In Denver we took a couple of rooms at a motel on Interstate 70 near Stapleton Airport. There was an indoor swimming pool connected to the motel and the boys swam for awhile, practicing their dives, while Jessie and I watched them and had a drink. There was also a couple from Texas swimming in the pool who said they were on their honeymoon from Nacogdoches. They seemed very young and happy. The girl was plump, with a pretty round-cheeked face, and her husband kept pulling her into the water and squeezing her and whispering into her ear; then she would splash him and laugh and swim away. Later they climbed out and walked back to their motel room, with his arm around her waist, and we didn’t see them again.
When TJ and Bobby were finished swimming they took a shower and we ate an early supper in the motel restaurant. Afterward we went out to a movie. We drove across town to a theater in a shopping mall and had popcorn and Cokes and sat in the dark theater watching the screen. But I couldn’t keep my mind on the story. They had done what they could to make it seem plausible that an Amish girl would fall in love with a city detective and there were many dramatic scenes and wonderful photography, with a growing sense of something ominous about to happen, but when the violence came it seemed too far away for me to believe it. I sat beside Jessie with my arm over her thin shoulders and watched her face. When we were outside again she and the boys thought it was a good movie. Probably it was. But I couldn’t be interested just then in somebody else’s unhappiness.
Later that night in bed in the motel room with Bobby and TJ asleep in the room next to ours, I told Jessie some of what I’d been worrying about.
“I know,” she said. “But don’t you see it’ll be all right now? Isn’t that what you said? That it was the best thing for him just to leave?”
“That was this morning. When I first heard about it. I felt surer then.”
“But nothing’s happened to make you change your mind, has it?”
“Not that I know of.”
“And there isn’t anything we can do about it now, even if there is something?”
“No.”
“Then will you please put your arm around me and hold me? It doesn’t do any good to worry about it.”
“I know.”
“And you know I love you.”
“I just don’t want anything to change.”
“Move your arm so I can come closer. There,” she said, “isn’t that better?”
“Yes. That’s much better.”
“I thought you’d see reason finally.”
We were lying very close together. She felt warm and silky beside me and I began to make love to her then in the dark motel room, with just the dim light showing through the curtains and the sounds of traffic going by outside on the interstate. But everything seemed different now and uncertain. Afterward when we were quiet once more, we lay close together and Jessie went to sleep immediately.
The next morning we got up late and ate breakfast. Then we checked out of the motel. We had decided to spend the day driving over to Boulder and across the mountain to Estes Park. The tourist season was over and skiing hadn’t started yet, so it would be quiet and peaceful in the mountains.
When we got to Estes Park in the afternoon we stopped and walked along the streets, looking at Big Thompson River where it went through town and peered in at the shop windows at the pottery and pewter and the expensive brand-name clothes. We bought some locally made chocolate and also some cheese and fruit and sliced ham and dark bread so we could have an evening picnic; then we walked back to the car and drove north out of town along the back way toward Loveland, winding narrowly down to Glen Haven and Drake, and finally pulled off the highway at a place where there were picnic tables beside the creek. It was late in the afternoon then; the canyon was all in shade. We put our coats on and TJ and Bobby climbed among the rocks beside the creek and dropped pebbles into the pools and floated pinecones through the narrow rapids, running alongside to follow the pinecones as they swirled and bobbed on the top of the water. Then we had supper ready, set out on the picnic table. “Do you want to call them?” Jessie said.