WINNA ARRIVED AT the Crystal Café for her lunch date with Kate. She picked a table with a view of Main Street. The street had changed since the fifties when she and Johnny had dragged Main in his convertible. Now it was more like a downtown mall with planters full of trees, shrubs, and flowers. Bronze sculptures decorated the sidewalks. Traffic had to slow as the street curved and snaked its way past all the plantings. The trees are a nice addition, Winna thought. They filtered the hard-edged light, giving a pleasant cooling shade to the sidewalks and parked cars. But Main Street no longer looked like the nineteenth-century Western street she first knew.
She looked up just as Kate came through the door. She looked like she’d just left the beauty parlor. Spotting Winna right away, she brightened and scurried through the line of people now waiting for tables.
“Hi, Winna,” she called. “Always on time.”
Winna gave her a hug and they sat down. Kate reached for Winna’s hand, patting it like the hand of a child. “You are a wonder. I’ve always wanted to ask why you’ve never done anything with your hair.”
Winna assumed she meant why she had not colored away the gray. “I guess I like it. Have you colored yours?” she asked, giving Kate’s flawlessly even dark-brown hair a quick glance.
“You bet.” Kate smiled and winked, fluffing her “do” with one hand. “I don’t have your courage.”
Remembering Kate’s tendency to speak her mind, Winna laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should,” Kate said. “You know me better than anyone.”
Winna had to admit she probably did. “We practically lived together for how many years?”
“Well, I moved to Peach Tree Ridge when I was in eighth grade—I think you were a freshman. We were together almost every day—especially in summer.”
“Sometimes I wonder if we had way too much freedom—riding off on our horses, swimming in the canal. When I think about the wild things we did—the trouble we could have gotten into—l’m amazed we’re still alive.”
After ordering lunch, Winna confessed that she had always been jealous of Kate’s clothes. “You were so sweet to let me borrow them.”
“I thought yours were better—believe me! If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have traded with you so often. Remember how we used to call each other the night before school, plan what we were going to wear the next day, and meet under the pear trees to swap?”
“Remember the ghost ranch? I was thinking about that the other day—what fun it was for us to pack up and ride all that way out to the foothills with our sleeping bags and something to cook for dinner and breakfast.”
“These days people can’t let their kids have adventures like that—it’s a shame. We knew how to take care of ourselves, make a fire, cook something to eat, and sleep out under the stars.”
To this day, Winna could not remember any other adventure from her youth that compared to riding off with Kate through the countryside to an abandoned farmstead in the shadow of the Book Cliffs several miles from home. Arriving late in the afternoon, they had unloaded their sleeping bags and rations near the house and let the horses go in the old pasture, certain that the ramshackle fence would fool them into thinking they could not escape. Searching for firewood, laying a fire—they were masters of the task at hand.
Like a traveler coming home after a long journey, Winna had stepped onto the old porch full of anticipation. They knew nothing about the house’s former owners or why they had deserted the place, and would lie around the campfire at night making up love stories with tragic endings.
“Every summer when we visited the house, it had changed—seemed more haunted,” Winna said. “One by one, the windows were shot out and the furniture stolen.”
Kate’s face lit up. “Remember the night we tried to sleep indoors?”
“Of course. I count that as my one and only encounter with ghosts. I’ll have to encourage Chloe with that story. She thinks I’m hopelessly skeptical about the unseen.”
“What imaginations we had!”
“After that one terrifying night, we never tried that again.”
Winna remembered making camp outside—in back of the house—lighting the campfire, roasting wienies on a stick, and eating baked beans from the fire-warmed blackened can. The sun set over Pinyon Mesa, lighting the sky pink and violet, and more wood was thrown on the fire. Fully dressed except for boots, they had burrowed into their sleeping bags. The moon rose high and Winna could see the horses still grazing the dry pasture. When she turned her eyes up to the sky, it seemed that the stars were close enough to touch.
The women turned the conversation to the present, catching up with recent events. Kate was busy golfing at the country club three mornings a week, playing tennis once a week with her husband and another couple. She and Jim also belonged to a folk dance group that met once a month for a hoedown.
No wonder she’s so slim, Winna thought. Kate still had horses and invited her to ride. A standing invitation Winna planned to accept. When their lunch arrived, a cheeseburger for her and a salad for Kate, Winna told Kate all about Adolph Whitaker’s letters and the jumble of treasures and trash packed into the old house. Kate wanted to know about Winna’s plans for the future, especially what she was thinking about John.
“We saw each other for dinner. We’re getting reacquainted. That’s all,” she said.
Kate picked through her salad, avoiding the tomatoes and red onion. Winna guessed she wasn’t very hungry. “You remember he married Maggie?” Kate said.
Winna nodded yes. “Did you see much of her after high school?”
Kate looked thoughtful. “Now that you mention it, I’d say not. Why do you ask?”
“I wrote her a couple of times and she never responded. I felt a little disappointed—hurt, actually.” Winna regretted the waver in her voice following that admission.
“Once she got involved with John, she moved to Boulder and took a job of some kind there,” Kate said. “She may not have gotten your letters. He was in school. I think they got married there. I got the impression that it was all very hush-hush.”
“Maybe she was pregnant?”
“I don’t know. They never had children,” Kate seemed to drift for a second before she went on. “When they came back to town—before he went to Vietnam—I didn’t hear from her. Bumped into her here and there. She was friendly enough, but didn’t seem interested in resuming our relationship.”
“Tell me about her death.” Even though John had recently told her what had happened, Winna wondered what Kate knew.
Kate shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it. “I was so shocked—she was a fine skier. John was with her when it happened. She ran into a tree and broke her neck.”
“Did he see it happen?”
“I think so. You know she was so good that he actually liked skiing with her. Jim won’t ski with me.”
“Johnny never skied with me,” Winna admitted, “but Maggie would—and you. I think I was the poorest skier of the lot—a real gaper.”
“No you weren’t. I remember having lots of fun with you—especially on trails. God, we had fun,” Kate reached for Winna’s hand.
Winna smiled and opened her mouth to add her assent, but she wasn’t fast enough.
“After the war, John came home lost and troubled—he was doing drugs. He and my Jim have always been best friends—like brothers, really. At one point Jim sat him down for a heart-to-heart. John was stealing money from his father to pay for drugs and gambling debts.”
“Really? That’s hard to believe. He told Jim that?” Winna said, feeling stunned, troubled.
“Yes—like a confession of sorts. He hated himself. Mr. Hodell was quite old then and had trusted his son to take over the business. John was devastated when he died and started going to Gamblers Anonymous. He wanted to pull himself and his father’s business back into shape and asked Jim to help him.”
“How could Jim trust him? I mean, after stealing from his father?”
“Jim loves him like a brother and believed in him—he still does. He didn’t go into business with him until John got his act together—then Jim became the financial brains.” Kate looked sure, as if she was confident that John had reformed.
Thinking Kate’s husband might well be a saint, Winna asked, “How has that worked out?”
“Very well. Jim is a good manager and John is a good contractor. They don’t get mixed up in each other’s territory and, if I may say so, they operate the leading firm in the area. Once John cleaned up his act, he stayed cleaned up. We are kind of proud of him for that.”
Kate had told Winna more about John’s past than he had. Winna sipped a second cup of tea as they talked and laughed and told stories from the past. When she looked at her watch, it was nearly three o’clock. They had forgotten the time.
“Oh, Lordy, it’s late,” Kate said as they prepared to go. “Promise that you’ll go riding with me soon.”
They hugged, pecked each other’s cheeks, and said goodbye.
That night, lying in bed in Juliana’s bedroom, Winna remembered Kate as a girl—her dark hair and snapping green eyes, her body straight as a stick. Winna’s body had developed sooner than Kate’s and her friend had teased her about having big boobs. Winna chuckled to herself. The night of the sweetheart formal she had helped Kate stuff her strapless bra with Kleenex. She wondered if Kate would remember that. The memory delighted her but she fell asleep thinking of beautiful Maggie, her eyes like a doll’s eyes, smiling blue, fringed with thick black lashes. And now she was dead.