Sky Above, Sky Below
SLADE
The box is on the back seat of the truck, wrapped in paper I had to ask the woman at the shop to do for me because I’ve never wrapped anything properly in my life.
I’ve been planning this for weeks. Ever since the rodeo. Ever since I heard her say what she said to Cassidy about marrying someone who thinks you’re the best thing that ever happened to them.
She’s the best thing, without question. That’s how she deserves to be loved. That’s the kind of love I can give her.
All that matters is making my wife happy, and I know that I’m the man who can do that.
From the courthouse, we drove straight home so I could pick up Lucky and the puppies. My explanation to Lila is that it’s a chance to give them an outing, which is true… but not the whole truth.
As I twine my hand in hers, thumbing across her diamond ring, I take the turnoff onto the ranch road. The truck moves through the pine corridor that opens up after about a mile, and I watch her sit up when she sees it.
The lake.
At this time of year, it’s frozen flat and mirror-still, the ice catching the afternoon sun and throwing it back gold and white. The mountains behind it are enormous and snow-capped, reflected so perfectly in the surface that the world seems to double. Sky above, sky below.
I park the truck and cut the engine.
The pine trees at the edge of the lake are heavy with snow, the afternoon light coming in golden through the branches and across the ice.When I open the truck door, the air is sharp and cold and clean, the cold of high elevation that you feel deep in your lungs.
I reach into the back seat and get the box.
I hand it to Lila.
She peels the paper back slowly. Then she lifts the lid and looks down and doesn’t say anything for a long moment as she looks at the pair of ice skates resting in the box.
The skates are custom made. I had them done in shearling-lined ivory with rose-gold blades, her initials embroidered on the ankle.
“You had these made,” Lila says.
“A few weeks ago,” I confirm.
“You’ve been planning this for weeks.” She runs her thumb over the embroidery, the LR in thread. “LR,” she says softly. “Lila Rhodes.”
I kiss her before getting out the door and coming over to the passenger side to help her lace her skates. “Stay here for a sec,” I tell her.
Then I set about taking care of Lucky and the puppies. The puppies I arrange on a fluffy dog bed in the truck bed, covering their fuzzy, wriggling bodies in a warm wool blanket. They’re weeks older now, full of energy, but they still need to be babied.
Their mama gets a set of dog boots that will help her grip the ice. I put the booties on Lucky first before I pull my own skates on. It’s been months since I last wore those skates. The longest I’ve ever gone without being on the ice.
There will be more skating this winter, no doubt. But not on a rink.
Lucky steps onto the ice and immediately her back legs go wide, all four paws splayed. She looks at us, then the ice. Then she glares at me, specifically, with a look of deep suspicion.
“You’re okay,” I tell her. “You got this, Lucky girl.”
She takes one careful step. Then another. Then something clicks and she’s moving, tentative at first and then with that Lucky confidence, the refusal to let any obstacle, including a frozen lake, tell her what she can’t do.
Her tail starts wagging.
Lila grins up at me. “All right. If a three-legged dog can do it, so can I.”
Holding my hand, Lila steps onto the ice carefully, one blade and then the other, and her arms come out for balance and she laughs at herself.
“I haven’t been on ice skates since I was a kid,” she says.
“I’ll be by you every step of the way.” I positions myself behind her and put both hands at her waist. “Don’t push yet. Just stand.”
She stands. Tests her weight. Her ankles wobble slightly and she grips my forearms.
“There,” I say. “Feel the blade. Let it settle.”
She takes a breath and adjusts. I feel the moment her weight centers and her grip on my arms loosens fractionally.
“Now push,” I say.
She pushes off her right blade and glides six inches and laughs again, delighted, her breath a small white cloud in the cold air.
Again, she pushes off the ice. Longer this time, her left blade finding its edge, her arms dropping slightly as her body remembers what her brain has been trying to calculate.
I skate alongside her with one hand at the small of her back, light enough that she can feel it but not enough to carry her weight. Slowly, it activates in her: that muscle memory that doesn’t fully leave, that knows ice even after years away from it.
By the time we reach the center of the lake she doesn’t need my hand anymore.
She pushes off into a long glide, the pink of her hair bright against the white mountains and the gold light and the mirror-flat ice beneath her, and she looks back at me over her shoulder with her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright.
That now-familiar satisfaction moves through me, the one I get when I’ve done something to make my wife happy.
Now I just have to keep doing it for the next sixty-odd years or so.
“I remember,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “You do.”
I push off and join her.
We find a rhythm without discussing it, long easy strides, her hand sliding into mine, the ice smooth beneath us. The cold air is sharp in my lungs and our breath comes out in matching clouds. The only sounds are the clean scrape of our blades.
She skates close, her shoulder against my arm.
The snow on the peaks goes from white to peach as the sun drops. The pines at the lake’s edge stand heavy with snow, branches bowed under the weight of it.
“It’s so quiet up here,” she says. “So peaceful.”
“At least until the Rhodes’s arrive,” I tell her with a smile. “We can swim here in the summertime. The ice skating’s good through February.”
“Have you been coming here all your life?”
I nod. “Mom used to bring us here with our skates the second it froze over. All us kids and my dad. She’d pack hot chocolate and those hand warmer packets you crack to activate. We’d be out here for hours.”
Lila is quiet for a moment, her blade finding its edge on a long curve.
“She skated?” she asks.
“She was the best skater in the family. Not even close.” I think about my mother out here, turning backward to face us on the ice, gliding and twirling effortlessly with a smile on her face. “She made it look like nothing.”
“Like you. You skate like you were born on ice. It’s really something.” She squeezes my hand. “I would give anything to have met her,” she says softly. “I bet she was extraordinary.”
“She was,” I say. “She really was. And I’ve spent so long thinking she was gone, but the truth is, there’s some of her in all of us. Walker got her musicality. Tanner got her way with words. Josie got her backbone and her caretaking side.”
Lila smiles at me. “And you got her fighting spirit. Her fierce devotion to the ones she loved.”
“I hope so.”
I look off into the distant mountains, at the clouds going over the sun. There’s a hot pressure behind my eyes. Talking about Mom to Lila feels natural. Feels good. There’s pain, yes, but it’s mingled with so much love.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Lila says gently. “If it’s too much.”
“You’ve turned me into a maximalist too. No such thing as too much,” I say with a smile. “I just wish she could have been here to meet you. That’s the part that gets me sometimes. All the things she didn’t get to see. All the things she’ll never get to see.”
Lila stops skating.
She turns to face me and puts both hands on my face.
“She sees this,” she says. “I really believe that. She sees all of it.”
I close my eyes for a moment.
“Yeah,” I say, when I can. “I think so too.”
Tears slip down Lila’s cheeks. I brush them away with my fingertips. “Baby, what is it?”
The lake is turning to liquid gold beneath us as the sun emerges from behind the clouds, the mountains doubled in the ice. But Lila’s looking out at the snow-dusted peaks like she’s not seeing any of it, like her heart is breaking.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” she breathes. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to let you go.”
“You’re not,” I tell her, voice husky. “You’re not letting me go any more than I’m letting you go. Not now, not ever.”
Lucky trots up to us, wagging her tail. Lila gives her a scratch between her ears, then looks up at me with her cheeks pink and her eyes wet and her breath coming in small clouds between us.
“But,” Lila starts to say.
I take both her hands.
It’s time to tell her everything.