Until Spring (14 page)

"Ah, Mary Kate," Duncan said with a sigh of exasperation.

Jane shot him an inquiring look. "Has she done something wrong?"

"Well, not lately. Rooney and I are holding our breath, waiting until the next time. There will be a next time, I can guarantee it."

"Oh, Mary Kate's not so bad," Jane murmured in the child's defense.

"You weren't here when she let Quixote, my prize stud, out of his stall. And you weren't here when she set fire to Rooney's house. Or when she—"

"Never mind, I get the idea," Jane said wryly. She didn't need to be told about Mary Kate's affinity for trouble.

"Although I do think that the kid is behaving better since you've been around," Duncan said, eyeing her intently. He admired the way Jane had taken to Mary Kate and that she was a positive influence for her.

"I've tried to keep her company. She's an active little girl who seems to need a lot of attention."

"I guess you're right, and Rooney and I don't have time to give it. She's a plucky kid, and I'm fond of her, but I can't help thinking how smoothly things ran around this ranch before she came here."

"She said she's lived here for two years."

Duncan sat down on his swivel chair and toyed with a carved wooden llama paperweight.

"Mary Kate came here after her parents died in an accident. Rooney wanted her to come live with him, and she's been here ever since."

"How sad," Jane said, and meant it. She knew what it was like to be cut loose in the world with no place to go and no one to care.

"That's what Rooney thought," Duncan said. "He's always been crazy about Mary Kate, and she was his flesh and blood, so he didn't want strangers bringing her up. I guess it's safe to say, though, that her presence here has changed his life."

"And yours," Jane said.

"And mine," Duncan agreed. "Maybe it needed changing. We're a family, the three of us." This he said thoughtfully, and his eyes seemed to reflect other more complicated thoughts that he didn't choose to express. Jane thought of Sigrid and wondered if Duncan still loved her.

He stood up. "You haven't met our stud males yet. Come on, they have their own stable behind the barn," he said. He seemed proud of the llamas and eager for Jane to know all about them.

They walked to an outbuilding, to which Jane had paid scant attention before because it was barely visible from the house. In front of it stood fenced pens, each separate from the others, and at the sound of Duncan's voice several llamas ambled out.

"This is Thor," he said, gesturing at a chocolate-brown llama with short-tipped ears and a heavy wool coat. "That's Paco hanging his head over the door. And this—this is Quixote."

Quixote was a majestic llama, taller than the other males, with banana ears and substantial bone structure. His coat was a golden reddish brown, and his wool was coarse with longer guard hairs.

"Is he your favorite?" Jane asked.

Duncan appeared reluctant to favor one llama over another. "He's our prize breeding stud. He came from very good stock, so he's quite valuable. And yes, maybe I am partial to him." He reached up and scratched Quixote behind the ear.

At that moment Mary Kate came around the corner of the barn.

"Jane!" she called, tramping along with Dearling following close behind.

"I guess I'd better go keep an eye on Mary Kate," Jane said.

"That's probably an excellent idea," Duncan told her. She waited for him to return to the barn with her, but he waved her away with a grin. "You go on," he said. "I have work to do in the stable."

Back in the barn, Mary Kate led Jane into the tack room. Here harnesses and saddles hung on wooden pegs on the walls, and panniers for the llamas were draped across a couple of sawhorses in the corner.

"I'm going to put a halter on Dearling," Mary Kate said as she stood on tiptoe to lift one of the halters off a high peg.

"Does Duncan let you do that?" Jane was skeptical.

"Sure," Mary Kate said. "He likes me to do it. I trained Dearling almost all by myself." She held the halter in front of the llama, and Dearling nosed into it. Mary Kate fastened the buckle on the left side before leading Dearling out of the barn. Jane tagged along behind, and the three of them headed toward the house.

"Hey," Duncan called from over near the stable. "Mary Kate, how about walking up to the road to get the mail?"

"Okay," Mary Kate said. "Will you come, Jane? It'll be fun."

"How far is it?"

"Grandpa says it's exactly a half mile from here to the mailbox," she said.

"Oh, I'd love to go for a walk," Jane said, feeling her spirits lift. It was such a beautiful day, the finest they'd seen since she'd arrived. She could clearly see the tops of the surrounding mountains. Alongside the driveway, fence posts stood in stark geometric purity against the snow of the pasture. Mary Kate led Dearling, who daintily picked her way around the remnants of snow in the rutted tracks. Once Mary Kate stopped briefly to adjust Dearling's halter, and then they resumed their walk.

"Tell me about training Dearling," Jane said as they rounded a bend.

"I started last summer. Dearling's not much more than a baby, you know, and I begged Duncan to let me work with her. At first Duncan didn't want me to, but my grandpa said, 'Oh, Duncan, what could it hurt?'"

Jane smiled at this cannily accurate mimicking of Rooney's deep voice.

"Duncan said to get Dearling used to me by touching her and playing with her, but I was already doing that, so it wasn't such a big deal. She likes me, she really does!" Mary Kate looked over at Dearling and smiled.

"She's very fond of you. I can see that," Jane said.

Mary Kate beamed. "Duncan said that training a llama to like wearing the halter means adapting to the llama so it will trust you. Then, because it trusts you, the llama is ready to develop a habit, for instance, putting on a halter. So after I was sure she trusted me, I stood on the same side of Dearling every time I took out the halter, and I held it up to her face very, very patiently while I talked softly in her ear. Pretty soon Dearling got so she wasn't scared, and finally one day I just slipped the halter over her nose."

Jane wondered if training a child could be accomplished in the same way—by adapting to the child to establish trust and then encouraging the child to develop the habit of good behavior. While she was pondering this, Mary Kate dropped back to walk beside Dearling and to whisper into the llama's ear. When she returned to Jane's side she took her hand.

"Actually," Mary Kate confided, "after I got the halter on her, it wasn't all that easy to lead Dearling. It was because at first I left the halter too loose, and she didn't like it. And then she wouldn't walk—she'd sit down! That was funny, but I didn't think so then."

"What did you do?" Jane asked with an amused glance at Dearling, who seemed to sense that they were talking about her.

"Oh, I'd get behind her and push at her backside, trying to get her up on her feet, and she'd just chew her cud and look at me like I was crazy. Duncan laughed at us, but then he came into the pen and showed me how to tighten the halter so it wouldn't flap against her head. After a while Dearling was walking right alongside me. This summer I'm going to teach her to pull a cart. Then she can take us for rides. You'll like that, won't you, Jane?"

"Well, I—" she began, but suddenly stopped. She wished that she could think of an easy way to tell Mary Kate that she didn't plan to stay at Placid Valley Ranch that long. While she was casting about in her mind for something to say, Mary Kate thrust Dearling's lead into Jane's hand and ran ahead to the mailbox.

When Mary Kate came back, she resumed leading the llama and handed Jane the packet of mail.

Jane leafed through it and found several business-size envelopes with windows, a journal from a llama-breeding association, and a small pink envelope postmarked Albuquerque, which could easily slip out of the packet if she weren't careful. Realizing that she'd fallen behind Mary Kate and Dearling, she slid the pink envelope into the pocket of her coat and tucked the rest of the mail under her arm as she hurried to catch up.

From where she walked, she could barely see the house within its shelter of evergreen trees, but something softened inside her when she remembered that she lived in that picture-perfect house now, if only temporarily, and had her own warm bed to which she returned every night. She also had food to eat whenever she was hungry, Amos had a little plastic cat dish that Duncan had surprised them by bringing home one day, and she drank from her own favorite coffee mug on which Mary Kate had written her name in fancy flourishes. And Duncan. She had Duncan.

Duncan to talk with, Duncan to joke with, Duncan to watch television with, and Duncan to eat meals with. At first she had felt constrained in his presence, it was true, but their relationship had become easy, even comfortable. If Jane had had a brother, she would have liked him to be just like Duncan Tate.

"This summer, maybe you can help me train Dearling to pull the cart," Mary Kate said, picking up the threads of their conversation.

Jane decided that there was no avoiding this and that she might as well confront the matter head-on. She wasn't about to participate in promoting any kind of falsehood, especially one as misleading as the one that tempted her now.

"What's wrong? Don't you want to work with me and Dearling?" Mary Kate peered upward, suddenly anxious.

"It's just that I won't be here this summer," Jane said quietly.

"Not
be
here! Why, you
have
to be here!" Mary Kate exclaimed in real dismay.

"Duncan and I agreed that I would stay at the ranch until spring," Jane told her as gently as she could.

Two red patches appeared on Mary Kate's face, one on each round cheek. Her chin jutted in defiance.

"I don't want you to leave," Mary Kate said from between tight lips.

"I never meant to stay here," Jane pointed out. "I only stayed because I was sick and couldn't leave."

"Well, I was talking to Duncan just the other day, and we talked about this summer and the llama cart and everything, and I said you could help maybe, and Duncan said he'd try to talk you into staying longer than spring. So there."

Jane didn't know how to reply to this. Did Duncan really think she might stay longer?

Mary Kate appeared tense and fretful when they parted, but Jane waited until after dinner with Duncan that night to broach the subject of her staying until summer. True, she could have let it ride, but she had become sensitive to Mary Kate's emotional makeup, and she didn't think it was wise to raise the child's hopes. Better, she thought, for Mary Kate to know from the outset that Jane was not going to become a permanent fixture at Placid Valley Ranch.

She chose a quiet moment after dinner when Duncan had finished watching the evening news on TV. He listened carefully while she told him all the reasons that he shouldn't lead Mary Kate to think that she, Jane, was planning to stay at Placid Valley Ranch beyond the time that they had agreed upon.

Duncan, who was sitting in his big leather chair near the fireplace, stared at the floor in front of the hearth for a long time after Jane finished talking.

"I suppose I was wrong," he said slowly. "I didn't realize that Mary Kate would take it for granted that you really would stay through the summer. Maybe I encouraged her to think there was a possibility, but I thought she knew that it was just conjecture."

"She takes everything literally, and she doesn't understand conjecture," Jane told him. "Mary Kate is a child who has experienced enough rejection in her life. I wouldn't want her to think that I'm rejecting her, too."

Duncan smiled at her. "You've become attached to her, haven't you?" He had a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

"Well—"

"I watched you walking up the drive today with Mary Kate holding your hand. You looked as though you belonged together."

Jane jumped up, suddenly feeling agitated. She stood staring into the fire, trying to sort out her feelings. She
had
tried to build a relationship with the girl, mostly because she felt sorry for her.

But to be more honest about it, perhaps the reason that she had grown close to Mary Kate in the short time that she'd been here was that she herself craved closeness. She had Amos, but he wasn't a human being. He couldn't talk to her. But Mary Kate did, and Mary Kate had made her feel welcome here, even needed. Jane had never identified within herself that desire to feel important to someone before, and it came as a surprise to her that the urge existed at all.

"Mary Kate needs the gentleness of a woman," Duncan said. "It's good that you're here for her."

Jane whirled and looked at him, but his gaze was too penetrating. She turned away and opened the glass door over the face of the mantel clock. The key lay beside it, and for the next few seconds she wound the clock. It was just busy-work, but something to do with her hands seemed important at this point.

When she had closed the glass cover again, Duncan said, "You're welcome to stay at Placid Valley Ranch as long as you like, Jane. I thought you knew that."

Because she didn't know what else to do, Jane sat down on the edge of the raised hearth, the fire warming her back.