Free The One Who Got Away: A Novel by Bethany Bloom Page B

seek.
    Charlie hardly ever appeared in
public with his wife. And yet, something about their relationship worked. Now,
they were both nearing seventy, like her own parents, and they were still
together.
    You never knew what it was
between a couple that made it work, Olivine thought. And maybe this is how it
would be now, with Paul. There was something more to a lifelong love than met
the eye. She could keep her outside world in order. Paul would help her take
care of that world, and inside, she could be however she wanted.  
    She liked to keep things inside
herself, and Paul didn’t pry. He never asked her how she was feeling. He made
suggestions, sure, on which direction she could go—on what kind of decisions
she should make. He helped her when she was struggling with her career. He
helped her to redirect to something of more significance. But he never asked
too many questions. He let her inner life be her own.
    She relished this inner life. And
Paul relished his. She understood Paul. She understood his silence and his
independence. Paul’s father was probably right: no one could love Paul like she
could. No one could understand his detachedness like she could. He needed her,
and she understood him. And that was that. They would be together. The way it
should be.

Chapter Six
    As Olivine turned onto her street,
she found herself driving more slowly and lingering at stop signs. She didn’t
want to go home. She didn’t want to talk about Anatomy class, and she didn’t
want to be indoors. It was a beautiful night, so warm for early May, and so she
turned out of her neighborhood and back to the highway, and, soon, she found
herself driving to the cabin.
    This is where she could come when
she needed to think and to be alone. Sometimes she would just arrive there, as
if on autopilot. This place would always be home to her. This is the place
where, as kids, she and Yarrow and their cousins would sit on the white trunk
of a massive cottonwood tree that had fallen across the river and dangle their
feet into the water, so cold it stung. In the springtime, they would walk
barefoot across the snow, which had grown coarse and pebbly with the slanted
sun, and they would sit side by side on the log and keep their feet submerged
as long as they could stand it, the river running high with fresh snowmelt from
the peaks just above. Some days, they would have contests to see who could keep
their feet in the river the longest.
    The water was just a few degrees
above freezing, and Olivine would suck in a sharp burst of air as she first
slid her feet in and watched them turn corpse white under the clear mountain
water. She could outlast anyone, even her cousin Brad, who was four years older
and who played varsity football and who always told her that she was one touch
chick. Also, that she would someday lose a toe to frostbite, which hadn’t come
to pass.
    Olivine would stay with her feet
in the water, breathing through the sting, willing the pain into the center of
her and away from her face. Away from anywhere it could be visible. Her eyes
would be closed, her breathing deep and even, and someone would eventually go
and get her mother, who would come and make her walk inside where she was made
to wrap her feet, now raw and red, in a blanket.
    Anywhere near the cabin—sitting
on the log over the river, by the fire ring in the backyard, on the cabin’s
front porch—she could see the four peaks that buttressed her town. She knew
them so well, she could picture them in any season. In the winter, their crags
blanketed in snow. In the springtime, the cornices on the high peaks would
tumble, triggering avalanches that left trails you could see from miles away. Long
skids of snow like ripples on a white sheet, hanging on the line .
    And now, Olivine turned into the
driveway, which was cut just wide enough for a single car; a narrow path through
towering Ponderosa pine, shrubby blue spruce, and patches of white-trunked
aspens, the trees so