Snowbound

and the one, shockingly vivid flashback, he had enjoyed

being around her students. Somehow they’d managed

to take him back to a time when hideous dreams didn’t

await every time he slept, when a Friday night date or

an exam had filled his world and the tragedies happening in other parts of the world had been headlines on Yahoo and not a landscape he couldn’t seem to escape.

He’d be sorry to see them go. But not as sorry as he’d

be that Fiona would be leaving as well, robbing him of the

anticipation he’d begun to feel on waking in the morning,

the erection he had to quell when he went to bed at night,

the color and life in between that had replaced his previous

days of nonstop work meant to keep him from thinking.

He wondered whether maybe it wasn’t just her. He’d

come to Thunder Mountain for quiet, hard physical

labor, unspoiled beauty and peace, believing they’d

work better than the drugs Army doctors wanted to prescribe. Maybe they had worked.

But he didn’t believe it. Fiona had awakened something nearly forgotten inside him. He would give almost anything to keep seeing her.

He could take a trip to Portland in a week or two.

Stay at his parents’ or his sister’s, give Fiona a call.

Good idea, John thought, ignoring the unease that had

him rolling over and punching the pillow into a new

shape. Yeah. He could do that. Just a short trip. His

parents would be thrilled to have him there for Thanksgiving. He could kill two birds with one stone.

Bad analogy. Not just words. Small frail bones.

Blood. Stillness.

Don’t think of it that way. He’d make his parents

happy, and get to see Fiona. Yeah. That’d work.

He finally slept, not dreamlessly but without throat-

clogging nightmares, and awakened in the early hours

of morning still aroused. Or, aroused again. A wisp of

memory suggested he’d had at least one good dream—

an erotic one.

He took coffee out onto the porch as he often did,

cupping his mug to keep his hands warm, watching the

forest around him gradually come into focus as the sky

lightened at first imperceptibly until finally it became

a pearl-gray shade that allowed the trees to acquire

sharp definition. And finally came color: a hint of pink,

as pearls sometimes had, then richer and richer colors

until they nearly hurt his eyes with their incandescence.

The blue of the sky leached the vivid colors away as

quickly as they’d been born, and morning had arrived.

For once, the spectacle failed to lift the heaviness in

his chest. More aware of the biting cold than usual,

John went back in.

The snowplows would come today. He realized he’d

been half-listening for the roar even though he knew the

highway department didn’t start work this early except

in emergencies.

He should get the kids out there right after breakfast,

shoveling in front of the shed so he could pull open a

door and get out the aluminum snowshoes he kept for

guests. He needed to go up and see how they’d left the

van and what kind of work was needed to get it back

on the road. The boys could come with him.

As first a couple of the kids and then Fiona came

downstairs for breakfast, John hid his regret.

She smiled at him, her gaze shy.

“Yeah, I’ll be surprised if the plow doesn’t make

it up here today,” he agreed with Troy. He half-

listened to the kids’ excited chatter and watched Fiona

to see whether she rejoiced, too, at the idea of making

it home or whether she shared any of his regret. She

nodded and smiled at things her students said, her ex­

pression pensive, but he couldn’t decide how she felt

about the idea of finally continuing the interrupted

trip.

The boys were intrigued by the snowshoes, a smaller,

lighter-weight version of the old standard, and did well

once they got the hang of lifting each foot.

The van was standard white, with the name and logo

of the school on each door. The snow hadn’t fallen as

heavily up here, deep under the trees, but that was the

only good news. The first problem was that the van

faced downhill on a steep curve, the second that it

canted to one side where a front wheel had gone off the

narrow road. If the road crew couldn’t help, they might