Lisey's Story(74)

She opened the gold-stamped menu to see what the Chef's Special had been that longago night, and a photograph fell out. Lisey remembered it at once. The owner of the place had taken it with Scott's little Nikon. The guy had scrounged up two pairs of snowshoes (his cross-country skis were still in storage up in North Conway, he said, along with his four snowmobiles), and insisted that Scott and Lisey take a hike along the trail behind the inn. The woods are magical in the snow, Lisey remembered him telling them, and you'll have them all to yourselves - not a single skier or snow machine. It's the chance of a lifetime.

He had even packed them a picnic lunch with a bottle of red wine on the house. And here they were, togged out in snowpants and parkas and the earmuffs which the guy's amiable wife had found for them (Lisey's parka comically too big, the hem drooping all the way to her knees), standing for their portrait outside a country bed-and-breakfast in what looked like a Hollywood special-effects blizzard, wearing snowshoes and grinning like a couple of cheerful nitwits. The pack Scott wore to hold their lunch and the bottle of vino was another loaner. Scott and Lisey, bound for the yum-yum tree, although neither had known it then. Bound for a trip down Memory Lane. Only for Scott Landon, Memory Lane was Freak Alley, and it was no wonder he didn't choose to go there often. Still, she thought, skating the tips of her fingers over this photograph as she had over the one of their wedding-dance, you must have known you'd have to go there at least once before I married you, like it or not. You had something to tell me, didn't you? The story that would back up your one non-negotiable condition. You must have been looking for the right spot for weeks. And when you saw that tree, that willow so drooped over with snow it made a grotto inside, you knew you'd found it and you couldn't put it off any longer. How nervous were you, I wonder? How afraid that I'd hear you out and then tell you I didn't want to marry you after all?

Lisey thought he'd been nervous, all right. She could remember his silence in the car. Hadn't she thought even then that something was on his mind? Yes, because Scott was usually so talkative.

"But you must have known me well enough by then..." she began, then trailed off. The nice thing about talking to yourself was that mostly you didn't have to finish what you were saying. By October of 1979 he must have known her well enough to believe she'd stick. Hell, when she didn't tell him to take a hike after he cut his hand to ribbons on a pane of Parks Greenhouse glass, he must have believed she was in for the long haul. But had he been nervous about exposing those old memories, touching those ancient live wires? She guessed about that he'd been more than nervous. She guessed about that he'd been scared to smucking death.

All the same he had taken her gloved hand in one of his, pointed, and said, "Let's eat there, Lisey - let's go under that

6

"Let's eat under that willow," he says, and Lisey is more than willing to fall in with this plan. For one thing, she's hugely hungry. For another, her legs - especially her calves -

are aching from the unaccustomed exercise involved in using the snowshoes: lift, twist, and shake...lift, twist, and shake. Mostly, though, she wants a rest from looking at the ceaselessly falling snow. The walk has been every bit as gorgeous as the innkeeper promised, and the quiet is something she thinks she'll remember for the rest of her life, the only sounds the crunch of their snowshoes, the sound of their breathing, and the restless tackhammer of a far-off woodpecker. Yet the steady downpour (there is really no other word) of huge flakes has started to freak her out. It's coming so thick and fast that it's messed up her ability to focus, and that's making her feel disoriented and a little dizzy. The willow sits on the edge of a clearing, its still-green fronds weighted down with thick white frosting.

Do you call them fronds? Lisey wonders, and thinks she will ask Scott over lunch. Scott will know. She never asks. Other matters intervene.

Scott approaches the willow and Lisey follows, lifting her feet and twisting them to shake off the snowshoes, walking in her fiance's tracks. When he reaches the tree, Scott parts the snow-covered - fronds, branches, whatever they are - like a curtain, and peers inside. His blue-jeaned butt is sticking out invitingly in her direction.

Chapter 12

"Lisey!" he says. "This is pretty neat! Wait 'til you s - "

She raises Snowshoe A and applies it to Blue-Jeaned Butt B. Fiance C promptly disappears into Snow-Covered Willow D (with a surprised curse). It's amusing, quite amusing indeed, and Lisey begins to giggle as she stands in the pouring snow. She is coated with it; even her eyelashes are heavy.

"Lisey?" From inside the drooping white umbrella.

"Yes, Scott?"

"Can you see me?"

"Nope," she says.

"Come a little closer, then."

She does, stepping in his tracks, knowing what to expect, but when his arm shoots out through the snow-covered curtain and his hand seizes her wrist, it's still a surprise and she shrieks with laughter because she's a bit more than startled; she's actually a little frightened. He pulls her forward and cold whiteness dashes across her face, blinding her for a moment. The hood of her parka is back and snow slides down her neck, freezing on her warm skin. Her earmuffs are pulled askew. She hears a muffled flump as heavy clots of snow fall off the tree behind her.

"Scott!" she gasps. "Scott, you scared m - " But here she stops.