing and rappelling. I'll never figure out how she survived that little escapade. The cardinal rule around here is that you
never
climb alone."