The sleigh slushed over the snow around the reservoir. Merry had cajoled Danny Blinkhorn to come “just as a friend,” and was gossiping with Drew and Pam Door. Kim was there with Brice, a new boyfriend from Deptford but seemingly very nice. Everybody spread rumors about the boys from Deptford, but Mallory was sick of rumors.
She knew there were already rumors about Cooper and her. And she knew they weren’t nice.
For her part, she wasn’t ever going to believe again anything she couldn’t prove with her own eyes—or in her case, the eyes inside her mind. The Barnes’ team of beautiful, mild-eyed Clydesdales trotted for an hour among the trees festooned with snow. Cooper tickled Mally’s nose with the end of her scarf. He did nothing in the way of PDA, but there was very much a sense that she was Cooper’s girl. For that hour, all was right with the world.
Julie surprised them with hot cider when they got back to the barn. Dressed in feather-light parkas (Merry’s baby blue and Mallory’s bright red) made of some space-age fabric, and matching lined boots of Australian suede, the girls looked as shiny as they felt. Grandma Gwen had crocheted matching caps and mittens, but for Mallory the best gift was left on her porch. At the last minute, Drew gave Mallory six of his grody old shirts, tied with a ribbon. A peace offering. The bundle included one new T-shirt from the mall that read “Cheerleaders Give It Their All,” which made Campbell’s eyes narrow when she saw it, although she decided Drew meant it as no more than a gentle jest. Even Adam had come up with a certificate for the twins’ iPods. With all the little gifts from relatives trickling in all week, they were feeling that “little Christmas” way they sometimes did having a birthday that came just after a major holiday.
Back at their house, a few other friends joined them for a tub of Campbell’s special Italian beef. By the time they got there, she was ladling the steaming beef onto generous slices from huge, crusty loaves. Mallory, the first in the door, noticed that Campbell wore a tight, glittery black sweater—no attempt to hide her belly tonight. Rushing up to her mother, she patted her sibling-to-be.
Before coming in, Mallory had eagerly counted the cars in front: There was Eden’s old truck and the Range Rover that belonged to the Brents, which meant that Will and his older brother, Rob, were there. Just as she and Cooper, with Merry in the backseat, pulled into the drive, Neely Chaplin hopped out of her parents’ Beemer—a little ad for Clothes That Counted, from her Italian sweater to her Finnish boots. But Mallory didn’t mind: Neely mouthed the words “so hot” when she set eyes on Cooper. As Mallory helped her mother put the sandwiches on plates with chips, Eden suddenly appeared from inside the house, wearing a long red shirt belted over a red skirt and boots, with the same infinitesimal braids with beads in her hair she’d worn on the night of the powwow. “Hi!” she said, pulling Mallory aside and giving her a birthday hug. She pointed to her braids. “Some of these have a mind of their own. I guess I didn’t really have my mind on putting them in tonight.”
As the boys began to eat and the music began to play, Eden shyly and secretly showed Mallory her left hand. “I want to show you,” she said. A tiny diamond winked in a white gold setting on her ring finger.
“You’re . . . engaged?” Mallory’s world seemed to screech to a stop.
“No, it’s a promise ring. For after I finish at least a year of college. James is getting his Master’s. He had an emergency tonight with one of his kids who had to come back out into the field so he couldn’t come.” Mallory was relieved. She wouldn’t have known how to look at a guy who was seven years older at a kid party. And especially now.
“Edes, do you think this is smart? Has your mom seen it?”
“Are you kidding?” Eden asked sharply. “I can’t wear it in school or at home, but I know he loves me. That’s all that matters. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Nothing’s more beautiful, or terrible, than love. I heard you say that, huh?” Mallory murmured.
“Eden,” Cooper said, taking Eden’s hand before she could slip it behind her back, “nice Christmas present.”
“It’s just a friendship ring,” Eden said.
“I hope it is, for your sake,” Cooper said sadly. “I don’t want to be the bad guy, sis, but James . . .”
“James doesn’t know anything about it. About me.”
“I was going to say,” Cooper went on smoothly, “James should know better than to be giving rings to a high school girl.”
“He doesn’t think of me like that. I could easily be out at my age, except for my so-called delicate condition that kept me out of school for a year! He thinks of me as the woman he loves.”
“That would be heavy talk even if you weren’t who you are,” Cooper said.
“I don’t intend to be who I am, Cooper,” Eden said quietly.
“That’s the first time you said it straight out,” Cooper told her. He pressed his lips together. “At least promise to pray and fast about this.”
“What does he mean?” asked Mallory, whose mood was sinking like the balloons on the ceiling in the warmth of the garage.
“He means shut myself up in the longhouse and not eat for three days until I feel totally woozy and guilty for ever wanting my own life,” Eden said bitterly. “Mally, I’m sorry. I have to leave.”
“Eden, it can wait.”
“I just don’t feel like being at a party. Even yours.” Eden kissed Mally’s cheek. “Happy birthday.”
Cooper said, “When she gets like this, it’s better to listen to her.”
“I wish it were you, Cooper!” Eden snapped.
Cooper said nothing. Then he whispered, “This isn’t the time or the place, Eden. But you do get to be the boss of the clan.”
“All the young people will run away to the cities, like Bly. I can have a job, but I don’t have to! The clan will always take care of me.”
“You love so many things, Eden. Art and words . . .” Mally began.
“Let Raina be the next shape-shifter!” Mallory had never seen Eden so angry. She stomped off and the other kids stared. Sensing something but not what, Tim put the music on loud. Campbell brought the cake into the garage. It was all covered with chocolate musical notes.
“We figured your cheer dances are music and now Mallory’s singing,” Campbell explained. “It’s my last gasp of being a good mother and doing the baking thing. You guys get to eat hot dogs until the end of March.”
Everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” and Mallory’s mood began to bubble again. As Campbell cut the cake, Tim added, “I happen to know that there’s one more gift for Mallory.”
He smiled at Cooper Cardinal.
Cooper was too dark to really blush, but his cheeks looked as though someone had laid a little finger of fire along each cheekbone.
“Anyone who can’t stand ugly sounds should leave now,” he said, to a murmur of laughter. Tim brought Cooper a stool and gave him his own old guitar, the one Tim had had since college. “I learned to play a little at school and this song has exactly two chords, so Mallory’s dad was nice enough to be in on this with me. And my dad was nice enough to teach me this song, which was old when he was young. It’s by John Sebastian. You probably never heard of him, but it’s a great song. Be patient with my lousy guitar playing.” Cooper spent a few minutes fiddling with Tim’s guitar. “I’m pretending to tune it,” he said with a laugh. Then, after a few opening notes, Cooper sang. His voice was higher and lighter than Mallory’s.
“She’s one of those girls who seems to come in the spring, and one look from her eyes makes you forget everything you had ready to say. And I saw her today. . . . A younger girl keeps rolling across my mind,” Cooper sang. “No matter what he tried, he couldn’t seem to leave her memory behind / In a few more years they’d call them ‘right for each other’ / But why? If he waited, he’d die / A younger girl keeps rolling across my mind . . . .”
Mallory had never cried in public except on the day she “heard” Meredith call out in fear for her life. Now two fat t
ears rolled down her cheeks, and she didn’t even bother to wipe them away. Cooper’s voice was as gentle and graceful as everything else about him. And it was just such a sweet, yearning song—so much of what she felt. She didn’t notice the other girls glancing at her under their lashes with envy. She only saw Cooper. When he finished, Mallory gave him a light kiss on the cheek, in front of everyone.
Merry paused to whisper to Mally, without a trace of sarcasm, “That was completely the most romantic thing I ever heard, Ster.” Then she gathered a crowd around her as she began opening presents.
Mallory was walking on air.
Campbell, however, had both feet on the ground.
“Meredith’s right. That was beautiful,” she told Cooper, as he handed Tim’s guitar over to her. “That is one of the sweetest songs ever written. I was probably Adam’s age or younger when I first heard it.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Brynn.”
“Mallory is very innocent.”
“No, she’s not that,” Cooper said. Enjoy this moment,Mallory thought then, as she watched Campbell’s face morph from disbelief to outright anger. You won’t be out after six at night again until you’re twenty. “I’m not talking about boys. If I were going to take advantage of a girl, like that, it wouldn’t be Eden’s . . . whatever . . . Eden’s protégé. I’m more afraid of Eden than I am of you, no offense. I mean Mally’s older in ways other than years.”
To Mallory’s relief, the other kids had drifted away. Campbell considered Cooper’s words. “That’s possible. What she saw last year changed her.”
“I mean she’s sensitive to people.”
“I accept that. She’s mature in that way. But she’s only fourteen.”
“Please kill me,” Mallory whispered. “Mom, Cooper’s leaving in two days. I don’t think he wants to run off and marry me before morning. We’re friends. Can you save the lecture?”
“I’m not lecturing,” Campbell said. “I just want him to know that Shakespeare was right. ‘These violent delights have violent ends’.”
“Oh. It’s Shakespeare now! Great. I’m not going to commit suicide either! Mom, please! It’s a party!”
Cooper said, “I know how Mallory feels, Mrs. Brynn, and that it’s unusual for her. The first time. No! Not that kind of first time! The first time she cared about a guy. I wouldn’t . . . I respect that and I respect Mallory.”
Campbell looked hard at Cooper. She said softly, “Okay. I believe you. Don’t let me be wrong.” She began to walk away, toward Meredith and Neely, who had been eavesdropping ferociously. Then she turned back. “That was a tremendously touching birthday gift, Cooper.”
Later that night, they stood in the snow, and Cooper tilted Mallory’s chin up to kiss her good night, promising to come to see her before he left.
“You were great with Mom. No one ever says boo to her.”
“I was sweating the whole time,” Cooper admitted. “Now I know where you get your personality!”
THE ESCAPE
Slowly, the residents of Ridgeline slogged through the last of the cold.
Skiers were thrilled that the snow stayed deep, with a new coat of light powder every few days. No one could remember a time when more than two feet of snow had stayed on the ground for two full months without going slushy and gray.
The Brynn twins took out their cross-country skis and cajoled their father into giving them new boots from the store, since they had outgrown theirs for the first time in three years. Out in the country, near their uncle Kevin’s house, they skied all over the farm fields and up and down the slight hullocks, returning to see Aunt Kate and their little cousins drained and sweaty as they never were from running. She gave them pumpkin-spiced tea and cookies and oranges. They skied the Cardinals’ land and tried the small hills.
But nothing could tire Mallory enough to make her stop thinking.
Each day, Mallory did everything but remove the mailbox and shake it upside down to see if a letter from Cooper would fall out.
None did.
She waited throughout January.
Why didn’t Boston Flanders allow e-mail? The whole deal about how letter-writing, real letter-writing, was part of a classical education was a bunch of garbage! If he had e-mail, or even a cell phone, she could talk to Cooper once a day at least!
On Valentine’s Day, instead of a sappy card, she got a postcard from Harvard. A guy with a red sweatshirt leaned against a column. The shirt read, “I Don’t Really Go Here.” On the back, Cooper had written, My heart’s in the highlands wherever I roam. I didn’t make that up. Love, C.
Eden said not to worry; boys simply didn’t write long letters ever. She also counseled Mallory against sending any to Cooper.
“Make him wonder,” Eden suggested. “Cooper thinks he’s a real gift to women.”
He is,Mallory thought.
She wrote Cooper pages of letters, then folded them away in the wooden keepsake box she’d had since she was ten. She never sent them.
Relentlessly, she did extra credit for English in hopes of getting straight A’s. On long, brainless afternoons on the couch, she marched through 1984 and 1985 on General Hospital,marveling that she could have turned to any episode on any day of any week of any year before 1990 and been up to speed on the characters’ lives within seconds. She also worked on her choir parts and solo for the spring concert.
Cantabile was more exciting now because, under pressure from Mallory, Meredith had joined after the basketball season ended and before the late spring competition season began. Merry had an extra study hall too, and Campbell assured Merry that, since she’d always had a sweet singing voice—a nice pure soprano—chorus would be an easy A or B. Miss Yancy was delighted. She quickly planned to showcase the twins in a duet for the spring concert of the old folk song “Green Leaves of Summer”—though Cantabile usually didn’t do folk songs of any kind.
The words somehow made Mallory sad: It was good to be young then / To be close to the earth / Now the green leaves of summer are calling me home.
Cooper, come home,she thought, and then rebuked herself.
A year ago, she would have mocked her sister savagely for being America’s number one priss. And now here she was, reliving one fifteen-minute kissing session over and over in her head until it was like a piece of paper she’d smudged and worn through with holes. She had to get over it.
With an abrupt turn of events, she almost did. She found herself bargaining with God that she’d give Cooper up if her soon-to-be-born little baby sibling would be okay.
Early in March, a month before her due date, Campbell began to have labor pains. Dr. Kellogg popped her into the hospital, where the pains subsided with medication. The twins and Adam went to the hospital to watch the little baby (“Not so little,” said Dr. Kellogg) dancing on ultrasound. With the 3-D technology, they could see his squashed little alien monkey face.
“He looks like you,” Adam told Merry.
“You look like that now,” she replied placidly.
“I can’t figure out what to name him,” Campbell said.
“I can’t figure out whether to put you on bed rest,” said Dr. Kellogg, who then decided to do just that.
Relief and pandemonium reigned at home.
Every day after choral practice, the girls, Tim, and Adam went to visit their mom, who was receiving royal treatment and special treats from all her old friends, competing to give her backrubs and milk shakes. She was grumpy, however, until the librarian, a cousin of the Brynns, brought her a stack of novels that weren’t even published yet. “You won’t be doing a whole lot of this for the next few months,” said Margie Bowen. “So you’d better stock up your head now.” After that, every time the family came, with Chinese noodles or pizza—no-cheese-extra-onions—Campbell had her feet canted up and her nose in a book.
Even fussy Meredith used up all her clothing before there was a general decision to do the wash. The kids watched TV, normally forbidden on school nights, until Adam litera
lly had circles under his eyes. Their little brother, whom they were already calling Buddy, had done them a good turn.
Eden was curiously busy—even more than usual.
Mallory had always felt a bit odd about asking her to do something, but now, when Mally reached out, Eden cheerfully but firmly put her off with a deft excuse.
Then one day, she asked Mally if she’d like her to drive her to the hospital to visit her mother and then go shopping. When she showed up, Mallory was stunned. Always glorious, Eden now seemed somehow burnished, as if the advent of spring had caused her to burst out of an outworn skin. Her hair was shinier, her skin glowing with deep rose tones under the gold. She’d cut her long hair, not short, but shorter, in a fashionable waterfall of long layers.
“Eden, you look like you’ve had a makeover,” Campbell said, accepting a pot of crocuses Eden’s mother had forced into bloom. “Thank you. And what’s the cause of all this?”
“Nothing,” Eden said brightly. “Just the end of a long winter. Mallory and I are going to go shop the spring sales.”
“I’m not,” Mally said. “After what I spent this last winter, it’ll take me until next spring to buy the other half of my new-me wardrobe. If I even decide a new me is worth it.”
“Practice starts in a week, doesn’t it?” Campbell asked.
“Yes, and then nice clothes won’t count at all,” Mally said.
“For some things,” Eden replied.
At the mall, Eden spent freely, on nightgowns and sundresses, new espadrille sandals and a big sun hat.
“Are you going on a cruise?” Mallory asked jokingly.
“No, but it’s sunny in New Mexico,” Eden answered.
“New Mexico?”
“I’m going with James,” Eden said. “It’s so fantastic I can’t even breathe when I think about it. I fasted and I prayed. And I decided I have to follow my heart.”
Mallory was floored. She cried, “Edie, what about your family and school? What about soccer and college? Have you asked your grandmother what would happen if James stayed with you, instead of you going with him?”