The Frozen

She stared out over the pond.

Ice-skaters whizzed by her, some waving and smiling, and she returned their greetings. Did they wonder what she was doing here? It didn't matter. She would skate again next winter maybe, but the thought of getting out on that frozen graveyard literally chilled her to the bone.

Fran was under there somewhere.

Shifting uneasily in the snow, she listened to the squeaky crunch of it beneath her boots. She hadn't been out here in two months, she mused. It had been two full months today. In an odd sense, this was an anniversary.

In another few weeks, the ice would thaw and fishermen, boaters and swimmers would return to these waters. The feel of the winter, the look of it, would fade.

She shivered again and closed her eyes.

Whatcha doin', Miss Vogel?"

Amanda lifted her lids to find a young girl standing in front of her, balanced on the blades of her skates. Crystal had been in her first-grade class two years ago. She'd grown more than Amanda had realized when viewing her across the schoolyard or cafeteria. The girl, tiny when she entered the first-grade classroom, now reached almost to Amanda's shoulders. She forced a smile. "I'm watching wonderful skaters like you, Crystal. Let me guess -- you're shooting for the next winter Olympics, right?"

Crystal grinned, showing off a gap where a tooth had recently been. "I'd like that. But I don't know that I'll ever be that good." She sighed heavily.

"You won't if you don't keep working on it. But..." Amanda reached a gloved hand and ruffled her ex-student's hair, momentarily displacing her cap. " But I know you, girl. If you decide to put your heart into this, you'll get there. Maybe not in the next Winter Games, but one day."

Crystal stared into her eyes and the smile broadened. "Okay," she said, sending a small cloud of frosty air between them. "I'm going to work real hard, Miss Vogel. Real hard."

Amanda smiled down. "You do that, Crystal. Go to it and I'll be watching you on TV instead of on this pond." She waved as the girl skated away, then turned back to face her, skating backward and raising a hand.

"That was sweet of you."

Amanda turned, surprised that anyone was able to walk up behind her without her notice.

Crystal's father smiled down at her. "Really sweet. She needs that kind of encouragement, especially from a woman. I'm not too good at it, I guess. I get too ... coach-y. Is that a word?" He laughed softly.

Amanda shrugged. "I guess it is now." His presence warmed her, from her heart straight out to her fingertips and toes. She imagined, for probably the hundredth time since meeting him, their life together, raising sweet Crystal, growing old together, and staying the lovers that she hoped they'd become.

His face closed a bit, pushing emotion away from its surface. "I wonder if her mother realizes what she left behind. Look at that girl." A sigh sent another cloud, much larger than the one created by his daughter. "How can any mother worth her salt leave a girl like that? Leave me, sure. Okay. It wasn't good ... not for either of us. But do this to Crystal? She still cries herself to sleep some nights." He stared past Amanda, watching his daughter skim gracefully across the ice. "what kind of woman would do that??"

Amanda paused. Weighing her words was of utmost importance. She had to let John know her intentions without pushing. It could be tricky, she thought, even though she'd known of marital issues even back when Crystal was in her classroom. She turned slowly. "I don't know, John. I can't understand it, either. I can't imagine leaving Crysti. Or you.."

He looked down at her and she saw a darkness, almost frightening in its intensity,  pass through his eyes. His mouth tightened for a split second and then relaxed, although a muscle under his eye twitched with unspoken emotion. "We're probably better off without her." He nodded his head almost imperceptibly. "Definitely better off." He didn't continue but returned his gaze to Crystal as she spun, lost control, and fell to the ice. "You okay, kiddo? Back on your feet now. Keep working on it! Don't let it stop you."

Amanda smiled, pushing aside the strange look that has raced through those green eyes. "I don't think that was too coach-y. At least you didn't start with 'back on your feet '."

John McCoy smiled down at her, blowing the warm air of his breath from his mouth into his ungloved hands.

Amanda saw the bruised knuckles almost immediately. He had a tiny split across the middle knuckle of his right hand, too. She frowned. "What happened there?" She gently touched the injured hand.

He glanced down and dropped his gaze further, obviously uncomfortable. "I... uh ... I guess I hit the ... uh ... washing machine last night."

"You guess you did?" Amanda tipped her head. "You're not sure? I bet the washer could tell you."

A chuckle escaped John's full lips.

He was perfect, Amanda thought. Perfect. His face, rugged and almost chiseled-looking, his dark hair, and green eyes, his height and muscular, athletic build, all exactly right. If she'd sent a list to Santa and asked him to place her perfect man under her tree back in December, she'd have walked down her stairs to find John sitting there with a bow on his ... head. She smiled at the other bow placement option that lingered longer in her mind.

"What are you grinning about?"

His words burst into her musing, shattering it into a million tiny pieces. Like a broken mirror, it lay in the warmth of her mind, sending tiny, fragmented bits of light up into her mental eyes. "Was I ? Smiling?"

John nodded. "Big-time. Like, from here..." He touched her cheek lightly under her left eye. "to here." He gently dragged his finger over the bridge of her nose to a spot opposite his first touch.

The warmth of the path he created across her face was electric, even though his finger had been cold. Amanda blinked up at him. "Oh..." she breathed.

He stared down at her. "It's too soon," he whispered. "Don't get me wrong... With her gone, I'd love to ... I think about pursuing a relationship with you. A real one. Not like I had before. I think about it...It's a little town, lots of gossips, you're Crystal's teacher --"

"I was Crystal's teacher. Not anymore." She wanted him to bend his face down toward her, slow-motion, as it happened in all the romance movies she'd ever seen, all the books she'd ever read. She wanted his lips to brush hers, first gently and then with all the passion she felt for him. She willed him to do it, sending mental pleas to his mind, begging him with her eyes.

He didn't.

Instead, he sighed and turned up one corner of his mouth. " Maybe in the spring... Maybe then it won't be such an ordeal. She'll have been gone longer then and it won't be so shocking, maybe. I hope. Let's let some time pass. Maybe in the spring."

"The spring," she repeated numbly.

John nodded again, looked up at his child, and whistled. "Crysti, time to get home!"

He smiled down at Amanda again. "Spring," he confirmed.

Amanda watched them leave and turned slowly back to the pond.

Spring. Who knew what spring would bring to them? Maybe love. Maybe everything she'd dreamed of, everything that John and Crystal deserved. Amanda smiled, smug and self-assured, and turned to leave. She slowed as a new thought assailed her.

What if... But she shook her head.

No.  She'd weighed the body down far too well for it to ever float to the surface.

Even a spring thaw couldn't release Fran McCoy from that grave.