and buns, more mugs of hot chocolate were served from the huge canning pot Emma had wrestled from the warming shed down to the side of the pond where they were burning branches.
After he’d eaten enough hot dogs to put even his teenage self to shame, he noticed Mona sorting through the skates she found in the warming shed. “Come on, girls, let’s go skating!”
And soon all the Fenshaws, including Tim, were circling the pond, graceful, people who had probably skated since they were Tess’s age. They were taking turns pulling Tess, still, and he could hear her squeals of delight as they picked up speed, as the sled careened around the edges of the pond behind the girls.
And then Ryder noticed Emma putting away things, stirring the hot chocolate, sending the occasional wistful glance toward the frozen pond.
“How come you have so many skates?” Ryder asked. “Are you renting them at Holiday Happenings?”
“No, people are bringing their own. But there will be a few here for people who don’t have them or forget. And the kinds of families who are coming to the Christmas Day Dream probably don’t have skates. I tried to collect as many different sizes as possible, so everyone can skate.”
“Including your size?” he asked, seeing her cast another wistful look at the pond.
“Oh, I don’t skate. I’ve never even tried it.”
Wasn’t that just Emma to a T? Giving everyone else a gift, but not taking one for herself?
“How is it possible you haven’t tried skating?” he asked. “You must be the only Canadian in history who has never skated.”
“Ryder,” she said, “not everyone had the childhood you had. My mother didn’t have money for skates.”
He saw suddenly the opportunity to give Emma a gift, humble as it was. He would teach her the joy of flying across an icy pond on sharp silver blades, give her the heady freedom of it. He would give her something from a childhood she had clearly missed.
He sorted through the skates, found a pair that looked as though they would fit her.
She sat on a bench and put them on, and he sat beside her, lacing up a pair that had looked as though they would fit him.
“No,” he said, glancing at her. “You have to lace them really tight.” And then he knelt at her feet and did up her skates for her.
Her eyes were shining as he rose and held out his hand to her. She wobbled across the short piece of snow-covered ground from the bench to the pond.
“You are no athlete,” he told her fifteen minutes later, putting his hands under her armpits and hauling her up off her rear again, but then he remembered she had heard nothing but negatives about herself all her life. “Though I’m sure you have other sterling qualities.”
“Name them,” she demanded.
“World’s best giraffe imitation.”
The laughter in her eyes, true and sweet, the shadows lifting, rewarded him for this gift he was giving her.
“Hard worker,” he went on, “passable cleaner-upper of baby puke.”
“Stop! I can’t learn to skate and laugh at the same time.”
“Smart. Funny. Cute. Determined. Brave. Generous. Compassionate. Wise.”
“You must stop now. I’m having trouble concentrating.”
But he could tell she was pleased. It was time for Emma White to have some fun, even if it was true that she had not an ounce of natural-born talent in the skating department. She walked on the skates, awkwardly, her ankles turned in, her windmilling arms heralding each fall.
“Can you relax?” he asked her.
“Apparently not,” she shot back, and then she dissolved into giggles, and the arms windmilled and she fell on her rump again.
He got her up, glanced at the shore of the pond. They had moved all of fifteen yards in as many minutes.
“Watch the girls,” he told her sternly. “Watch how they’re pushing off on one leg, gliding, then pushing with the other leg.”
She pushed tentatively, fell.
“We’re going to go,” Mona said. The sun had completely gone from the sky, the ice on the pond was striking as it reflected the light of the huge brush fires they had lit around it. “We’ll take Tess home again for the night. Brrr, it’s getting too cold out here for her.”
And then the giggles and shouts and laughter faded as they moved further and further away until Ryder and Emma were completely alone.
He didn’t feel cold at all. He felt warmer than he had felt for nearly a year.
“You want to take a break?” he asked Emma. She had to be hurting.
“No.”
There it was. That fierce determination that let him know that no matter what, she would be all right. When he left.
The road was going to be open tomorrow.
And knowing that, and that it was his turn to give to her, something in him that had held back let go. Enough to tuck his arm around her waist and pull her tight into him.
It was time for her to skate. He thrust off on one leg, and then the other, steadying her, holding her up, not allowing her to fall. There was something so right about holding her up, about lending her his strength, about the way she felt pressed into his side.
“Oh,” she breathed, “Ryder, I’m doing it.”
She wasn’t. Not at first. He was doing it for her. But then he felt the tentative thrust of her leg, and then another.
“Don’t let me go.” The end of the pond was rushing toward them. “How do I turn? Turn, Ryder!”
And he did, taking her with him, flying across the ice, feeling her growing more confident by the second.
“We’re like Jamie Salé and David Pelletier,” she cried, naming Canada’s most romantic figure-skating duo.
He laughed at her enthusiasm. “This year, White’s Pond—2010, Whistler,” he said dryly. “You might have to learn to lace up your own skates, though.”
She punched his arm. “I can’t believe I’m still on the ground. How can you feel like this without flying? Let me go, Ryder, let me go.”
And he did. She took her first tentative strokes by herself.
He watched her moving slowly, and then with growing confidence. At first he called a few instructions to her, but then he let her go completely. She had about as much grace as a baby bear on skates, falling, skidding, picking herself back up almost before she had stopped, then going again, arms akimbo, blades digging into the ice.
And then, just like that, joy filled him. It came without warning, sneaked up on him just as those memories did.
