I
Julianne was standing in shopping hell when time elected to stand still. All around her swarmed well-dressed men and women and teens, the seemingly permanent population of Tysons Corner Center, a sprawling mall that catered to the shopping needs of the suburban wealthy near the nation's capital.
The handled shopping bags overflowing with things she didn't need—or even want—were suddenly dead weight at the end of Julianne's wrists. Hundred dollar moisturizer, fifty-dollar mascara, audiobooks she would have no patience to listen to, exquisite truffles she would later vomit up, silk lingerie for which she had no willing audience. If it hadn't been for the woman—thirtyish, long Barbie hair, too short dress—standing too close to him, she would have dropped the bags right where she stood and run over to him.
Instead she stood and stared at his profile, drinking in his civilized appearance—she had done that! not her!—until he turned slowly and saw her. He didn't smile right away, but recognition registered in his eyes—those, too, less wild now—and he made no effort to disguise his appraisal of her.
I'm sorry! I never meant to turn out this way. She could see through his eyes. She knew what he was seeing right now: a woman in her late thirties, her skin no longer fresh and supple, tired eyes, soft rosy lips plucked by frown lines. A woman who stank of idle money with her large leather handbag, trendy jeans, shoes that said she rarely had to walk anywhere.
His hair was still long and golden blonde, though cleaner and neater than when they'd first met. She allowed herself a tiny, rationed smile at the memory of his hair that first day. His cotton shirt was too loose to reveal whether he had thickened or softened around the middle; if he had, it was slight.
Was he still the same? Probably not, given his presence in Tysons Corner Center. Was he a kept man the way Julianne was a kept woman? The way Julianne hadn't wanted to keep him? His companion looked younger than Julianne, but she had the high-gloss varnish of suburban wealth.
There were only two people Julianne could say she had ever really, truly, with every fiber of her being, loved. Her mother had always made herself difficult to love, her father had vanished years ago. She had no siblings, more acquaintances and lunch partners than friends, and a husband who wanted a wife for show only. No, the only people she had ever loved were her daughter and this wild, beautiful man staring at her through the madding crowd of a shopping mall.
II
It was her day off and Julianne was walking deep into the Olympic National Forest, deeper than casual hikers went. The trail all but disappeared, becoming just a narrow tunnel through a wall of green. All around her were ferns and moss and low, heavy branches. After an hour, the undersides of her breasts were damp beneath her shirt and the biting air on her cheeks made her feel bracingly healthy. Her arms were pimpled with gooseflesh, her nipples as awake and alert as her mind. She could taste the air, crisp and clean and sharp.
Ever since she'd been a little girl, she had craved the quiet and solitude of nature, of trees, of the open sky. Back then, the closest she got to nature most days was sitting on the fire escape outside her mother's Brooklyn apartment.
Some kids hightail it off the farm and head for New York the minute the ink is dry on their high school diplomas. Julianne went in the opposite direction. She headed to the University of Montana to study forestry, then was accepted into Yale's doctoral program for the fall. But first, she was spending the summer in her dream internship at the Olympic National Park.
Most of the other interns spent their days off driving to Seattle to sample the culture of the city. Julianne went with them once. If she never set foot in a city again, it would be too soon. Her mother worried that she'd raised a complete misanthrope, a social outcast who despised people.
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