“Maybe I’ll check it out sometime.” She smiled at him, encouraging him to continue.
“My Dad was—is, I guess, since he still dabbles from time to time when they need him—a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago, with a specialty in paleontology. I don’t know if you know this, Miss Montana, but Choteau is near one of the most important paleontology sites in the world, Egg Mountain. Egg Mountain was discovered in 1977, and my father was sent west in 1978 to collect various specimens to be put on display in the Field Museum. He was sent up there for a week, and of course…”
“He needed a place to stay!” she finished for him, her voice conveying how engaged she was in the story.
Keeping his eyes on the road, he pointed to her with his index finger. “Yes!”
“So, how did it work out?”
“Well, there he was every night at dinner, dusty and tired. He wears glasses, my Dad. One night he was sitting quietly by himself eating dinner and my Mom came over to him, and without saying a word, she gently took his glasses off and cleaned them with her breath and her apron before she put them back on his face. When she did, she said, ‘Now I can see your eyes, Sean.’ After that, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.” He was thoughtful for a moment, thinking of his parents, how in sync they were, how loving, such good friends. He realized once again how much he wanted a marriage like that for himself one day. Someone who loved him, someone who set his heart on fire and was still his best friend. A triple threat.
“They’re a love match,” he blurted out, an extension of his thoughts. “And they’re best friends. Everything they do is better or more fun if they do it together. You can tell that about them. He told me one time that after he found her, he couldn’t imagine his life without her.”
Jenny sighed beside him and cocked her head to the side. “Why didn’t they stay in Choteau near her folks?”
“Because she was a maid in her parents’ lodge, Jenny, and he was a rising young curator of a world-famous museum. It wouldn’t have made sense for him to stay in Choteau.”
“But her family—”
Sam sensed they weren’t talking about his parents anymore and wanted to tread very softly, choose his words carefully. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. She lived in the Chicago suburbs and raised her family near her husband’s work. But we were here in Montana a lot, Jenny. It took some planning and driving and commitment, but we were here regularly. I told you, I love Montana. That’s all because of my Mom. Because going to Chicago with my Dad didn’t mean abandoning her childhood home or her family. She chose my Dad—”
“And left her family.”
He raised his palms off the wheel for a moment in a gesture of frustrated surrender and looked out his side window. This wasn’t going well. She was getting upset and she wasn’t hearing what he was trying to say.
He answered her softly. “Yes. But, they were still her family and yes, it took planning and effort, but she still made time for them. Look how close I am to Kris. Isn’t that evidence that it all worked out?”
She looked out her window then, too, and a tentative silence filled the car as he changed his glance back to the road. When he looked over at her, she was chewing her bottom lip, brow furrowed.
“Looks like waterfalls up ahead, Jen. Great Falls. Fitting last stop, huh?”
He heard her breathe in deeply and exhale. “Sure. It’s worth a look.”
***
As they approached Gardiner Jenny checked her watch. Their drive was almost over, and her resolve to be cheerful was starting to crumble. She had to be at her Dad’s house in forty minutes.
“We have a few minutes. We should stop so you can check out the arch. It’s the major attraction of Gardiner. Who knows when you’ll be back?”
He nodded and parked on a snowy patch of grass in an adjacent parking lot and turned off the car. Neither of them made a move to get out, each feeling the emotional impact of Jenny’s words. She stared down at her hands, willing back the tears that threatened to gather in her eyes. Sam shifted in his seat to face her and reached over to take her hand in his. She looked up, and the tenderness in his eyes was her undoing. The first tear made its lazy way down her cheek, past her nose to rest on her lip.
“Jenny,” he murmured seriously but gently, searching her eyes. “We need to talk.”
He got out of the car and perched on top of a picnic table, looking out at the mountains, waiting for her. She opened her door and walked the few steps to sit beside him.
***
He took her hand in his, stroking her soft palm with the pad of his thumb, his head down, trying to figure out how to begin. Finally he turned to her.