The Alpine Journey (34 page)

“You don't love me.” It wasn't a question.

“I do. But not the way you mean, or want me to.” The confusion on his long face was disturbing, more so than I'd expected. “Do you love me? You've never said so.”

Milo slipped his hand out from under mine and fingered his chin. “I think so. Like you said, we're not teenagers. What the hell
is
love, anyway?”

“I don't know.” But I did. I remembered it vividly, wonderfully, painfully.

“Okay.” He took a last sip of Scotch, then stood up. “I'll pass on dinner. You haven't put the steaks on yet, I take it?”

I shook my head. “I haven't even thawed them.” Maybe I'd known all along it would come to this.

“Okay,” he repeated, then picked his jacket up from the back of the sofa, ruffled my hair, and started for the door. “See you around, Emma.”

“Sure.”

Milo left.

Vida was holding forth in the news office, excoriating everyone on the staff, including me. It was Wednesday, October 23, and she had just returned from Cannon Beach the previous night. This week's edition of
The Advocate
, which I had been able to supervise, had just come off the press.

“Carla, I fail to see how you could cover the pudding-off at the Congregational church without taking a picture of the winning pudding!”

“Jeez, Duchess,” Leo murmured, “it's a
pudding
, for chrissakes!”

“Hush, Leo, and mind your mouth.” Vida was giving Carla her most intimidating look. “Well?”

Carla tossed her long black hair over her shoulders. “That's because Violet Hollenberg dropped it. She was holding it up with the blue ribbon on it, and lone Erdahl bumped into her. All that was left was glop.”

“Ooooh!” Vida yanked off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “What good is a pudding-off with no pudding?”

“You've still got a picture of the winners,” Carla pointed out.

“Violet's not looking at the camera, Lorena Clay has her eyes closed, and Ione's smile is much too artificial,” Vida fumed. “Was lone third? I suspect she ran into Violet on purpose.”

Carla said nothing. Since my return, her usual vivacious manner had been replaced by a detached, otherworldly demeanor that suggested she might be in love. Or on drugs.

“Ginny,” Vida was saying to our office manager, “you might reconsider bringing your baby to work. He threw up on three days' worth of my mail.”

“It was only one day,” Ginny countered. “And it was just handouts you'd never use.”

“Ginny can bring Brad if she wants to,” I declared, annoyed at Vida's preemption of my authority.

Vida ignored me. “I cannot think,” she said, putting her glasses back on and turning to Leo, “how you could possibly run the Skykomish County Planned Parenthood
ad next to the birth announcements on my page! Did you bother to read the copy?”

“Sure,” Leo replied cheerfully. “I wrote it.”

“It's unbelievably tasteless,” Vida declared. “‘Unwanted pregnancy’ and ‘Don't rush into motherhood’ indeed! We'll have calls from parents, grandparents, uncles, and cousins.”

Leo appeared unperturbed. I, however, was next.

“I understand you inserted that equally indecent item in ‘Scene’ about Wilbur Hinshaw losing his dicky.”

“He did. It was at the Moose Lodge. They were dressed up for some kind of ceremony. Ed told me about it.” I was trying to keep a straight face. Certainly it wasn't any worse than one of Vida's recent ‘Scene’ observations wherein she'd noted that,
After a very hectic summer season, Park Ranger Wes Amundson's wife Annagreta was glad that her husband's business was falling off.

Leo had erupted into laughter. “Hey, I just got a great idea! Maybe we should start calling it ‘
Ob
scene Around Town.’ How do you like that, Duchess?”

The black look that Vida gave Leo would have withered most people down to their socks. But our ad manager kept laughing. Vida got up from her chair and stomped out of the office.

Ginny picked up Brad, who had been rolling around on the floor, and went into the front office. Leo started to say something to me, but his phone rang, and he merely winked. I hadn't asked him about his get-together with Tom Cavanaugh. I didn't intend to. There was always the possibility Leo might mention their meeting at some point. If so, I'd listen. Politely.

Carla was staring off into space, humming. My reporter was definitely living in another world these
days. Eventually, she'd tell me why. I'd listen to her, too. Listening was part of my job.

I decided to follow Vida. I didn't like having her, as she would phrase it, “on the peck.”

My House & Home editor had reached the corner, by the Venison Inn. “Hey,” I called, “wait up!” I virtually ran past Cascade Dry Cleaners and the restaurant. “Where are you going?”

With a nod, she indicated farther along Front Street. “The GM dealership. I brought the Buick in this morning to make sure everything was all right after the body shop finished with it in Seaside.”

“How are they?” I asked, not having had a chance to inquire during what had turned out to be an unusually busy Wednesday morning.

“The Imhoffs? Or what's left of them?” Vida's tone was thorny, though her anger with me seemed to have run its course. “Derek and Dolores are staying on at the house. At present, Stacie is moving in with a family in Seaside. The daughter is a close friend. What she'll do after she graduates from high school, I don't know. I'm glad nothing terrible happened to Derek and Stacie. I was so afraid that Molly … might not be able to stop herself.” Vida's voice dropped, then resumed its normal tone. “Marlin is trying to plea-bargain. The marijuana crop was burned by the authorities over the weekend. Rett wants to sue Clatsop County.”

We were passing the local TV repair shop and AlpNet, the computer store. Unlike Cannon Beach, there was no bright fall sunshine. Alpine was overcast, and it had been raining off and on all week.

“And Rosalie?” I asked.

“She's coping. What else can she do? As it turns out, she likes Dolores. If Derek marries her, maybe she and Rosalie
can become close. Dolores needs family and Rosalie needs a friend. Walt's no use and Rett's impossible.”

“Rosalie seems like a nice woman, really,” I remarked as we waited for a UPS truck to cross Sixth Street. “Will you keep in touch?”

To my surprise, Vida shook her head. “I think not. What's the point? We have very little in common.”

“But you and Rosalie both married Runkels,” I pointed out.

Vida was marching toward the side entrance that led to the service department. “We're not related. As for the youngsters, they never took to me. Derek and Stacie are still strangers. Blood isn't always thicker than water. Things aren't the way they used to be,” she continued, looking wistful. “Family doesn't seem to mean what it used to. I suppose some of it can be blamed on all the divorces. It's a terrible thing, but the ties that bind no longer do.”

Vida's reaction surprised me. She had invested so much of herself in the Imhoff tragedy. Had she been a lesser being, I would have suspected Vida of turning her back on the remaining Runkels because they were tainted. But my House & Home editor wouldn't do that. She was being realistic, shunning self-delusion, and, as she would put it, using
sense.

Vida greeted Trout Nordby, who, with his brother, Skunk, owned the local GM dealership. Vaguely recalling that the Nordbys' real names were John and Robert, I whiled away the short wait by wondering how they'd gotten their nicknames. I'd probably heard at some point; certainly Vida would know. Meanwhile, I tried to screen out the shop's noise and ignore the various smells of grease and gasoline.

“I told them to go ahead and do a tune-up,” Vida announced. “Otherwise, everything seems fine.”

We went back out onto Sixth Street, where it had started to drizzle again. “Say, Vida,” I said, trying to sound abject, “I'm sorry about the Wilbur Hinshaw item. I didn't intend to embarrass him—or you.”

“I'm sure you didn't,” Vida responded rather absently. “People have such naughty minds.” At the corner, she poked me. “See that? Francine Wells just went into her apparel shop wearing a cape! Did you notice Trout Nordby's bandage on his left wrist? He hurt it trying to get a stump out of his backyard. Ah!” She stopped, right in the middle of crossing Sixth. “The car that just went by—that was Ethel Pike with her grandson, Bickford, wearing a jester's cap on his head. He'll be two next week, just before Halloween.”

Down Front Street we went, with Vida's head swiveling like a searchlight. Autumn leaves—real ones—filling Harvey's Hardware's display window; a cutout of Tom Hanks in
That Thing You Do!
outside the Whistling Marmot Theatre; County Commissioner George Enge-bretsen greeting potential voters on the courthouse steps; Donna Wickstrom leading her day-care charges in a train of colorful plastic cars.

At the door to
The Advocate
, I gave Vida's arm a squeeze. “What's that for?” she asked.

“I'm glad you're back,” I said.

Vida offered me a small smile. “So am I.”

I, too, was glad to be back. The ocean was fascinating, the coastline beautiful. But I preferred the mountains and the forests. Sunshine was pleasant, but after a while I yearned for rain. If I had to live in a small town, I'd rather be in Alpine.

By chance—or maybe design—I hadn't seen Milo all day. For the first time it dawned on me that he wouldn't call or come by. The thought made me sad.

But that was my choice. I gathered up my belongings and walked through the empty newsroom. It was just after five, and the rest of my staff had already left. Outside, my beloved, aging Jag waited in its accustomed parking space. The rain was coming down harder, and it was almost dark.

I glanced down the street, past the hobby shop and Parker's Pharmacy, to the sheriff's headquarters. Milo's Cherokee Chief was still there.

I could picture him at his cluttered desk or behind the curving counter in the front office. He would be going over paperwork or getting reports from his deputies or listening to a call from somewhere in the damp, dark corners of Skykomish County. His wide mouth would turn down. The hazel eyes would be wary. He'd take off his regulation hat and brush back the graying sandy hair.

I knew him so well.

He knew me not at all.

I went home alone.