By Proxy(72)

His mother’s head snapped up. “Should I be worried?”

“Nah. Just thinking it’s time for a change.”

“It’s not Pepper, and it’s not your job. So, what happened in Montana, Sam?”

He sighed and rubbed his hands together. “I met a girl.”

“You don’t say.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“Samuel Gunderson Kelley, you wear your heart on your sleeve. Always have. Always will. And when I see my boy this melancholy, I think—no, I know—it’s got to be about a girl.”

“I fell hard, Mom.” He sighed loudly, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees. “I asked her to come to Chicago, but she won’t leave Montana. And I mean, I love Montana, just like you do, but—”

She put her hand on his arm, interrupting him. “Oh, sweetheart. Sam. I don’t love Montana.”

“Of course you do.” Sam looked at her, confusion wrinkling his forehead. “W-we went back. Every year. Twice a year. We always went back…”

“I love my sister. I love Aunt Lisabet and your cousins. But Montana? No. Oh, Sam, I was… I was glad to go. I left cheerfully. An opportunity to see the big city with a man I was in love with? It was a dream come true.”

“No. No. Wait, Mom. You left with Dad, but—but—”

She was shaking her head gently, but her eyes said it all. “Sam. You love Montana. Always have since you were a little boy. For me? It was about family. Not the place. The people. Only the people.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped as he processed this new truth. He had always thought of Montana as “in his blood,” an affection he had almost taken for granted as inherited, like brown eyes or reddish hair, from his mother. To learn that she harbored no love for Montana meant that his affection for it was individual. It was not a part of her but solidly a part of him. Not in his blood, perhaps, but firmly in his heart, of his own choice, of his own making.

Margaret hugged herself tighter against the cold. “You pressured her to come to Chicago?”

“Yeah. I thought she’d at least consider it. I bought her airline tickets. At the time, it seemed like the only way to be”—he sighed again, angry with himself—“together. I was mad when she said no. I was hurtful. I said unforgivable things.”

His mother nodded, slowly. “Wait. Sam, here’s what I don’t get. You love Montana. If you want to be with her, why wouldn’t you go there?”

“My life is here. My job, my apartment, friends, family. She comes from this ridiculously tiny town. I couldn’t make the money there that I make here. What would I even do in some small town? I couldn’t be happy there.”

She looked at him, incredulous. “Is it the only town in the entire state of Montana where she could be happy? That seems unlikely.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her to go anywhere else. I pitched Chicago. It didn’t work out.”

His mother drummed her fingers in her forehead in thought. “Bozeman’s a great town. Plenty of work there. Helena. Laurel. Great Falls is a nice little city, you know, for people who like Montana.”

“She likes Great Falls,” he said, thinking about her original plan to make a life for herself there. “She went to school there. But she chose Gardiner over Great Falls.”

“I need to know about her. Tell me about the girl.”

“Her name’s Jenny.” He sighed, shaking his head. “It’s no use, Mom. I said terrible things when I left and—”

“Samuel. Tell me about the girl.”

He put his hands on his knees and looked up at the sky. He got a good fix on her face in his head and smiled in the darkness. His voice was soft and tender when he started speaking, like how your voice sounds in your own head, like a stream of consciousness.

“Jenny. Her name’s Jenny Lindstrom. She’s twenty-four. She drinks Glögg on Christmas Eve. She doesn’t like it that I drink beer, but she says ‘men will have their vices’ and she can live with that one. Her mother actually used to say that, but she passed away, and Jenny misses her. Really badly. Her family’s the most important thing in the world.

“She teaches high school science and she has puppy, which is ridiculous, right? A schoolmarm with a puppy. She knows all this stuff about the stars and points out the constellations to anyone who will listen. She quotes Shakespeare and C.S. Lewis out of the blue. She said she’s a frustrated English teacher inside. It’s true. She is.

“The principal at her school, Paul, he really likes her. He’s young and good-looking and best friends with her brother. She’s got three brothers, and they’re all like these huge blond stereotypical Swedish guys. Anyway, she says she doesn’t like Principal Paul, but I’m sure he’s wearing her down.