Chapter 29
Forty-Seven Days Until the End of the Summer Excavation Season
She listens for his breathing, but there’s only silence.
He’s not here. He could be out on the dig, courting the bears. Or drinking fancy alcohol and shooting the shit with Griff.
Or he could be with Mindy. They could be drinking fancy alcohol and reminiscing about the good old days.
They could be doing more than that.
The thought shreds the last vestiges of Ripley’s sleep. She hates herself for rolling over to check if he’s been here. It will hurt her to see the undisturbed hospital corners on his bed, but she can’t stop herself.
His bed is empty but not undisturbed. All his relentless daytime tucking has come undone, the blankets twisted and bunched like he threw them aside in exhausted frustration.
On the floor under his bed, soft white light shines from his headlamp, which he must have forgotten to turn off when he went out.
She sits up, shoves her feet into her flip-flops, and grabs a hoodie to ward off the night chill. If he’s outside, she’ll make sure he’s okay. He might feel more comfortable coming back in if he knows she’s awake too.
She squats down to switch off his headlamp—battery life is precious out here—and realizes it’s sitting on his open sketchbook.
Unlike his bright, lively sketches of Beauty, this drawing is mostly dark except for the faint illumination spilling over the central figure.
As if hypnotized, Ripley puts on the headlamp and picks up the sketchbook.
She stares for a long time before flipping back to the first page—a study of the ranch house and paddocks at Yellowtail.
The sketch is simple yet evocative, full of movement.
Next, there’s a landscape of the canyon.
It’s guarded by a distant figure with a long pale braid and an unwelcoming set to her crossed arms.
Some of the sketches are a dozen quick strokes; others are almost photorealistic. Most are in pencil, but a few—like a tiny, painfully exquisite Montana sunset—are tinted with watercolors she didn’t know he had.
There’s a portrait of Geraldine, her laugh lines given loving emphasis.
James’s tidy, old-fashioned lettering marches across the bottom of the page: Geraldine Yellowtail, Montana, USA.
A sketch of a field with lines of wheat that part and close around a thick-trunked oak tree the farmer surely must have considered felling but never did.
An old man changing a tire on a vintage pickup truck.
A rabbit, its nose mid-twitch—how still James must have been not to scare it away.
And herself, bent over her excavation, her hands poised more elegantly than she’s ever held them, she’s certain. At the bottom, he’s written Ripley, Brushing.
The next one is all the more passionate for being untidily done—drunkenly done, maybe. Ripley’s sprawled across a pair of legs in the back seat of a car, her outstretched hand not quite obscuring the way her eyes are hooded with alcohol and desire and badly concealed plans: Ripley, Reaching.
She’s everywhere in this book. Eating a club sandwich.
Squinting suspiciously from under her hat.
Sitting with her feet dangling over the side of the canyon.
Laughing behind the wheel of the Charger.
There’s a drawing of what looks like the pine trees near the showers, although it’s not quite accurate, as if he drew it from memory.
The illustration is overlaid with an agonized scribble she doesn’t understand until she reads the caption, the letters pressed into the paper so hard, she can see where the pencil tip broke on the g.
Ripley, Showering.
And then she’s back to the last drawing.
She’s kneeling on the floor when the door creaks open.
“Ripley.” James’s tired voice contracts with shock.
“ ‘Ripley, Sleeping,’ actually.” She traces a fingernail under the lettering, careful not to touch his lines.
On the page, half her face is in darkness, the other half lit by the moon. She rebraids her hair at night, but he’s drawn it rippling over the pillow, spread out the way he arranged it in the museum.
He’s made her far more beautiful than she is in life, flattering her the way royal portraitists did when their work could earn them a king’s ransom or get them beheaded.
Or the way artists do when they stop seeing with their eyes and start seeing something visible only to the heart.
She stands up, her knees creaking. She pulls the headlamp off and lets it dangle from one hand; the beam of light swings back and forth across the plywood floor.
“How many times did you draw me, James?”
“Nine,” he says like he wants to cause himself pain. “I can explain.”
She looks at his carefully blank face. “You’re a really good artist, James. Really, really good. I’d say these don’t need an explanation.”
He exhales, nodding. His long legs are barely covered by navy-and-white-striped cotton shorts that match the collar showing at the neck of his zippered riding jacket.
How very James to be collared and buttoned even at night—although he does seem to be wearing his boots with no socks.
His hair is a mess, like he’s spent an hour with both fists clenched in it.
Behind his crooked glasses, his eyes are shadowed with resignation.
“I’m so sorry, Ripley. I can go if you’re not comfortable with me here.
I’ll sleep in one of the jeeps. I can leave tomorrow, first thing.
” He retrieves his monogrammed weekend bag from underneath his bed, sets it on the mattress, and starts stuffing clothes inside with barely controlled movements that look almost like punches.
“James. The issue is not the drawings. It’s that you said we should stop before there were deeper feelings involved.”
“I did,” he says.
She flips to another drawing. “ ‘Ripley, Unconvinced,’ ” she reads. Flips the page again. “ ‘Ripley, Hoping.’ You. Had. Feelings. And not shallow ones.”
He crushes his towel into the bag so ferociously, Ripley can hear stitches popping.
“Yes,” he says, straightening. “I had feelings for you.”
“You lied,” she breathes hotly. “You let me think I was the only one.”
He spins around so quickly, she expects…she doesn’t know what she expects, but it isn’t James gently extracting the sketchbook from her hands and setting it on top of the bag. “I’ve never lied to you, Ripley. Never. Maybe I elided certain things, but I never lied.”
“Oh, okay, Wordy McBigword. If you say so.” They’re both whispering, but it feels like shouting.
“I do say so,” he says, taking a step toward her. “I wasn’t talking about my feelings. I meant yours, Ripley. I wanted us to stop before your feelings grew deeper.”
“The fuck, James.” She presses her palms to her forehead. “Literally, what the fuck. Am I not good enough for you? There’s nothing someone like me can offer someone like you, so you’re planning to go back to Oxford and wait until the feelings pass?”
He catches one hand, pulls it away from her face. “No,” he growls. “You are never to think that. You are everything to me, Ripley. Everything.”
“If I’m everything”—she makes the word sound maudlin and overdone so she won’t cry—“why are you pushing me away when there’s no one here but us? What’s the problem, James?”
“What’s the problem?” He looks skyward with an incredulous laugh.
“The problem is that when you love something, Ripley Adams, you love it with your whole heart. You never walk away. Not ever. You could’ve become a librarian or statistician, like your classmates.
You could have gone to work for the Black Hills Institute, scouting T.
rexes for a finder’s fee. They would’ve sent a team to Yellowtail Ranch and hacked Beauty out of the hillside in one week flat.
“But you didn’t. You’re here doing the thing you love and taking care of the father you love. You were looking for your dreams, and you’ve bloody well found them.
“So what happens if you come to have feelings for me, Ripley? Not that you would. That’s arrogant of me.
Unbearably conceited. Wishful thinking, at best,” he says in a hoarse rasp.
“But if you did, that would tear you apart. Because you can’t have this”—he gestures between them—“and your work, and your father. I don’t presume you would choose me over them.
In fact, I would not allow it, because I cannot, cannot be to you what my father was to my mother.
“But having to make that choice would hurt you. If you loved me,” he says, his whisper dying over the last words.
His body slackens, losing its fire. He looks away, out the front window of the cabin, where the waning crescent moon shines over the canyon.
God, she loves him. She loves him for never compromising.
For always putting others before himself.
For thinking through what things will mean and taking decisive action even when it hurts him to do it.
She loves him for never, ever asking how long her dad is expected to survive or where she might be willing to live after his death.
She steps forward, reaching for the hand that lies loosely against his thigh. She curls her hand under his, her fingers whispering across his palm. “If I loved you back, you mean. If we loved each other.”
“Don’t,” he says, the word raw. “Don’t say that word, I beg you. I can still leave. It’s not too late; I can—”
“It is too late,” she says, and he takes a breath like a sob. “It’s too late. I have feelings already, and so do you. There’s no way to avoid the pain, James. It’s going to happen no matter what we do. The only choice we have now is whether to reach for the joy too.”
“There’s so little time,” he says, like he can’t quite believe it.
“How can this be what’s meant to happen?
” He pulls her hands to his stomach, runs her palms up his chest, and drapes her arms over his shoulders.
Her back bows where his arms loop around her waist. He lowers his face, closing his eyes when his forehead kisses hers.
“I don’t know,” she says. “But I think…I think we’re lucky, James. Some people have regrets because they would have done things differently if they’d known the end was coming. But we do know. We can do anything we want with the time we have. So what do you want?”
There’s a moment of stillness where every possible future comes into focus, one after another after another, shifting like the kaleidoscope in his eyes.
“I want so many things,” he says. “I want everything.”
“Me too,” she says.
And he lets her pull him down.