The Snow Falcon (40 page)

SHE DID HER best to make it up to him, but she could tell he was hurt. She cooked some eggs and sat with him at the table, and he told her that they’d spent the night in a motel. He hadn’t seen any point in staying after that, so this morning they’d driven back.

She was angry with Jamie that he could do something like that.

“Don’t take it out on him,” Coop said. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is, though,” she said. “What am I going to do with him?”

“He’ll come around. Give him time.”

She could hardly believe his patience; she didn’t know why he persevered when all his efforts met with the same response. Except, she reminded herself, she did know why.

“So what did you do all by yourself?” Coop asked her.

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Her smile faltered. The empty wine bottle was still on the counter, and she knew what she must look like. “Nothing much,” she said.

Suddenly she saw herself standing on the edge of the clearing while Michael looked across at her from the porch; then a woman appeared behind him. Jesus, what had she been thinking?

“Susan?” Coop looked at her worriedly. “You look sorta pale, you know.”

“I’m okay. Just a headache.”

She couldn’t meet his eye and stood up to clear the table, feeling heat rise in her face. She felt humiliated. For an instant she clung to the idea that Michael might not have recognized her, though that was a faint hope. Even if he hadn’t seen at first that it was her, he would have worked it out eventually. He would wonder why she’d been there. How many reasons could there be?

She thought about having to face him again, and her headache got worse. Vaguely she wondered who the woman had been.

“I guess I should be going.” Coop got to his feet.

She turned to face him, trying to compose herself, though she didn’t think she was doing a very good job. He looked at her strangely, and she thought he could read her thoughts.

“I’m really sorry, Coop,” she said again as she went with him to the door.

“It’s no big deal,” he said. “He can’t hold out forever.”

The implication in that bothered her, but she couldn’t face thinking about anything right then. She waved as he went, then shut the door and leaned against it, her eyes closed.

She felt that her life had drifted from her control, and she didn’t know what she was going to do about it.

THE FIRST WEEK IN APRIL, THE STORE was finished. The floor had been sanded and stained, and successive coats of polyurethane lent a deep luster. The walls were all painted, and the sign outside had been taken down and a new board put in its place, dark green but otherwise blank. The counter ran along the back wall as it had when Michael was a boy; the shelves and fixtures he’d built were all empty and waiting.

There was no money left to buy merchandise. Michael took a trip down to Kamloops and saw a wholesaler there who agreed to supply opening stock on sale or return so long as Michael could pay for it all up front. So Michael went to a bank in Williams Lake and took out a mortgage on his house, and midweek, a truck pulled up to the store loaded with cartons. As he helped the two guys unload, Michael was aware that people were stopping across the street to stare, and when he went into the diner to buy the guys a late breakfast, the place went quiet.

The driver, whose name was Walt, looked around in puzzlement, picking up the turned-away looks and the muttering.

“Small towns,” Michael said. He shrugged.

“Yeah,” Walt agreed uncertainly.

When the unloading was finished, it took Michael three days to check everything off against the invoice and display it all on the shelves and fixtures. When he was finally done, he put up some signs in the windows, which were still blanked out with paper, announcing the grand opening.

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When everything was ready, he locked the door behind him and drove to the church on the edge of town. After he’d pulled over, he sat behind the wheel and drank a beer from the six-pack on the seat beside him. He’d grown up disliking and resenting his dad, believing everything his mother had told him over the years. He was a drunk who’d wanted to leave them when Michael was young, she’d said, but she’d shamed him into staying. Ever since she’d died, he’d wondered if his dad had really found her that day and left her, the way some people had said. For that, and for everything else his mother had bitterly nurtured in him, he’d left Little River Bend meaning never to return and vowing that whatever happened in his life, he’d never screw his own kids up the way he’d been screwed up.

As he’d come to realize over the years that his mother had been crazy, it had, as if by osmosis, also seeped into his awareness that maybe his dad hadn’t been everything she’d tried to make him out to be. As Michael had tried to assimilate that notion and started to wonder if cutting his father dead all those years had been an injustice, his own madness was budding, and when his dad died before any of the mixed-up quagmire of his emotions could be resolved, he’d lost control and fallen into the abyss. He wasn’t sure what he’d been looking for when he’d decided to come back; maybe it was just that he needed to look his demons in the eye. He accepted now that he could do no more. He would never know for sure all of the answers to the questions he had, and all he could do was accept that. Perhaps initially he’d been looking for a neat package to explain himself, a set of actions and reactions, but now he knew it would never be that simple.

He finished his beer, and in the fading light he went across the road. Back in the corner, beneath the old tree, a figure emerged from the landscape of headstones and angels, and as they met on the path, she looked at him briefly, meeting his eye. She was an elderly woman, with fine wrinkled skin and bright eyes, her white hair pulled tight beneath a hat. For an instant he thought she was going to stop and say something, but then, with her head down, she went on, and he watched her retreating back.

He stood beside his parents’ grave, and though he’d thought he might say something, he didn’t. At different times he’d felt angry and bitter toward them, individually and together, but now he just

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felt regret. After a while he turned around and drove back into town.

In the dark, the lights of the decorations for the forthcoming festival gave Main Street a celebratory air. The posters were all over town, advertising the sled races and market day, the cooking competitions and woodsmen’s events. The highlight was to be the supper and dance at the Valley Hotel. Michael went past the store and turned off toward home, but on the way he took a short detour and pulled up outside Susan’s house. He hadn’t seen her for more than a week, not since the night Rachel had been at his house.

He pulled up and killed the engine, and from inside the house he heard the dog barking. When he knocked at the door, he had to wait only a second or two before Susan opened it.

“Hi. I was on my way back from town,” he said.

There was a mixture of things in her expression, but they shifted and fled before he could interpret them, and her face set, giving nothing away.

“I wanted to tell Jamie that I’m going to take Cully hunting on Saturday. I thought he’d want to come along.”

“I’ll tell him,” she said. “I know he’ll want to go.”

She was being polite but distant with him, and he had the feeling she wanted to end their conversation as quickly as she could and close the door on him. Ever since that night, he’d wanted to come over and say something to her, but quite what he didn’t know. At times he was uncertain even that it had been Susan in the clearing, and what, if it was her, she’d been doing there. Faced with her cool reserve now, he was at a loss for something to say that might bridge the gap between them; he wasn’t even entirely sure why he wanted to, what he thought it might lead to. Perhaps for a while he’d allowed feelings for her to grow in him almost unnoticed. He felt that she’d taken root in him, and at night he thought of her while he sat alone in the house in front of a fire. He mused about what might have happened had Rachel not been at his house that night. Now, though, all he saw in her expression was something like discomfort at his presence.

“I have something on the stove,” Susan said, breaking into his thoughts. “I better go.” She made as if to close the door

“Wait,” he said quickly. “I saw there’s a dance at the hotel in town this weekend, and … well, I wondered if you’d like to go. With me, I mean.” It hadn’t come out the way he’d planned; he was out of

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practice and unsure of her. “What I’m trying to say is, I’d like to take you.”

Her expression was blank for a moment, then she said, “I can’t. I’m sorry. Somebody … I mean, Coop has already asked me.”

He tried to keep the disappointment from showing in his expression. “It doesn’t matter, then. It was just an idea,” he said. He thought again that perhaps he’d been wrong about seeing her in the clearing, or misinterpreted her presence. He’d always wondered if she and Coop were involved, and perhaps in the end it was better to believe that they were. Maybe she and Jamie simply represented something Michael had lost, something he could never regain. As he retreated down the steps, she said something he couldn’t quite hear, and he turned back.

“I said, ‘Good luck.’ I hope everything goes well with Cully. I’ll tell Jamie you came by.”

“Thanks.” He went to his car as the door closed behind him.

Q

SUSAN SAT AT THE COUNTER, HER SEAT swiveled around so that she could see across the street. The paper was gone from the windows of Michael’s store, revealing displays and special offers. The sign above the door was freshly painted.

“I haven’t seen anyone go in there for an hour,” she said.

Linda sat beside Susan to take a break. “Nobody’s been in there all day, from what I’ve seen,” she said.

“And they won’t, either,” Carl Jeffrey butted in as he took a seat. “Let me have a piece of that blueberry pie and some coffee, Linda.” Linda rolled her eyes and got up to fetch his order.

“You sound as if you’re pleased about that,” Susan said to Carl.

Carl shrugged. “It’s not a case of being pleased or otherwise, Susan. I’m just stating a fact. I could’ve told him right from the start he was wasting his time.” He took a mouthful of pie. “Mind you, I didn’t think he was going to make it so hard for himself. What the hell does a town this size need with two hardware stores?”

Susan frowned. She didn’t particularly like Carl; he was just too smug for her taste. There were plenty of others like him, the businessmen and their wives who liked to think they ran the town, sitting on all the council committees, making a lot of noise about moral values and keeping Little River a decent place to live. And yet it was well known that Carl had been seen with a waitress from the truck stop on the highway, and that his car was sometimes parked around the back of the Sunset Motel.

All the same, he was right, she admitted. She couldn’t understand

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why Michael had decided to sell hardware, of all things, when there was a store just down the street that was part of a big chain and could afford to sell its merchandise cheaper. It didn’t make a lot of sense.

“He should’ve taken what was offered when he had the chance,” Carl commented. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up to find his wallet. “It was a fair price. More than fair.”

“He had to make a living,” Susan pointed out, “since nobody would give him a job.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that hasn’t changed,” Carl said. “The only thing that’s different is that now he’s going to get less money for that store than he would have if he’d sold when he had the chance.”

“But he’s fixed it all up,” Susan said.

“That’s not the issue.” Carl put some money down on the counter. “It’s about market forces, Susan, you ought to know that. Things change; he’s got a mortgage now—and no income, by the look of it. That sorta reduces his negotiating power, I’d say.”

“You mean, it gives people a chance to take advantage of him,” Susan said.

“Hey, what are you being so defensive about?” Carl wrinkled his brow. “What’s he to you, anyway?”

“He doesn’t have to be anything to me, does he? He’s just my neighbor, and I don’t see why anyone should want to take such obvious pleasure in somebody else’s bad luck, that’s all.”

“Luck’s got nothing to do with it. He brought this all on himself. Anyway, I have to go. Good pie, Linda.”

Susan watched him go, his suit jacket stretched across his broad back. “Asshole,” she muttered.

Linda grinned. “He may be an asshole, but you have to admit he’s got a point. It was a pretty dumb idea to sell hardware.”

“Yes, I know,” Susan admitted. “That doesn’t mean I can’t feel sorry for him.” She slid off her stool. “I should get going, too. I’ll see you later.”

Back in her office, she sat behind her desk fiddling distractedly with a pen. After a while she got up and went down the street, pausing briefly to look in the window of Somers Hardware before she went inside. Michael was leaning against the wall behind the counter, reading the newspaper. He looked surprised to see her. She picked something up at random and went to the counter.

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“I’d like to buy this, please,” she said.

He looked at it. “You want a wrench?”

She hadn’t even looked to see what it was. “That’s right. How much is it?”

She met his eye and felt her cheeks starting to heat up. She’d done her best to avoid him since the night she’d humiliated herself outside his house, determining that the best way to handle it was to pretend it had never happened.

“It is for sale, isn’t it? I mean, this is a store?”

“Sure.” He looked around and got a bag. “There’s no charge.”

“That’s not a good way to make money.”