A Morning Like This Page 2

  “Crystal wouldn’t let me practice my pitches,” Braden mumbled, still half asleep.

  “She told us. We’re going to have to work out something about your lamp, you know. You’ll have to do a few chores and earn money.”

  “Did you have fun?”

  “Yes. It was very romantic. Your mother wore a new dress and made me feel special.”

  “G’night, Dad.”

  “Good night, son.”

  Lord, thank You for keeping us secure.

  Braden burrowed his face deep into his pillow and his baseball mitt again, his eyelids closed. Abigail said in a hushed tone, “Ah, he’s fine, isn’t he?” She leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. “I just wanted to make sure. Do you have any idea how much I love seeing you two together?”

  “Well, Mrs. Treasure. You’ve seen everything you need to see, haven’t you?” He cupped his fingers around wisps of her hair. “Maybe we ought to finish what we’ve started.”

  “Maybe,” she echoed, and this time she couldn’t help smiling as David took her by the hand and led her where he wanted. As they passed through the kitchen, though, the blinking light on their answering machine distracted him. He stopped for a moment and stared at it.

  “That can wait, can’t it? With all the things that go on around this place, can’t one of them wait until morning?”

  “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  “A girl after my own heart.”

  “I am after your heart. And I think I know just how to get it.”

  “Hm-m-mm.”

  Abigail followed her husband into the bedroom that they’d shared since exchanging wedding vows a dozen years ago tonight. Through the open window she could hear the coyotes yipping and the lilting music of Fish Creek and the hiss of night breeze like rain, moving through pine boughs and cottonwood leaves.

  “Love you.” Abigail nuzzled the words against his ear. “Nothing will ever change that, David. Ever.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You promise?”

  “I do promise. That’s an easy promise to make.”

  “You sure?”

  “I am sure,” she answered without hesitating, her voice reflecting all the fervency of her faith in her God and in her husband.

  But in the next room, the answering machine waited, the flashing light relentless as it flickered red against the microwave, the dishwasher door, the chrome faucet, against every shiny surface in the kitchen.

  Blink. Blink. Pause.

  Blink. Blink. Pause.

  All through the night.

  Chapter Two

  Brewster, the Labrador retriever, never let David Treasure sleep in past six-thirty. With dog breath pungent enough to awaken dead things, he would sidle along David’s edge of the bed and flop sideways, eighty-five pounds of compact weight jostling the mattress. When that didn’t work, the dog would shake his ears. He would pant. He would sink back to the floor with one extended, wretched groan. He would rise on his haunches again. When David rolled over and squinted at the clock, trying to protect his face beneath the covers, the licking would begin.

  “Okay, boy. Okay,” David objected every morning, although never so loud as to awaken Abigail. “I’m getting up. You win again.”

  This morning, as every morning, David yanked on a pair of baggy gray sweatpants that had seen better days, tugged on a faded OLD BILL’S FUN RUN T-shirt, turned on the coffee to brew, and, without being completely lucid, started out with the dog for a jog.

  Even during the summer months in the mountains, at this altitude they could have a hard freeze during the night. The trail David now followed was crisp with frost, already melting away where the sun hit it, the shape of shadows still encased in ice. He left crushed prints behind him as he ran, a faultless marking of his footfalls where he followed the path along Fish Creek. Above him, early sun from the east had begun to paint the pleats and folds of the mountains, the sheer, chaste light of alpenglow spotlighting the hillsides in an ever-changing wash of gold and pink.

  For a little while at least, the morning belonged only to David.

  He could hear wind chimes singing from several patios as he passed. Farther along he saw his neighbor doing some early fly-fishing in the stream. The man waved briefly before going back to his casting. The sun glanced off the line with each arc he made, the tiny mayfly landing with precision upon quiet water. “Morning, David!”

  “Morning, Joe! Having any luck?”

  “I guess I should have stayed in bed. I think the fish are still asleep.”

  David slowed his long strides and turned toward home; he’d do well to leave time for a shower and a shave. Back he headed along the stream, past patios with cedar hot tubs and pretty wrought-iron gates. His feet pounded a hollow beat in syncopation with the clacking of Brewster’s toenails as they crossed the rickety wooden footbridge together. As he trod quietly into his house, reluctant to awaken Abigail or Braden, he spied the cake box waiting on the counter. It made sense, didn’t it? After working off those calories, he would eat cake for breakfast.

  He’d taken two huge bites when he noticed the flashing message light. Without thinking much of it, he pushed the play button.

  David couldn’t explain why the fear came. He knew something was wrong the moment he heard the clicking connection and the empty whirring, someone hesitating on the end of the line. He stopped chewing. For what seemed an eternity, no one spoke. Then, brittle, businesslike, a woman said, “Hello, David. This is Susan Roche.”

  Susan Roche.

  For a moment he couldn’t place the name. He started chewing again.

  Then stopped chewing for the second time.

  Oh. That Susan Roche.

  The message continued. “I’m staying at The Elk Country Inn.”

  Elk Country Inn? Susan? In Jackson Hole?

  “Would you return my call as soon as you can?” And then, softly, “It’s imperative, David. Please.”

  Her careful voice went on to dictate a number, but David didn’t write it down. He stared at the machine, his anger growing. He turned it off before she even finished the sentence.

  How dare she do something like this?

  The slice of anniversary cake sat abandoned on the counter with two huge chomps taken out of it. Brewster stood over his bowl, panting, waiting to be served from the forty-pound bag that listed to one side in the corner. And David Treasure looked up to see his face reflected in the toaster beside him, his features mirrored and distorted in the dents of stainless steel. It was someone else’s face, someone who didn’t look at all like him.

  After so many years, how dare she turn up in Jackson and call me at my house?

  He fumbled for the delete button on the answering machine. The motion, which he made several times daily, evaded him now. Which button did he push? That one? No. This one?

  He hit the wrong button and the message began to repeat. “Hello, David. This is Susan Roche.” It sounded louder the second time. In desperation, David found the button marked DELETE and punched it hard.

  “Deleting. Deleting,” said the liquid crystal display.

  The blinking red light stopped just as Braden came barefoot into the room. David reeled away from the phone machine. “Hey, sport,” he said and in his own ears his voice sounded too booming, too cheery.

  Braden opened the cabinet and pulled out a box of Honeycomb cereal. “Morning, Dad.” He stood on tiptoe and rattled the stack of dishes, trying to pull out a bowl.

  “Here.” David reached over the boy’s head and shifted things so Braden could get what he needed. “Let me help you with that.”

  “You eating breakfast, too?”

  “No,” David said. “I’m running late. I’d better wake your mother up and get to work.”

  “Don’t forget my baseball game this afternoon.”

  “I won’t forget. It’s a big one, huh?”

  “If we can beat Food Town, we can beat anybody.”

/>   David scrubbed his son’s blond hair until it poked from his head like the spines of a porcupine. “Brush your hair before you get to school,” he teased, doing his best to be lighthearted. “Your mother will never forgive me if you don’t.”

  Your mother will never forgive me. Of course she wouldn’t. Never.

  Not if she found out about Susan Roche.

  David walked into the bedroom and stopped beside their bed. He stared down at Abby’s face—at her dark, mussed, Meg Ryan hair—his heart tightening. He reached and stopped, his hand poised above her shoulder. He swallowed hard, steeling himself for what the next moment might bring, and the next, and the next. “Ab—” he whispered, jostling her. “Hey. Wake up.”

  She moaned into her pillow, gave him a sleepy smile and, first thing, before her eyes had barely opened, reached her arms to encircle his neck. “Please don’t tell me it’s already time.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

  “Is the coffee ready?”

  “I turned it on before Brewster and I went out.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  A nod. “Braden’s up. He’s eating breakfast.”

  “Good.” She smiled again as he bent to kiss her and if he seemed subdued about something she didn’t act like she noticed. She pulled his head down to hers once more, kissed him again. “Last night was fun. Real fun.”

  He hesitated, a slight moment just long enough for her to narrow her eyes at him. “I’ve got to shower,” he said.

  She watched him, her smile gone, and propped herself on one elbow. “David? Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? No? Why would anything be wrong?”

  “I don’t know. You just seem…I don’t know. Preoccupied.”

  “I’m late.” He pulled away from her. “That’s all.”

  He left her and began rattling around in the bathroom. He showered, dropping the soap on the tile with a resounding thud. He shaved and buzzed his battery-powered Crest Spinbrush over his teeth. He dressed without coming out of their huge walk-in closet.

  “Honey?” she called past the suit coats and shoes and tailored shirts. “Are you sure nothing’s the matter?”

  “I’m sure,” he lied.

  When at last he found the courage to reappear, he grabbed his keys with purpose from the table, managing to depart without so much as a perfunctory kiss for either of his family members. “I’ll meet you at Braden’s game,” he called as he took the porch steps two at a time, feeling like he was running away.

  If the minutes before David left for work seemed excruciating, the hours he spent trying to focus on business proved even worse. He helped one confused teller balance her till. He listened to a couple concerned about the time it was taking to process their home loan. He wandered around in the lobby, smiling at customers he knew, shaking hands with colleagues, talking about the bank’s newest marketing plan to open two new branches in Wyoming.

  But he couldn’t focus. The first chance he got, he retreated upstairs to his corner office and leather swivel chair, where he stared at the telephone on his desk as if he faced an enemy.

  Susan Roche. At the Elk Country Inn.

  June had come to western Wyoming with a welcome, harrowing rush of hot weather and RVs and visitors who wanted to stalk bison and bear in Yellowstone. Outside his office window, stores stood with their doors open, the displays behind their polished glass fronts beckoning to sightseers with turquoise and elk-horn jewelry and hand-woven Shoshone rugs. A cavalcade of interstate traffic—campers and motorcycles and cars—inched forward on the street, setting a pace that would make any seasoned rush-hour driver crazy. An apple-red stagecoach trundled slowly past on bright yellow wheels, a group of tourists inside waving to passersby.

  David stared past the busy scene without seeing it. Of course he wouldn’t call her. He hadn’t written down the number.

  Any fool could look it up in the phone directory, you idiot. Right there under Motels in the Yellow Pages.

  David grabbed the phone book, flipped open to the motel page, and ran his forefinger down the listings. The Elk Country Inn. He picked up a ballpoint pen and scribbled the familiar prefix, then traced over the number a second time, thinking about it, his apprehension rising.

  Abby always thought she could be so sure of me.

  Finally he steeled himself, picked up the receiver, and dialed. A front-desk clerk answered in a singsong voice.

  “Elk Country Inn. How may I direct your call?”

  “Yes. I… uh.” David stared at the thick gold wedding band that encircled his ring finger. “Susan Roche, please. One of your guests.”

  Before he could say anything more, before he could ask “Is she there? Will you connect me?,” another series of clicks came, followed by a beeping and then a distant ring. Only one, which he didn’t expect her to answer.

  “Hello?” came a breathless voice.

  Anyone who’d braved the crowds in Jackson this time of year ought to be out driving through the parks or hiking some backcountry trail. Nobody should be sitting in a motel room, waiting beside the telephone.

  “Susan Roche? Is this Susan?”

  “Yes,” she said. “David.” And nothing more.

  David lifted his gaze from his wedding ring and saw the photograph of Abigail and Braden propped where he could always see it, framed in silver beside his lamp. In it, Abby squinted at the camera and leaned against a log wall, her Sunday shoes sunk to the hilt in springtime mud. She cradled Braden, wrapped in a fuzzy blue blanket, in her arms. The picture had been taken on the sunny spring day he and Abigail had walked forward at their little nondenominational church to dedicate their son to the Lord.

  “You phoned my house,” he said to Susan. “You asked me to get in touch.”

  “I did.”

  One beat passed. Two. “So—” Nothing more. His throat ached for her to say something, anything that might help him know where to go with this or to let him off the hook. “You’ve come back to visit.”

  “I have.”

  “It’s been a long time, Susan.”

  “It has.”

  Heartrending silence while he waited, she waited, to see who might speak next.

  “A lot has changed since I saw you last,” he said finally.

  “Yes,” she agreed, her voice gone soft with what sounded like relief. “With me, too.”

  The pen in David’s hand, the one he’d used to write the number, read The Jackson State Bank. He clicked the ballpoint shut with his thumb, then clicked it open again. “This trip…” And then he stopped clicking. “Is it business or pleasure?”

  He heard her draw a deep breath.

  “I came to see you.”

  David stared at the picture on his desk. Abby beaming at the camera. Braden, so innocent and tiny, nestled in her arms. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “What I have to say can’t be done over the phone. I want to meet you somewhere. For lunch, maybe.”

  David turned to his Palm Pilot for escape—to a calendar unmarked for the afternoon. He didn’t have to be anywhere until Braden’s baseball game late in the day. “I don’t see how I can fit you in,” he lied.

  I’ve worked so hard to put this behind me. It’s been so many years since I made this mistake.

  “Don’t push me away, David.”

  “It isn’t the best idea. Getting together.”

  “There’s a café down the street from my motel. Betty Rock, or something like that.”

  “I can’t. That won’t work.”

  “David,” she interrupted him. “This is important. Believe me, I wouldn’t put either of us through this if I didn’t have to.”

  “I won’t meet you at Betty Rock. Not there.” He hated himself for not standing firm against her and saying no to the whole thing. But Susan sounded desperate, and she’d come from so far away. “I will meet you for a few minutes,” he told her. “Let me think of a better place.”

  Batting practice for the Jackson Hole A
ll-Star Little League Team kept Braden just busy enough that Abigail Treasure didn’t need to worry. Besides, there was always another mother around willing to take the boys out after the drills—to Dairy Queen for a milkshake or floating down Flat Creek on lumpy inner tubes during the heat of the day or biking along the potholes of the Snow King trail.

  “You going to be okay this afternoon?” Abigail asked as Braden reached into the backseat to grab his mitt.

  He nodded and grinned. “I’m going to Jake’s.”

  “Well, call me if you need me. Tell Jake’s mom I’ll take you guys to the Alpine Slide tomorrow, if I can.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  “Tell her I said thanks.”

  “I will.”

  They both hesitated, waiting for each other. “Don’t I get a kiss good-bye or something?” she asked.

  He looked mortified. “Mom, not here.”

  Abby let out a deep sigh. “Later then,” she said. “Not in front of these guys.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have a good practice.”

  “I will.”

  Braden slammed the door. As Abigail eased the SUV out of the parking lot, she couldn’t help checking her rearview mirror and watching her son high-five one of his friends. He was surrounded in an instant by a pack of boys, all bouncing up and down like puppies.

  For a moment, as she glanced back, she let herself wonder what could have happened to her husband this morning.

  As David had showered in the bathroom, he’d made more noise opening and shutting the medicine cabinet, thumping the soap into the sink, and slamming the toilet lid down than the entire percussion section of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra. As he’d dressed in their closet, he’d remained ominously silent, never breaking into the warbling whistle she’d grown accustomed to. He didn’t step out to double-check the weather through the window. He didn’t stand before the mirror with his chest to the fore, confidently taking stock of his day.

  Most telling of all, when David had emerged and made a beeline toward the door, he hadn’t embraced her. He’d grabbed his keys like he was capturing the flag in a cavalry charge. He’d raced out the door and down the steps, pounding his soles against the pavement with such purpose she hadn’t dared call him back.