“You mean Cameron used to.”
She nodded. Yeah, Cameron, who else? “Greggie Light’s older brother carried me piggy-back because I couldn’t keep up on the trek out there the first year I got to go.” She remembered how happy she’d been not being left behind, and the feel of his muscles between her thighs as they walked, his laughter. She remembered the snowball fight, the wetness down the neck of her snowsuit, and the pond ice hard beneath her butt when she fell. She never cried. Greggie’s brother might not have carried her again if she had.
“Can’t see your husband riding piggy-back.”
Neither could she, but he’d been a kid then. All bets were off when a kid wanted to go with the big guys. Still, it was an odd memory, especially when she thought of the almost sensual delight she’d felt high atop the Light boy’s back.
Beyond Cameron’s house, bordered by a windbreak of trees that had camouflaged it at first, lay a field of white, a meadow. She had the sensation of summertime and long, flowing grass molded to rolling hills. Max climbed from the car, never taking her eyes from the almost blinding purity of it.
“There,” she pointed. “That’s where I want to go.”
Witt’s door shut. “What about gloves?”
She shoved her hands into the pockets of her down jacket, turned to him. “Wimp.”
“Just worried about you and your delicate skin.” Witt’s cheeks had turned pink with chill.
Her nose hurt dragging in the frigid air. Her breath crystallized. Cold anesthetized the tops of ears. “We won’t take long. Come on.”
She didn’t worry that they crossed private property. Lights gleamed behind the windows of the two houses they walked between and no tire tracks marred the unsullied blanket covering the drives, but Max didn’t expect anyone to rush them off. It was too damn raw out here. Freezing air raised a property owner’s trespassing tolerance.
The fence reached her chest, the aged slats a foot apart and icy.
“I’ll go first.” Witt elbowed in front of her as if he were afraid she’d slip, break her neck, or fall down the rabbit hole without him.
The muscles of his thighs working, he hoisted himself, swung first one leg, then the other, before jumping down on the other side. Snow poofed around his boots.
Max stepped on the bottom rung, threw a leg over and rested a moment with the wood between her thighs. Then she swung over to hang precariously on the other side with her feet braced on the slats. The fence railing, iced and slippery, froze her butt cheeks.
“Take my hand.”
She could jump down on her own. It wasn’t that far. She didn’t need help doing the things she could do perfectly well on her. She reached for Witt’s hand anyway.
Landing in the snow, her toes meeting his toes, she laughed, the sharp, frosty air making her feel alive.
“We used to climb through, not over,” she told him, seeing her own dual reflection in his eyes, finding her hand still trapped in his big, warm grip, and not minding at all. She was a skinny kid, he was a big guy with his own internal body heat that seemed to reach right inside her.
Then she closed her fingers over his hand, pulled, and started running across the open field. Theirs were the only footprints in the snow, her laughter and his breathing the only sounds in the world.
Fifty yards in and surrounded by a field of white, she stopped. Across blindingly bright hills lay a farmhouse covered in snow and glistening in one small ray of sunshine that broke through the clouded sky. A line of naked telephone poles marked the driveway.
“Debi Tolen and I—”
“Your husband’s best friend was a girl?”
“Well ...” She didn’t know, the feelings inside confusing. “I guess so.” She waved aside his question as unimportant. What the hell did it matter anyway? “You’re spoiling the mood.”
She wanted it back desperately, closing her eyes to find that special place again. Ah yes, there it was.
“We used to sneak over there when it was empty,” she whispered, scenting Witt’s musky aftershave in the freezing air, gathering warmth from his hand still in hers. “We found shotgun shells and a skull, and we made up a big mystery about what happened deep in the night.”
“A skull?”
She laughed at the cop tone in his voice. “It belonged to a cow, but we didn’t care. We must have been about ten and we loved the mystery, loved best that we never solved it.”
The hole of sunshine above the farm closed. Shades of white and gray abounded, colors fading in the snow-covered morning.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” She dropped his hand, raised her face to the gray but somehow still bright sky, threw her arms wide, and whirled around and around.
“More than beautiful,” she heard Witt say with something that bore the texture of awe.