Promise Me

I took Matthew on a romantic, moonlight ride in a horse-drawn, open sleigh. I feel like I’m living in a Hallmark commercial. Whatever happened to too good to be true?

Beth Cardall’s Diary

Friday afternoon I got off work at two-thirty to prepare for our date. I packed an overnight bag for Charlotte, then dropped her off at Roxanne’s house to spend the night. I came back home and put together a picnic dinner of pitas stuffed with chicken salad, red grapes, two large pieces of butter-cream-frosted chocolate cake, a large thermos of steaming hot cocoa and a bowl of fresh homemade granola with cashews and cranberries to snack on during our drive to northern Utah.

I hoped he would like my surprise. When I was fourteen, I went with a group of friends on an outing to the Hardware Ranch; a 19,000-acre wildlife management area in eastern Cache Valley in northern Utah. (Cache Valley was named after the early mountainmen and trappers who used the area to cache their beaver pelts.)

We took a ride on a horse-drawn sleigh through the herd of more than six hundred elk that are fed on the ranch. Even at that age I remember thinking it would make for a romantic date. Our first year of marriage I told Marc about it. We were sitting on the sofa watching a Jazz basketball game on TV when I brought up the idea for our upcoming anniversary.

“Where’s this place?”

“Hardware Ranch. It’s just outside Logan.”

“That’s almost two hours away.”

“Yes, but we’ll be together. We can talk.”

“I don’t have that much to say,” he said. “It sounds cold.”

“That’s part of the fun. We get to snuggle under a blanket.”

He kissed me on the forehead. “We can do that here,” he said and went back to the game.

I hoped Matthew would feel differently.

Matthew arrived at my home at four-thirty sharp. He pulled his car in next to mine, then climbed out wearing a thick wool coat and a cowboy hat. He looked a little like the Marlboro man, both masculine and boyishly cute.

“Nice hat,” I said. “You look cute in it.”

“Wasn’t really going for ‘cute,’ but I’ll take it.”

I smiled. “Are you ready?”

“Absolutely. Shall I drive?”

“Okay, spoiler alert. Where we’re going is two hours away through a snowy canyon.”

We both looked at my old Nissan. “Maybe I should drive,” he said.

“Good idea,” I replied. “I still need to get a few things from the house.” I ran inside, then came back a few moments later with my coat, a stocking cap, and a woven picnic basket.

He stared curiously at the basket. “That’s a real picnic basket,” he said. “Like on the Yogi Bear cartoons.”

“Did they have Yogi Bear in Italy?”

“Of course.” He opened my door for me. “After you,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, sliding in.

He took the basket from me. “Should I put this in the trunk?”

“No. There’s some granola in there for us to snack on, on the way.”

“I’ll just put it in the back.” He set the basket on the back seat, then climbed in to the driver’s seat and threw his hat in back. “Which way?”

“North. Like you were driving to Idaho.”

“Idaho?”

“Don’t worry, we’re not going that far. We’re going to Cache Valley.”

“What’s in Cache Valley?”

I looked at him and smiled. “My surprise.”

The drive north was pleasant. We talked the whole way, though as I think back on it, I learned very little about Matthew. Every time I asked him a question about himself, he turned it back to me. I didn’t so much sense that he was hiding anything, rather that he just had very little interest in talking about himself—a rare trait in most of the boys I’d dated. Nothing I revealed about myself seemed to surprise him. He asked a lot of questions about Charlotte, like how she did in school, special aptitudes, and if she had any boyfriends, which made me smile.

Around North Salt Lake we got caught in rush-hour traffic, but it thinned out by Layton, where we stopped at a McDonald’s for Cokes. As we waited at the drive-in window, I reached in back and brought the bag of granola out of the basket. I opened the plastic bag and offered him some.

He popped a handful in his mouth. “Delicious. I love it when you make this,” he said.

I looked at him quizzically. “What do you mean? I’ve never made it before.”

He turned and looked at me then smiled. “I meant to say that I love it that you made it. I love granola.”

The woman at the drive-thru window handed him our Cokes and he passed one on to me. Then we drove back to the highway. As we pulled from the ramp onto the highway, he said, “So when are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“I suppose it’s about time. I made reservations for a moonlight sleigh ride at the Hardware Ranch.”

I carefully watched his face for a reaction. To my relief, he smiled. “I’ve always wanted to go on a sleigh ride. Ever since I saw that old movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.”

“Really?”

“I really have. I just thought it seemed so romantic.”

I stared at him in disbelief. He actually said “romantic” without smirking. Best of all, I could tell that he was sincere. He looked like an excited little boy on the way to an amusement park. Where have you been all my life? I thought.

As we drove the last ten miles through Sardine Canyon, Matthew began singing a song I had never heard before. “That’s pretty,” I said when he finished. “What’s it called?”

“ ‘Truly Madly Deeply.’ ”

“Who sings it?”

“A group called Savage Garden.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He looked over and smiled. “They’re an Australian group.”

“Savage Garden,” I said. “I’ll look for them next time I go to a record store.”

A peculiar grin spread across his face. “Let me know if you find them.”

We arrived at the ranch after dark, but we’d made good time, arriving a full half-hour before our reservation at seven. Matthew pulled the car into a small, plowed lot near an illuminated visitors center.

“Here we are,” he said. “The Hardware Ranch.”

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“In spite of eating almost all of your granola, I am. What’s in the picnic basket?”

I reached in back. “I made my not famous, but still very good, chicken salad pitas.” I pulled one out of the basket and handed it to him. “There you go. And I brought hot cocoa to drink. Oh, and for dessert there’s chocolate cake.”

“Nice,” he said. He unwrapped the cellophane from the pita and took a bite. “Should be famous,” he said.

“Fame doesn’t make it taste any better.”

“No, it just confirms your suspicion that it’s good.”

We finished everything except the cake. At five minutes to the hour we walked in to the visitors center. We picked up our tickets, then walked out on the patio behind the building. The mountain air was biting cold, as the temperature had dropped to single digits.

A man wearing a felt cowboy hat with a rattlesnake-skin band, a sheepskin jacket, and leather chaps and gloves, was standing next to a long black wooden sleigh hitched to two huge Clydesdales. The sleigh had four benches inside and there were electric spotlights connected to the front of the sleigh.

“I’m Roger,” he said with a western drawl. “I’ll be your driver tonight. Welcome to the Hardware Ranch. We’ll be riding over a few of our acres, not all of them,” he said grinning, “as this is a moonlight ride, not a sunrise ride.”

“The Hardware Ranch was originally a cattle ranch back in the early 1900s. But as people started moving into the valley, the natural feeding places for the elk began to disappear. So the State of Utah purchased the ranch in 1945 and turned it into a wildlife preserve. Each year we feed more than six hundred head of elk. At night you won’t be able to see the herd as you would during the day, but I venture we’ll see a few and you most certainly will smell them. I guarantee it.”

We climbed aboard the sleigh with about five other couples and a family with two small boys, who sat on the front row to be close to the horses.

There were thick wool blankets folded on the bench seats, and Matthew and I unfolded one and pulled it over us. Roger said, “Giddup,” and slapped the reins, and the sleigh jerked forward behind the powerful animals across a pristine, snow-covered meadow that rolled out ahead of us like a great, moonlit sea.

Throughout the ride, Roger pointed out wildlife and answered questions, most of them from the young boys or their parents, but his voice was like a conversation at another table at a restaurant. We weren’t there for a tour. We were seated on the back row of the sleigh with another young couple who were cuddled up and leaning the opposite direction, leaving a space between us. “This is beautiful,” Matthew said. “Look at the stars.”

I leaned back to take them in. In the absence of city lights the stars were highly visible, crisp and bright, as if they’d been polished off and hung above us as part of the ride.

“Beautiful and cold,” I said, my teeth starting to chatter.

He smiled. “Isn’t that the idea?”

“Whatever do you mean?” I said playfully.

He put his arm around me, pulling me tightly into his warm, firm body. With his other hand, he grasped my arm beneath the blanket, slid his hand down to my hands, which were clasped in my lap, and held them. I lay my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes, disappearing into his warmth, the sound of the horses’ gait, the smooth glide of the sleigh and the cold, wet air against my face. I felt so amazingly happy and secure—happier than I had felt in years.

For the rest of the ride neither of us spoke, and I wanted to believe that it was because words were too clumsy for what we were feeling. I wondered if Matthew was feeling the same thing and hoped he was.

About an hour after we’d started out, the lights of the distant visitors center came back into view. I sighed. “I don’t want this to end,” I said. I looked up into Matthew’s eyes. “Ever.”

He was gazing at me intensely but sadly. “Me too,” he said. Then he said softly, “How can you love the stream and not love the source?”

I looked at him quizzically. “What?”

“Nothing.” He reached his hand up from the blanket and drew a finger across my cheek, down my jaw then to my lips. Then he softly cupped my chin and pulled it forward slightly as he leaned forward and we kissed. If I had thought I was in paradise before, I was now sure of it, engrossed in a delicious buffet of irony: hard and soft, passionate and gentle, thrill and peace, femininity and masculinity. The kiss was everything I had hoped it would be when I first hoped it would be. When he leaned back, I honestly felt a little dizzy, the way you feel when an amusement park ride suddenly comes to an end.

Our sleigh slid into the gate behind the center and came to an abrupt stop. Roger turned around. “I’d like to thank you all for joining us. Hope you had a pleasant evening and be sure to come back and see us again real soon.”

“Come on,” I said, grabbing Matthew’s hand, “Let’s go.” We walked back to the car. Matthew opened my door but I shut it. “Let’s get in back,” I said. I opened the back door and climbed in, moved the picnic basket to the front seat, then reached my hand out to him. He just stood there looking slightly nervous.

“Come on,” I said. He slightly nodded, then climbed in and shut the door behind himself. I leaned into him, pressing my body, then lips, against his. He didn’t resist, but he wasn’t all there either. After a minute I pulled back, hurt and a little angry. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry . . .”

“Why won’t you kiss me? Aren’t you attracted to me?”

He looked deeply into my eyes. “Of course I am. You’re gorgeous.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just not ready for a physical relationship. I feel like I’m betraying her.”

“Don’t you think she wants you to be happy?”

He didn’t answer. He looked more than sad; he looked tormented. My hurt went away, replaced with sympathy.

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair. I guess this is new territory for me. My husband ran off with every woman he met and you’re still loyal to your wife after she’s gone.” I looked into his eyes. “That’s really beautiful. You have a beautiful soul. It’s okay. I’ll wait until you’re ready, no matter how long it takes.”

“Thank you.”

“Would you be okay holding me?”

He nodded. “I’d like that.”

I turned around and lay back into him. He wrapped his strong, warm arms around me. I loved this man. Truthfully, the anticipation only heightened my feelings for him.

“I didn’t know there were men like you,” I said.

He didn’t say anything.

I reached up and caressed his head, my fingers sliding under his ears and back through his hair. “What is it about you? There’s something about you that I just can’t put my finger on. Something . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know, just curious.”

“Curious?”

“Like when I asked you what year you graduated from school, you had to think about it. Or how you diagnosed Charlotte without even seeing her. What is it about you that you’re not telling me?”

“What do you think I’m hiding?”

“I have no idea. Who are you, Mr. Matthew?”

“Now there’s a question.” He pulled me in tighter. “Trust me, you really don’t want to know.”