The Snow Falcon (50 page)

He went to the window and looked out over the lights of the city.

“You said on the phone that you saw Louise?” Susan prompted. She’d stopped him then, telling him to wait until he got back before he told her, until she could see his face while he talked.

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“That’s right. She wasn’t surprised to hear from me,” he said. “I suppose I should have figured she’d know I’d been released. She asked me if I’d called her before.”

“Had you?”

“Once,” he said. “From Clancys. But I didn’t say anything, and she hung up. She said she’d felt it was me, but I’d taken her by surprise.”

“So what happened when you met her?” Susan asked.

He detected the very faintest hint of uncertainty in her tone, and guessed it was natural, considering this was his ex-wife they were talking about, a woman he’d once loved enough to try and kill the man he’d thought was taking her away. Even if he had been crazy at the time.

“It was like meeting an old friend, somebody I once knew but hadn’t seen for a long time. I think she was a little nervous at first, but she relaxed after a while. We both did. I thought she would hate me, but she didn’t. She said she never had. She said she’d been frightened of me.”

He went on, telling Susan about their meeting in a coffee shop in the hotel. He didn’t say that he still felt a certain pull within him when Louise sat across the table. There was nothing sinister in it; it was just a recognition that he’d loved her once, mixed up with regrets and recollections of good times they’d had.

She’d brought photographs of Holly, and in some of them there was a man, the doctor Louise had married. The snapshots were like any other family pictures. What surprised him was that there were two other children, both boys.

“Matt and Campbell,” Louise had told him.

He’d nodded, studying a group shot in which they all smiled at the camera. Her husband looked like a regular guy.

“Alan,” Louise had said. “He treats Holly just like his own.”

Holly. She was just the way he’d imagined. Long dark blond hair and deep blue eyes, a pretty, happy-looking child. He could see Louise in her, but mostly he could see himself.

“She looks like you,” Louise had said, as if reading his thoughts. “She has some of your mannerisms, too.”

He couldn’t speak for a while, couldn’t trust himself to. Louise had reached across the table and tentatively put her hand on his.

“She’s happy, Michael,” she’d said.

Later, they’d gone for a walk in the park, and he’d heard that

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Holly was taking acting lessons, that she seemed to have a talent for it and had already decided she wanted to be a movie star. She was a good student, too, and had a pet dog, and she’d ridden horses for a time but had decided it wasn’t something she was crazy about. He learned a myriad of small details about her life, what she liked and disliked, and he listened to it all; soaking it up.

He’d wanted to ask Louise the question that was uppermost in his mind, and she’d stopped at one point and they’d looked at each other.

“She knows about you, Michael. She knows you’re her father, she knows everything. She doesn’t remember any of it, of course, and she doesn’t understand, but she does know about you. She knows you’re here, too. I didn’t keep anything from her.”

He’d had to turn away from her then. He felt an overwhelming gratitude toward her, never having dared to hope for that much, and he was unable to respond. When he related that part to Susan, they were both quiet for a moment, then Susan spoke again.

“Go on.”

He couldn’t answer for a few seconds, and she said it again. He told her that Louise had taken him to pick up Holly from school, that he’d waited on the sidewalk outside the gates while Louise sat in her car. When she came out, walking with her friends, parting at the gate as they were met, waving to one another, he’d recognized her from her photographs straightaway. Holly had searched for her mother, her smiling eyes ranging over him and going beyond, to the car. Then her brow creased, and she’d looked at him again. Her smile had faltered and faded; then, as he went toward her and crouched down to talk to her, to tell her who he was, she’d done the most unexpected thing and thrown her arms around his neck.

“Daddy,” she’d said.

Michael stopped speaking, and Susan brushed hair from his forehead as she leaned down to kiss him. His eyes were shining, moist. God, I love him, she thought, and as if reading her mind, he held her hand and kissed it.

“I love you.”

She stood up, keeping hold of his hand. “You look tired. Let’s go to bed.”

IN THE MORNING, they loaded up the Ford and ate breakfast at the hotel. They were driving into Washington State, headed for a town an hour and a half from Seattle that they had picked off the map because it seemed like a decent size, but not so big that it would be choking on its own pollution the way Seattle was these days. When they got there, they would decide what happened next.

While Susan signed her credit-card slip in the lobby, she looked out to the lot and saw Jamie and Michael standing together, leaning against the truck. They didn’t look like father and son—they were too physically different for that—but Michael had his arm about Jamie’s shoulder and they were both grinning about something. Bob was sniffing around the wheel, his tail wagging, his coat glistening in the sun.

The desk clerk gave her a receipt, and followed her look. “Are you on vacation?”

Susan smiled. “No. We’re moving.”

“A new life.”

“I guess you could say that,” Susan said.

“Well, best of luck to you.”

“Thanks,” Susan said.

A new life, Susan thought. An appropriate phrase. She went over to the truck, reached up and kissed Michael, and as he gave her a quizzical look, she said, “I’ll tell you later.”

IN THE FAR north, ice and snow gleam across the earth. A falcon takes to the air, rising fast, soaring on thermals, the crisp dry air streaming across her feathers. She banks and turns and comes around above the rocky ledge where a moment ago she rested. There is a faint memory of stiffness in her wing, but it is very distant now and it does not affect the way she flies. The air rushes past. She turns her head and surveys the ground below.

Her mate watches her, his head cocked to one side, then he takes to the air and flies to join her. They wheel in circles, calling out to each other.

Far above the snow.