A Little Learning Read Free Page B

Rory hadn’t been there to pull it off. As it was, she’d needed sixteen stitches to close the bite.
    Rory agreed that the snake might have killed Samantha. In fact, Lola had frightened Rory more thoroughly than anything else ever had in her entire life. And Rory was not afraid of snakes.
    She wanted to plead with Desert not to do anything that might jeopardize her job. But Desert wouldn’t welcome an interruption to her practice. And on second thought, Rory didn’t think she was up to coping with Desert at the moment.
    Desert, christened Naomi Katz, had come to Colorado at the age of eighteen. She’d immediately rechristened herself and had begun living off a trust fund provided by her grandfather, a diamond broker, and also by her mother’s family. Rich and beautiful, she’d trained in Boulder as a massage therapist and as a fire dancer, had moved to Sultan and bought the two-storey Victorian where she, Rory and Samantha now lived. Its exterior was painted pink.
    Sometimes, Rory and Samantha asked themselves why they put up with Desert.
    But they loved her. And pitied her. And wanted to help her somehow; help her to not make life hard for herself. Desert’s boyfriend was a recent acquisition—they’d been together nine weeks. Rory and Samantha were holding their breaths, dreading the ending. Dreading it for themselves as well as for Desert, who was sensitive and, well, troubled.
    Rory said to Samantha, “Can you take these? I’ve got to go show some clients to the Empire Street house.”
    “Sure.” Samantha took the rabbits, clutching the bundle against her with one arm. “Go.”
    * * *
    R ORY G ORENZI WAS ATTRACTIVE , but Seamus had come from Telluride, where beautiful was the norm. He didn’t want another girlfriend; he only wanted to sort through the things his ex-girlfriend had said. He wanted to attend to the flaws she’d pointed out. And they were flaws. He didn’t want to marry again—his experiences with other women reminded him not that Janine had been the perfect wife and mother, but that she hadn’t been. No, that wasn’t fair. She’d been the mother of their kids and, so, the perfect mother for them.
    But she’d always needed to prove something. He’d known she was sensitive beneath her sometimes-abrasive exterior. One of his male employees had once said to Janine, “You have more testosterone than I do.”
    She’d said, “Thank you!” and had clearly been pleased by the compliment.
    She’d been an athlete, but that wasn’t the only thing that had made her challenging. It was the way she’d presented herself. Her certainty that her way was right. She’d been insecure and determined to hide the fact, and in their twelve years of marriage she’d never revealed the source of that insecurity or the reason for it.
    She’d been smart—a legal-aid lawyer employed by the Women’s Resource Center, defending the battered and the terrified. And she’d never struck him as particularly maternal, although she’d nursed each child for at least nine months.
    Janine had been difficult, and since her death Seamus had vacillated between the notion that no relationship could be as trying as his marriage had been and the idea that no woman would be as good for his children as Janine had been. And how good was that, really?
    Better than you, Seamus.
    But that hadn’t been so true, back when his wife was alive. He’d spent time with his kids, talked with them and listened to them.
    Janine had listened, too—long enough to get the gist of situations. Then, she’d pronounced judgment. You’re not going to take that from anyone, she would order the seven-year-old who’d just had his lunch money stolen.
    Lauren seemed determined to remember her as a sort of warrior mother, an Amazon who had demanded warrior-like behavior from her children, as well. Even these days, Seamus occasionally heard his oldest say, “Mom wouldn’t have stood for that,” or “Mom wouldn’t have put up with