about any other reason.
Maybe he was right, but Wendy had beat the odds. Wasn’t that all that mattered? She was out of a wheelchair and walking, after most of the doctors had said she’d be an invalid for life.
Still, Gina supposed she could understand that Wendy would feel differently. People tended to define themselves by the things they did. She’d taken enough silly pop quizzes to know that. Who was Gina Monroe, if anyone asked? How would Gina Monroe describe herself? As a wife. A mother. A teacher.
Wendy would have defined herself as a champion skier. But was that all? It didn’t seem possible that her daughter’s self-image could be so one-dimensional. Wendy had loved to ski from the time she was a child, but there’d been more in her life than skiing.
At least, there had been after Seth Castleman came along.
Gina untied her apron, hung it on the back of the pantry door, then sat down at the table to finish her lukewarm tea.
Howard had bought their daughter her first pair of skis the Christmas she was, what? Four? Five?
“She’s just a baby,” Gina had said warily. “She could get hurt.”
Her husband had smiled proudly as they watched their little girl stomp around the snowy yard. “She’ll be fine. She can’t possibly get hurt on the Ski Wee hills. You know that, darling. Those slopes are nothing more than bumps in the snow. Besides, our girl’s a natural. Just look at her. She’s got the makings of a champion.”
He was right. Wendy had been born to ski. She was quick, graceful, a joy to watch. At eight, she’d won her first junior medal. At ten, she was taking winter vacation trips with Howard to Aspen. By the time she was twelve, skiing was all she lived for.
She was bright, thank goodness, so she did well in school, even though she didn’t pay much attention to her studies. As for dances and parties and the sweet silliness young girls enjoy—those things didn’t interest her. Gina closed her eyes, remembering how she used to long to be able to make the same complaints as other mothers of teenage girls, but Wendy didn’t spend hours tying up the phone, or plaster her room with posters of rock idols and giggle over boys.
And then, when Wendy was seventeen, she’d met a boy on the slopes. She was practicing; Seth was running the lift. Gina didn’t know what had happened that day, except that her daughter came home with high color in her cheeks and excitement in her eyes.
“A good day at Brodie, huh, punkin?” Howard said at dinner.
Wendy nodded. “Yes…terrific.”
Something in the way she said it, or maybe in the quick rush of color that climbed into her face again, told Gina the truth.
Wendy had met a boy.
Gina kept her thoughts to herself. The phone began to ring with calls for Wendy, all of them from the same polite young man. Sometimes she came home a little late from school, and in the evenings, when she sat at the kitchen table doing her homework, Gina caught her staring into space with a dreamy look in her eyes.
Gina was glad. It had begun to trouble her, seeing Wendy lock everything but skiing out of her life. Her daughter still loved to ski, still skied almost all weekend, but for the first time, she balked at Howard’s rigorous practice schedule.
Howard was perplexed.
“What’s gotten into her?” he mumbled one evening when Wendy said she wasn’t in the mood for a drive to Brodie for an hour’s work.
“She’s a teenage girl,” Gina answered. “She just needs time for other things.”
“Not if she wants to make it to the Olympics, she doesn’t,” Howard said, and not for the first time, Gina wondered whose goal that really was, his or Wendy’s.
One evening at dinner, Wendy asked to be excused before dessert.
“Apple pie,” Gina said. “Your favorite.”
“I know, Mom, but…” She blushed. “I have a date.”
Gina smiled. Howard stared.
“A date? With a boy?” Howard spoke in the same tone he’d have used if Wendy had announced she had a date with a Klingon warrior.
“Yes.” Wendy’s blush deepened. “His name is Seth Castleman.”
From that night on, everything revolved around what Seth said or did. Gina thought she’d never seen her little girl so happy. Howard thought he’d never seen her so distracted.
“She’s going to lose her edge,” he grumbled late one Friday night when he and Gina lay in bed, listening to the clock chime eleven and knowing Wendy had yet to come home.
Gina sighed and put her head on his shoulder. “She’s in love, Howard.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“The signs are all there.”
Howard had snorted. “Puppy love, maybe. That’s all it is.”
Gina had been sure it was more than that—until the accident, when Seth flew to Norway to be with Wendy and Wendy wouldn’t even see him. When she’d sent him a note that cut him out of her life.
The doorbell sounded. Gina glanced at the clock. Howard was the reading coordinator at the school where they both worked. He was meeting with the principal and she expected him home for lunch, but it was only ten. It had to be the UPS man with the books she’d ordered.
But it wasn’t the UPS man. It was Seth.
“Hello, Gina.”
She stared at him stupidly. Seth hadn’t come to the house in a long time, and now, only minutes after they’d talked about him, he was here. She gaped at the young man before her, snow dusting his dark hair and leather jacket, as if he were an apparition.
“Seth? I didn’t expect… I mean, what are you—”
“May I come in?”
Gina swallowed. “Actually,” she said carefully, “this isn’t a very good time.”
“I know she’s here.”
“Seth.” Gina glanced over her shoulder at the stairs. “I really don’t think—”
“How come you didn’t tell me she was coming home?”
There was anger in his voice, but she thought she could detect pain, too. “Oh, Seth…”
“You should have told me,” he said gruffly.
The snow was coming down harder. And Mrs. Lewis, out walking her dog, had paused on the sidewalk and was watching the scene with frank curiosity. Gina swung the door wide and moved aside. “Come in, then. But only for a minute.”
“Thanks.” Seth stepped into the entry hall and stomped his boots on the mat a lot harder than necessary. He didn’t give a damn just now about the snow he might track in on Gina Monroe’s slate tiles. Driving
