A fine and bitter snow by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online Page A

think how that happened." She looked sharply at Kate. "Didn't see you out there."
     
    They must have left before the conga line, Kate thought. "I don't dance."
     
    "Hell you don't. Many's the time I've seen you whooping it up at a potlatch."
     
    "That's a different kind of dancing."
     
    "And why not dance them all? Dancing's good for what ails you. Kick up your heels and it lifts your spirits."
     
    "It's good for your soul," Ruthe said.
     
    Kate mumbled something, but by now the two old women were on the warpath.
     
    "How's Johnny?" Ruthe said.
     
    Like everyone else in the Park, Dina and Ruthe had a vital interest in the well-being of Johnny Morgan, who had come to the Park to live following his father's death. It was natural for them to ask, as Johnny was Jack Morgan's son, and Jack had been Kate's lover. "He's fine," Kate said.
     
    Dina fixed her with a penetrating eye. "How are you?"
     
    "I'm fine, too." Even if she did still wince at the mention of Jack.
     
    Dina's fierce eyes saw an uncomfortable amount. "Huh," she said, lighting another cigarette. "Miss him?"
     
    Kate took a deep breath. "Every day," she managed to say.
     
    "But you're learning to live with it."
     
    "Yes."
     
    "And without him," Ruthe said.
     
    "Yes." If the joy she found in sunrise over a world without Jack Morgan in it was not as strong as it had once been, it was no one's business but her own.
     
    "That Ethan Int-Hout still sniffing around?"
     
    "The boy's got the look of someone who knows his way around a bed, I'll give him that."
     
    To her acute embarrassment, Kate felt herself turn a brilliant red.
     
    "That might be none of our business, Dina," Ruthe said.
     
    "Oh balls! Everything in this Park is our business," Dina said, and pointed her cigarette at Kate again. "Shit or get off the pot. It's not like there aren't men waiting around the block to step up if you'd look at them twice."
     
    "I suppose," Kate said in a desperate bid for one-upmanship, "you would know."
     
    Dina only cackled again. "You bet your ass, I would, sweetie. Whether I took 'em up on it or not." She looked at Ruthe and her eyes softened. "You bet I would."
     
    Ruthe put her hand over Dina's.
     
    Kate stood. "Time for me to mosey on home."
     
    "Say hi to Johnny for us," Ruthe said. "I like him, Kate. He values his elders."
     
    "He's been up here?" Kate said, surprised.
     
    Ruthe chuckled. "On half a dozen occasions. Seems like old times."
     
    "And give Ethan our love," Dina said, and cackled as Kate climbed back into her down overalls and parka and headed out the door.
     
    3
     
    The two gentlemen in question were both at her cabin when she got there. Mutt knocked Johnny off the doorstep and wrestled him across the snow, growling in mock anger. Ethan stood in the doorway, watching as Kate ran the snow machine into the garage. "I'll be in in a minute," she called, and after a moment she heard boyish laughter and fake growls fade as the cabin door was closed.
     
    She topped off the snow machine's gas tank, checked the oil, looked at the treads. The ax needed sharpening, and so, too, it seemed, did the hatchet. She checked the rest of the tools hanging in neat rows from the Peg-Board while she was at it. The truck had been winterized and was parked as far out of the way as possible at the back of the garage. The woodpile was down to four cords, and although it had been a mild winter thus far, it wouldn't hurt to haul in a few more trees from the woodlot and replenish it. She visited the outhouse—plenty of toilet paper and lime—and the Coleman lantern hanging from the planter hook on the wall was almost full of kerosene.
     
    It wasn't that she didn't want to see Ethan, and it wasn't that she didn't want to spend time with Johnny. She just wasn't used to anyone waiting for her when she got home. She kicked the snow from her boots and stepped inside.
     
    It was a cabin much like the one she had come from, twenty-five feet on a side, with an open