Shelley looked at him. Then at Jane. "You've been talking about me behind my back, Jane."
"Not really. I didn't say anything to Mel I haven't said to you about your driving."
"I'll bet you told him about that Army convoy."
"Not a word," Jane said, shivering at the recollection.
"If a bunch of soldiers can't cope with being passed on a tiny little hill — which I could see beyond perfectly well — without going to pieces and running up on the shoulder, I'd like to know what sort of help they'd be in a war!" Shelley said indignantly.
Mel drove.
And they had a lovely day. They went back to I-70 and east to the turnoff to Golden. The scenery along the narrow mountain roads was breathtaking, and when they emerged onto a stretch of high plains, it was even more so. The world had never looked so vast, clean, and beautiful. Jane and Shelley firmly squashed Mike's proposal that nobody should visit Golden without tasting a pitcher of Coors at its birthplace. They went on to Boulder, the quintessential red-roofed college town in the foothills, and Mike looked it over with the greedy eyes of a high school senior. Jane saw it through the eyes of a parent who might have to pay the out-of-state tuition and blanched.
From Boulder they took a back road that led to a town called Nederland, where Shelley claimed there was a magnificent rock-and-jewelry shop. She was right, of course, and once again Jane was left to marvel at her friend's uncanny ability to home in on superb shopping opportunities. Halfway across a continent, on unfamiliar ground, Shelley had managed to know, as if by instinct, about this small shop in a tiny town high in the mountains. It was amazing.
Jane admired a necklace of polished red agate beads, which Mel insisted on buying for her. Jane put up only token resistance to his generosity. The necklace would look magnificent with her new outfit.
They made it from Nederland to Estes Park, where they ate and spent several hours driving on some of the roads that were kept cleared in the winter. Finally it was three o'clock, and fearing a sudden sunset, which is how sunsets happen in the mountains, they headed back to the resort.
Jane had discovered that her children, freed from their late father's dictatorial concept of vacationing, made pretty good travelers, and she spent much of the return trip in quiet consideration of taking a family trip when school was out. Where to go? A resort in Wisconsin, perhaps? No, a trip to Williamsburg. She had been there as a child and loved it. There would be lots of things to interest all of them in Williamsburg. Of course, she'd have to let Mike do part of the driving. That thought brought her to the next, which was about vehicles. Her poor old station wagon would hardly make it beyond the suburbs of Chicago. There were days when she wondered if the station wagon was going to make it past the pothole at the end of the driveway.
"What are you scowling about?" Mel asked glancing at her in the rearview mirror.
"Cars," she answered. "Cars and money. Are we almost there? I'm hungry again."
Mel had been driving and Shelley had taken over the other front seat as dictator/guide. Every time they'd piled out and back into the van, Jane had ended up farther back. Now she was in the rearmost seat by herself. As they once again headed across the high plains outside Golden, there was surprisingly little traffic, and Jane's imagination kicked into gear.
Looking out to the right, she could see nothing but mile after gently undulating mile of snow, ringed by rugged mountains. The setting sun caused the mountains to cast long blue shadows, and here and there were simple wooden structures, hunkering down against the wind and the drifting snow. A half-remembered scene from a movie, probably Doctor Zhivago, superimposed itself on the landscape, and Jane found herself thinking it might not be so strange after all to find an exiled Russian here.
Had old Gregory actually been who Doris thought he was? And if so, why had he come here? How could he have known about this desolately beautiful place? And why would it have appealed to him? She smiled at the recollection of a conversation she'd overheard between two of the genealogists at a nearby table the day before. One had been talking about one of his ancestors coming from Sweden and settling in northern Minnesota. "Most of our ancestors came to this country," he'd said, "and wandered around until they found some place just as shitty as the place they'd left."
Had Gregory craved the hostile solitude of the Russian steppes? Had he somehow needed the bitter cold and blowing snow? Or had Gregory Smith just been a man named Gregory Smith and nothing else, who had meant to go to California and only got this far before giving up the trek? Maybe he'd been making his way through the mountains, stopped on a pleasant day to do a little gold panning or to explore an interesting crevasse, and found riches. That was certainly possible.
But if that were the case, where and how had he come by the jewels he later gave his wife? Had he found enough gold to buy them? Who could say? His life before his marriage was a mystery. He might have had his eye on the pretty local girl and taken the train to Chicago or New York to buy the jewelry as a wedding gift. Jane wondered if there were actually any Holnagrad crown jewels that history had recorded. It would take a team of experts to make the connection, if so. And Doris had been just that kind of expert. Was it even remotely possible mat Doris had known about the jewels, or suspected their existence? And if she had, would she have kept quiet about it? Probably not, but Jane had to admit that she wasn't in a good position to speculate about Doris. She had hardly known the woman. They'd had one brief conversation and then a collision in a hallway.
All she knew about Doris was either surface impressions or from what other people said. Mainly what Lucky Lucke had said about her. Was there any reason to doubt his interpretation of her character? Jane simply couldn't guess. She didn't know anything more about him than she'd known about Doris.
At the exit where they turned off I-70 for the final leg of the drive, Mel stopped for gas. They all got out to stretch their legs. Shelley approached Jane. "Are you feeling like I am? The thought of returning to the resort and having to keep an eagle eye on the kids is oppressive."
Jane nodded. "I didn't quite realize what it was until you put it in words, but I'm not anxious to get back, either. Except that I have to let Willard out for a run. It's a lovely place, but given the circumstances…"
"Then let's just stay long enough to tend to Willard and change our clothes, and then go out somewhere away from the resort for dinner. It'll be my treat. Someplace elegant?"
"I like the part about your treat, but I've had my quota of elegance," Jane said. "How about someplace really inelegant? Barbecue, maybe? Burger King would be even better."
Everybody else agreed, but Jane was outvoted on Willard. "Either he's destroyed the place by now or he hasn't. Another half hour isn't going to matter," was Mel's opinion, and the others agreed.
"Besides," Shelley put in, "Linda Moose foot has been around to clean, most likely, and she probably let him out, seeing as we were all gone."
There was a Burger King diagonally across the interchange. They considerately let the kids go in first so they wouldn't have to be seen traveling with adults; then Jane, Shelley, and Mel wandered in a moment later and took places at the opposite side of the room.
"You're very quiet today," Mel said while he and Jane waited for Shelley to bring their food.
"I was thinking about Russia and old Gregory Smith and a lot of things. And, I have to admit, I'm a little bit homesick — and I'm enjoying it."
"You're liking being homesick?" Mel asked.
"Yes. See, the whole time I was growing up, we had no home. With my father being in the diplomatic corps, we were always moving. I never went to the same school for two years. Sometimes I didn't even manage two semesters in the same place. And we didn't really even have a home base. We lived in some pretty fancy surroundings every now and then, but they were never ours to keep and come back to. So when we bought the house I live in, back when Mike was a baby, I was determined I wouldn't leave until I was taken out on a gurney. And it's neat to discover that I really have become so attached to one place that I miss it."