Painted Moon Read online

  Painted Moon

  Jackie Frakes is a talented architectural intern whose life has fallen into unsatisfying patterns – both personally and professionally. Renowned artist Leah Beck is exhibited in galleries nationwide. But her life has darkened with the death of her lover, Sharla.

  Trapped by a mountain snow storm over Thanksgiving weekend, Jackie is rescued by Leah. The snowbound weekend in Leah's cabin shakes the very foundations of Jackie's life. As for Leah, Jackie provides renewal and inspiration for her work. And the exhibition of PAINTED MOON, her new series, will reveal Leah as never before – as a lesbian artist.

  With their relationship increasingly torn by conflict and misunderstanding, the winter weekend together will surely be their last. Then intervention comes… from a most unlikely source.

  I

  A winter storm warning meant snow for Thanksgiving.

  Leah found the idea of giving thanks ironic. She had little to be thankful for. Another gust of wind shook the windowpanes in the A-frame of the loft above them and Butch leaned her whole weight across the back of Leah's legs with a whimper.

  "I know, girl," she said absently. She thumped Butch's side through the thick white fur. Somehow Butch always knew when provisions were running low. If she didn't get into town and back before the storm, they'd be eating canned baked beans for Thanksgiving and several days after that.

  Leah looked forward to being snowed in. If Mother Nature kept her from the outside world for a few days, then for those days the isolation wasn't by her choice.

  This was her second Thanksgiving without Sharla. She wondered when she'd stop counting. "C'mon, girl," she said. She pulled on her plaid parka and snow boots. The earlier she started out the more likely she wouldn't need chains to get back.

  Butch didn't need any encouragement. She scrambled out the door ahead of Leah and when the truck door was open, she hauled all ninety-five pounds of her Alaskan Husky body into the passenger seat. When Leah slammed the door after her, Butch barked once.

  "Okay, okay, I'm hurrying."

  The drive into Bishop wasn't bad — the truck was more than heavy enough to stand a little wind. But when she came out of the market, the snow was coming down in small flurries. She quickly stashed the paper sacks onto the floorboard below Butch. Butch panted and licked her lips.

  "If you so much as nibble at that turkey, you won't see a single drumstick." Leah didn't know why she'd gotten a turkey except that they were really cheap — the penny-wise aspect of her Brethren upbringing stayed with her no matter what her current bank balance was. In the back of her mind she thought perhaps she'd set the table with an empty chair for Sharla. Maybe Sharla's spirit would visit. Maybe it would leave her feeling whole instead of walking around like a ghost. As though she'd been the one who had drowned.

  She made a quick stop at the post office. There were two letters and a parcel she had to collect at the window. One letter was from her mother. Leah wasn't sure she should read it. The other was from Maureen and Valentina, persistent friends who continued to write even when Leah didn't answer.

  The return address on the parcel made Leah catch her breath. She scrubbed her parka sleeve over her eyes. Why hadn't she cancelled her standing instructions with the art supply house? Every time one of these boxes arrived, it was like a knife in the chest.

  The flurries had thickened. She had to bend into the wind to keep the snow out of her face as she went back to the truck. Why was everything so hard? Leah slammed both fists on the steering wheel. The spark of fury dwindled as fast as it had flamed and she closed her eyes against unaccountable weariness.

  Butch whined and gnawed on the sleeve of her parka. Leah shook her loose and tried to calm herself. The snow was coming down in a no-nonsense steady flow... she didn't have time for the luxury of grief.

  2

  Jackie leaned forward and peered anxiously through the windshield. She flipped the beams to high, but the wall of rain and sleet reflected the extra light into her already straining eyes. She still could see nothing farther ahead than another car length—maybe two. Wincing, she switched back to low beams and prayed the lines on the road would remain visible as rain continued to wash over the pavement. The turnoff for Bishop loomed out of the dark and she slowly bore to the right. She clutched the MG down into low gear as the road curved and then headed what felt like straight up where the rain would be snow. Next stop, six thousand feet.

  There was nothing else to do but inch ahead and curse everyone responsible for her predicament. This surely couldn't be her fault, she thought. Oh no, you're not the one driving an old sports car in this weather. No, it was her mother's fault for guilt-tripping her into spending Thanksgiving with her nearest living relative — an aunt Jackie hadn't seen since she was a toddler. It was also Parker's fault for advising her to buy the used but sporty MG when she had really wanted something with 4-wheel drive. It was her boss's fault for keeping her an extra three hours beyond when she had wanted to leave work. It never failed — whenever she told him she needed to leave by a specific time, a deadline always came along and she felt guilty, harried and ill-used by the time she left. Mannings would refer to her untimely departure for weeks. If you'd stayed another hour, you would know why the project changed...

  He would have kept her there until midnight if she hadn't given him The Look. The Look told Mannings she'd had enough of changing CAD specifications one at a time and, no, she would not do a new set of twelve color proofs for client X before she left. The Look said she was sick of ticky-tacky box condominium design, Mannings, and the last-minute rush jobs that were keeping her later and later in increasingly foul weather.

  All she had said was that she would do it on Monday. He became all consideration suddenly, expressing concern about the long drive ahead of her and the weather. It would take a lot out of a gal, he had said, to undertake a six-hour drive up into some pretty big mountains. Jackie gritted her teeth. He always paused before saying gal— she knew he still wanted to say girl, even if it was the nineties. She gave him The Look again and told him no, she did not think starting out tomorrow morning was better.

  She clenched the wheel and cursed herself for being too much of a coward to tell him that if she'd had the early start she'd intended there wouldn't be a problem. She passed an elevation sign: 5,000 feet. And she was still heading up. She was certain she was lost. She reached to turn the heater up again but checked herself. It was up as far up as it would go. Half-frozen rain clung to her wipers. Another blast of freezing air worked its way around the ragtop and Jackie groped in her glove compartment for the thin driving gloves Parker had given her. They weren't lined, but they were better than nothing.

  She braked at the top of the grade and was relieved to see lights of civilization through the smearing slush on her windshield. She increased speed and saw a sign that said she'd found Bishop. It was a small place and she was through it in a few minutes. There were no other people in sight and all the houses she passed looked hunkered down for the storm. She drove carefully along the highway and fought back a tremor of fear. The left-turn pocket her aunt had told her to take popped out of the glare after only a few minutes of tense driving and Jackie heaved a sigh of relief. It was only another ten minutes, her aunt had said. She decided that she could make it to her aunt's house.

  Of course, her aunt hadn't known it would be snowing. There were no street lights. City girl, she chided herself, you've gotten soft. Her MG wasn't made for this weather, she knew, but she had no choice except to press ahead. The snow thinned as she slowly ground her way up another grade. As the odometer clicked forward each tenth of a mile, she guessed that her aunt's ten-minute estimate might be a half-hour at this pace.

  Her fear and doubts returned in full force when sh
e crested the first grade. She hadn't realized it had been sheltering her from the wind and the worst of the snow. The MG shuddered when the initial blast of Arctic air hit it and snow immediately glazed her windshield. She sacrificed the warmth of her feet and turned all the heat onto the windshield. It helped, a little. She slowed to a crawl and guided the car from mileage marker to marker, grateful she could tell where the side of the road was.

  The landscape appeared to stand still while the minutes clicked by. Jackie was beginning to feel as though she would end up in Brigadoon. The snow had already masked any landmark she might have recognized. She had left Bishop behind almost a half-hour ago. It had been almost eight hours since she had left San Francisco. She was cramped from concentrating and shivering. Her need for a bathroom was becoming acute, which wasn't helping her composure any. At times like this she envied Parker that handy little gadget he had.

  Aunt Eliza would be frantic. They'd spoken briefly this morning and her aunt had told her to expect "a little rain." She hadn't known Jackie was driving a sports car into an Arctic storm.

  The windshield wipers slapped ineffectually across the windshield — go back, go back, they seemed to say. Why hadn't they said that an hour ago? She wasn't sure she could turn around and not end up off the road. And where would she go back to? The only light was her headlights. The snowflakes were like Boston's in February — the type that slip inside your boots, no matter how tightly they're laced, and then melt instantly. The type of snow that tires slip on.

  As if on cue, the MG slid sideways a few feet as Jackie slowly maneuvered it around a curve. Oh terrific, she thought as she brought the car out of the skid. I wanted to buy something sensible, something I could take on a construction site if I had to, but no. Parker said the MG will be cute. Fun for us to take to the beach. He had always wanted a convertible. They'd been to the beach exactly once in the last nine months.

  Aunt Eliza had said that if she stayed on this road she'd come to a right turn. Then she was to drive without turn-offs to the second gate, and then she'd be on a gravel and dirt road. Gravel and dirt meant mud. The MG wasn't up to mud. It wasn't up to the asphalt and snow either. Every few feet the tires slid in the slush and then the car jolted as it plowed into packed snow. The unpredictable slide-thunk rhythm put her stomach in knots. She should just go back to Bishop and see if there was a motel with a vacancy. Or drive on a few hours north to Lake Tahoe. Oh, right, Jackie. Like you could get to Tahoe in this weather.

  I am a fool, she cursed herself. She slowed the car and listened to the disarmingly quiet plop-plop of snow on the ragtop. There was nothing for it. It was a long climb up the hill she'd just come down, and probably another forty minutes to get back to Bishop, but she didn't think she would see a gate or a road in this weather, and she would freeze to death in the M6 if the engine died. She had to turn back.

  She began the treacherous U-turn. If there was any traffic, they'd run right into her. She also couldn't see clearly enough to tell if she'd turned the full 180 degrees. Where is the marker I just passed? The sleet made it nearly invisible... there.

  She let out the clutch and the MG shuddered its way back up the hill. At the crest, Jackie steered slowly to the left. It took her a few seconds to realize that the MG was heading to the right. She wrenched the wheel harder with no effect, then pumped the brakes lightly, then more frantically as the car continued to slowly slip sideways on the slope of the road. The right wheels dropped onto the shoulder and the car picked up speed as it slid completely off the pavement and tipped down the slope;

  Jackie had a split-second to decide if she should unbuckle her seat belt and try to jump out of the car or if she should stay with the car and hope the seat belt would somehow save her from injury. But then the car slowed, and with a mild jolt, it stopped.

  Jackie opened her eyes. They were lodged against a row of sturdy pine trees only about four feet below the road. It could have been much, much worse.

  The snow was light under the trees but even as Jackie decided to stay where she was the MG's engine gave a wheezy splutter and died. She gingerly tried to coax it back to life. She tried swearing. Neither approach worked. It was probably the angle... gas couldn't reach the engine. She thought bitterly of the used Trooper she had wanted to buy and the Trooper's fuel injection system, heater, anti-lock brakes and on-demand 4-wheel drive.

  The temperature in the car fell rapidly. Jackie blew on her fingers and decided she'd have to get out and walk. Walking would keep her warm, which was vital, and she knew her aunt's house lay ahead. She didn't know how far, but she would get there.

  The next most important thing was to keep her feet dry. She had on her thickest leather boots... not hiking boots by any stretch of the imagination, but they were warm and waterproof. They'd survived a Boston winter. With some scrambling she managed to fish her suitcase out from behind the seat. She added a second pair of jeans over the ones she wore — the big jeans she'd brought for after the Thanksgiving meal — then pulled two oversized sweaters over the pullover she was already wearing. She struggled back into her jacket, another Boston survivor.

  She stuffed extra underpants and socks into her jacket pockets, thinking she would wrap them around her hands if she had to, and she cursed herself for not throwing in a wool scarf or a pair of real gloves. Her jacket didn't have a hood and she needed to preserve what she could of her body heat. Her braid would help, but she didn't have bobby pins. She piled her braid around the top of her head and wrapped a sweater vest around it like a ski mask. A silk scarf secured it in place, sort of. Her thickest socks became mittens over the driving gloves. She was never more grateful that she used a fanny pack instead of a purse. She strapped it around her and had the morbid thought that if she froze to death her driver's license would identify her body. As the emergency card in her wallet said, the nearest Canadian embassy could find her father almost immediately.

  Her movements were stiff through all the layers, but the cold didn't immediately hit her when she got out of the car. That was a good sign, she thought. She peered through one armhole of the vest and scrambled as best she could up the sodden, slippery hillside. Wetness had penetrated to her hands and knees by the time she reached the road.

  On foot she had a decent chance of seeing a gate, so she headed down the grade in the direction she thought her aunt's house lay. Surely they would be looking for her... or maybe they thought she'd had the sense to stop when it got bad. Don't panic, she told herself. This isn't any worse than when you and Mom got trapped at the top of the ski run at Banff. It's no worse than any survival-training vacation Dad dragged us on. She would write him the moment she got home and thank him for insisting she learn some basics.

  By the time she reached the top of the next grade, her nose and ears were numb and she was sweating profusely under the sweaters. Her lungs ached from the cold and lack of oxygen. At the bottom of the hill, surely there would be houses. There had to be. The idea of climbing another hill... her heart sank. She paused for a moment and heard a faint whine behind her.

  In a panic of hope, she moved to the side of the road, though she could tell that the vehicle was moving slowly. Headlights finally appeared and she stepped into the pools of light, waving frantically.

  It was a pick-up, a big one. The kind that rednecks drove on television. It probably had gun racks. As the truck stopped, a huge white dog lunged at the passenger-side window, baring its teeth. Jackie jumped back.

  The passenger door flew open. A hoarse voice ordered the dog to stay, then rasped at her, "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

  Jackie didn't know what to say. Killed how? Freezing? Rabies? Getting run over by a surly hick? Everything she'd ever been taught about the consequences of accepting rides from strangers surged inside her. City survival tactics applied now, she told herself, then realized she was near hysterics. "My car went off the road. If you could call my —"

  "Will you get in before we both freeze?"

  "I don't need
a lift—"

  "Suit yourself." The door started to close.

  "No, wait!" Jackie grabbed the door and heedless of the dog, stepped up onto the running board. She dragged the sweater vest off her head and tossed her braid back, peering anxiously at the driver. She could make out nothing more than a thick flannel jacket — the kind that hunters wore. But no sign of a gun rack. "If you could call my aunt —"

  "I don't have a cellular phone," the driver said sarcastically, leaning toward Jackie. As the overhead light illuminated short, dark hair and thin, ascetic features, Jackie realized the driver was a woman. She nearly fainted with relief.

  The woman said, "Just get in, will you? Butch doesn't bite and neither do I."

  3

  What had she done to deserve this? Leah gunned the engine and wasn't surprised when Butch sidled up against her. Idiot woman was drizzling water all over the inside of the truck. The paper bags were going to get wet and they'd be chasing canned peas down the driveway.

  God spare her from people who thought the weather could be reasoned with. Nothing made Mother Nature more vicious than when her power was taken for granted. Going back to town was unthinkable. She'd slid twice on the last grade, and her own gate was just a half a mile ahead. She'd be damned if she'd put on chains when she was so close to home. She was going to have the last thing she wanted for Thanksgiving — a visitor.

  She pulled up in front of the gate and started to open her door, but the woman said, "I'll get it," and slipped out. Well, maybe she had some sense after all even if she did look seventeen with that braid. Leah watched her stumble through the snow.. .oh hell, look at those boots. Where did this fool think she'd been headed? Club Med?

  The woman managed the gate catch and held it open as Leah drove through. In the rear view mirror Leah saw the woman latch it again properly and then disappear as she stumbled. When she opened the door she was covered with slushy snow. Butch moved halfway onto Leah's lap.