A January Chill. Rachel Lee

might,” Hannah replied. “Witt’s like any other man. He wants to hear how brilliant he is.”

      The statement carried the warmth of affection, and Joni laughed. She tucked the envelope under her arm and headed upstairs.

      “Trust me,” Hannah called after her, “it’ll put you to sleep.”

      But Joni had other thoughts in mind, and she eagerly pried the envelope open when she reached her room. A stapled stack of papers came out, and a quick scan told her most of it was boilerplate, establishing rules such as how the bid should be presented. But there was a specification, too, one that she was able to determine required an architectural proposal for a thirty-room lodge. The other details didn’t matter to her. What did matter was the due date on the request: January tenth.

      She was jolted by the nearness of the date. Witt must have sent these out early last month or even in November to the firms in Denver. They would need at least a month to respond.

      The due date was only a week away. And Hardy probably hadn’t even seen this yet.

      She checked the date again to be sure she wasn’t mistaken. This was fast, awfully fast, but maybe it had to be, so construction could start as early as possible in the spring.

      But why had it taken Witt so long to drop this copy off for her mother? Had he deliberately done this so it wouldn’t fall into Hardy’s hands? But why would he even suspect it would? No, it must be that he’d only now gotten a spare copy from his attorney.

      Eight days. If Hardy was to have any chance of responding to this, she had to get the papers to him right away.

      But even as she jumped up from the bed, ready to dash out into the blizzard once more, a thought yanked her back. If she did this, Witt might never forgive her.

      Her pulse racing, she flopped onto the bed and stared at the cracked ceiling, thinking about that. It was all well and good to believe that Witt ought to forgive Hardy. The police had blamed the drunk driver for the accident, and Joni couldn’t understand why Witt persisted in believing Hardy was responsible—except that Hardy wasn’t supposed to be seeing Karen, and if Karen hadn’t climbed out the window that July night, she would probably still be alive.

      But Karen was dead, and Witt honestly believed that Hardy was responsible. There was, she supposed, a possibility that Witt was right. Maybe he knew something about what had happened that she didn’t. But it was more likely, she believed, that he simply needed a scapegoat, and since the drunk driver hadn’t survived the accident, Hardy was the only person left to blame.

      Taking this proposal over to Hardy would be seen as a betrayal. Witt might never forgive her. But then she decided that was ridiculous. Witt always forgave her. He would be mad, sure, but he would forgive her once she explained.

      Explained. It occurred to her that maybe she’d better be able to explain this to herself before she tried to explain it to Witt. Common sense dictated that she just stay out of this. It wasn’t her problem, nor was it her feud—as Hardy had made patently clear since their talk that night at the hospital. He was still avoiding her like the plague.

      But it was her problem, she decided. She loved Witt, and she liked Hardy. It pained her that Witt had carried such anger all this time. It meant that he wasn’t healing.

      Karen would want her to do this. She believed that in her soul. They’d been like sisters, especially after Joni moved to town, sharing everything—their hopes, dreams and feelings. Sharing Witt as a father, and Hannah as a mother. Sharing Hardy’s friendship, although only Karen had dated him.

      Karen wouldn’t like to see her father so bitter and angry, and she wouldn’t like Hardy to miss this opportunity. There was not a doubt of that in Joni’s mind. Karen, had she been here, never would have allowed this state of affairs to continue for so long.

      But Karen wasn’t here, and Witt was. She hated to have Witt angry with her and always had. She loved him so much that she wanted to be perfect for him, although it was an impossible goal.

      And sometimes, dimly, she realized that she’d spent the last twelve years trying to replace his daughter for him. Maybe it was time to grow up and accept that she couldn’t replace Karen, and that she had to live her own life as she saw fit.

      Sitting up, she went to the closet and pulled out a small photo album she kept on a shelf beneath a stack of sweatshirts. Almost all the pages were empty, but that was because she only had a half-dozen photos of Karen.

      Oh, Witt had shoe boxes full of pictures of his daughter, but these photos were special. These photos had been hers and hers alone, taken with a cheap camera that hadn’t lasted beyond a couple rolls of film. In retrospect, she wished she’d photographed Karen more often, instead of wasting film on scenery. But she hadn’t guessed what was going to happen.

      So here they were, her six private memories of Karen. The first snapshot, her favorite, showed her and Karen sitting on the bleachers at the high school football field. They had both laughed and acted silly that afternoon at football practice, full of the high spirits and joy of youth. Hardy had snapped that photo of them just before practice had started. She could still remember how he had looked all suited up for the game, holding her silly little camera in his big hands.

      The next photo, one she would never, ever let Witt see, was of Hardy and Karen. Snow was falling, and the flash had bounced off it, giving the couple in the photo a dim, background look. But they were holding each other, hugging, their faces pressed close as they grinned into the camera.

      Where the first picture always made her smile in memory, this one always made her ache.

      They had been so young. So sure that the world was their oyster. All of them. And maybe it had been, only instead of finding pearls they’d all found lumps of coal.

      Her throat suddenly tight, Joni closed the album without looking any farther. She knew the photos by heart, anyway. She’d wept over them on enough cold, dark nights, lying up here, unable to believe that Karen was truly gone.

      There was such a feeling of unfinished business, but not just for Karen, who had died. Lately she had been thinking that they’d all somehow gone into stasis since Karen’s death. As if they were in some kind of emotional suspended animation. All of them: Witt, who had never recovered from his grief; Hannah, who…who just seemed to be getting through the days. Herself, who always felt as if she was just marking time. And Hardy, who, as far as she could tell, hadn’t even dated.

      They were all unfinished lives, and for so long none of them seemed to have taken any real steps to move forward emotionally.

      Karen wouldn’t have liked that. And it was time, Joni decided with a stiffening of her shoulders, that someone pushed them past their frozen emotional states.

      Scooping up the request for bids, she tucked it under her baggy green Shaker sweater and set out on her personal mission to thaw the glacier that had swallowed them all.

      “Where are you going?” Hannah asked as Joni passed her in the living room. “Supper’s almost ready.”

      “I won’t be long,” Joni replied, not even breaking step. “I just need to run over to…Sally’s. Back in a sec.”

      “Be careful out there. It’s getting really bad.”

      No kidding, Joni thought after she’d tugged on her parka, hat, mittens and boots, and stepped outside. It had been bad enough when she’d come home from work, but now the wind was blowing so hard that ice crystals stung her face, and the street lamp two houses down was nothing but a glow in the snowhidden night.

      If she’d had to go either up- or downhill to get to Hardy’s house, she would have stopped right there. But he lived three blocks over on a cross street, a level run. She could make it.

      The night was mysterious and threatening, the whipping snow hiding the landmarks, making the world look unfamiliar. Leaning into the wind, squinting against the stinging snow, she slipped and slid down the drifting street. The sidewalks, caught as they were between two deep snowbanks,