is for you, just a blank right before and during your fall?"
A chill snaked up her spine. Jonas was trying to find out how much she could recall? But why? Just sympathy and support? Or was he desperate to know if she'd seen or heard something--someone? Maybe him.
"That's the way it was at first," she told him, keeping her eyes on the forest path, hoping he wouldn't see the lie on her face--lawyers were skilled at psyching such things out. "But I really feel some of it's coming back to me, bit by bit. I really think I will recall everything."
"Well, sometimes it's best to just let tough times stay buried. You know--considering where we're headed--to let sleeping dogs lie. Can't wait to see these huskies. In photos they seem to have the bluest eyes. Never had a job interview, so to speak, where the criteria had to do with racing dogs and zip lines and river rafting. What a resume we're going to have when we get out of here. I was really nervous about all this at first, but what could possibly happen on a dog sled, especially one on wheels on grass in warm weather?"
He sounded nervous. Very nervous. Either from what lay ahead or what she'd said. "I would have agreed with you a few days ago," she told him, "but what could happen just standing on an elevated path between a lovely lake and a white-water river, right?"
"Famous last words, you mean?" Jonas said with a forced laugh that showed his white teeth.
Sharp teeth, Lisa thought, as they came into the clearing where Spike's property began. Teeth like the beavers cutting down trees or bears ripping apart river salmon. However much Mitch had not told her about Christine, she had to at least find a way to get him alone to tell him about Jonas.
11
L
isa thought Spike's Siberian huskies were beautiful. As Mitch had said about the moose that had terrified her at first, they were also majestic--their thick, silvery coat hairs tipped with gray or black, their deep-throated, eager barks. They sounded like howlers, but her feelings toward them were a far cry from hearing the wolves that night in the wilderness. The dogs had perky ears and curled, wagging tails and alert, sky-blue eyes. She could tell how much they wanted to please their master, especially when they saw him pull the three-wheeled sleds out of the storage shed. "Okay, here's some info before I hitch four dogs to each of your sleds," Spike announced as everyone gathered around him at the gate to the dog yard.
Lisa eyed the metal and wooden sleds, mounted on sturdy-looking wheels for the dogs' summer exercise. "I'll give some background on mushing and how to handle the teams, because you'll each--Lisa, Vanessa and Jonas--be getting a chance to control one of these sleds on a short run thataway," he said, pointing.
All around them, grass about a half-foot high and white wildflowers blanketed the clearing, blowing like green waves with whitecaps, like river foam. Lisa could picture the dogs rushing into it, pulling her deeper into a whirling current of green and white...She jerked alert. That memory, that vision, had sneaked up on her like it used to. A flashback of being in the river, or of losing Mother and Jani again. Or was she still so exhausted she'd dozed off for a microsecond, falling into the dream that had haunted her for years? Mother's face through the blurry barrier, her voice calling, calling, "Come with me--come on." Her mouth open, her eyes wide from behind the glass or water or--
Lisa shook her head to clear it and forced herself to look around at the here and now, to recognize reality. Spike's log cabin and his dog yard were in a large, oval-shaped clearing on the edge of the forest they had walked through from the lodge. The huskies lived in a miniature fenced-in village, where each dog had one of the small wooden houses set in two neat rows.
Spike had said the dogs slept, ate and played with their neighbors, stealing bones or nipping at ears or tails, but they were always ready to run. Ready to run. She could recall Graham saying, "So, are we ready to run?" more than once before a team of Carlisle, Bonner & Associates attorneys went into court on some huge corporate lawsuit or defamation trial. Not "are we ready to go" or even "ready to rumble," like Vanessa sometimes said,