The Snow Falcon (6 page)

Coop flashed her a smile. “He’ll come around. Listen, how about when you get back I take you both out for supper at the hotel? What do you say? I bet Jamie’d like that.”

She doubted that somehow. Not for the first time it struck her that Coop seemed immune to the way Jamie treated him. It bordered on outright hostility at times, but Coop didn’t seem to mind. A lot of people would have given up long ago, she thought. She tried to remember at what point her relationship with Coop had altered, when

exactly he had become more than simply David’s friend looking out for his widow and young son. She couldn’t get a fix on it, and wasn’t even sure what exactly their relationship was. It had been on her mind lately, seeping into her consciousness that some kind of understanding seemed to have developed around them without her really being aware of its happening. She wondered if it was possible for a thing to happen like that. Or had she been aware all along and just lacked the energy or the will to acknowledge it? For now she put it out of her mind. She begged off his invitation, claiming she would be tired, which was true enough.

“Okay,” he said easily. “How about just you and I have dinner sometime, maybe on Saturday? The break would do you good.”

“I don’t know, Coop. …” She was unsure of what to say, or even why she was backing off. It just seemed like things had drifted beyond her control, and she needed some space to think.

“Come on. Saturday at eight, okay?”

She relented. Maybe he was right, maybe the change would do her good, and she could think of no good reason to turn him down. She knew he’d be hurt, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t know what she would have done without him in those early days, so she smiled and said that eight would be fine.

“Okay, see you then.” He raised a hand to Jamie as he left, and called out for Susan to drive carefully on the way home. “It’ll freeze up later,” he warned.

She waved and watched him go, then got back into her Ford, where Jamie sat with his shoulders hunched, a sullen expression marking his features. “You didn’t have to do that,” she told him, but he just looked out the window as if he hadn’t heard.

DANIEL CAREY WAS a child psychologist Jamie had been referred to by Dr. Peterson in Little River.

The therapy had been going on for more than a year now, though it was closer to eighteen months since the accident. That morning, when she’d last seen David alive, Jamie had looked back at her and waved, yelling that they’d bring home a deer. It was the last time she’d heard his voice. She had nightmares occasionally in which he spoke to her again, but though she could see his lips move, the sound he made was unintelligible. She would wake distressed and try to

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recall exactly how his voice had sounded, and each time it seemed her recollection was less clear.

It was shock, everybody had told her initially, it would wear off, and she’d tried to believe it. For the first few weeks she’d been a mess herself, dazed from loss and prescription tranquilizers, but one morning as they sat at the kitchen table, the two of them like zombies, she’d gone right upstairs and flushed the rest of her medication down the toilet. After that she’d put her own feelings aside. There would be time for grieving later, she’d told herself, and since then Jamie had been her first concern.

Slowly he’d come out of himself, a little at a time, and she’d been careful not to push him. She let him decide when to go back to school, and one day he’d just brought his books down to the breakfast table without ceremony. He hadn’t looked at her but just carried on eating as if nothing had changed. She hadn’t let him see the tears in her eyes when she drove him to the bus. After that he seemed to be coming back to her a little more each day. He started to smile again, and life resumed an almost normal rhythm, except that Jamie still wouldn’t speak. There were other things, too: He didn’t hang out with kids he knew from school, and he never acknowledged the pictures of David she’d placed around the house; nor would he refer to his dad in any way. That was when she’d agreed to take him to see a psychologist, though she was unsure now about what good it had done.

Dan Carey perched on the edge of his desk, reviewing Jamie’s file.

“So tell me how he’s been,” he said.

“The same. He’s out there now, staring into space as if nothing exists. It worries me,” she added.

During the drive, Jamie’s behavior had followed a familiar pattern. She could almost feel him retreating from her as if he were slowly drawing a cloak around himself, burrowing down deep. After Coop had gone, he’d flicked radio stations a few times, changing them without apparent reason, rhythmically kicking his heels against the seat bottom. But then, like some clockwork figure slowing down, his jerky and unnatural movements had stilled. She’d glance over at him, watching the lines on his brow smooth out, as if he were falling into a trance, and then he’d sit there motionless, staring out the windshield in an unseeing manner. The first few times this had happened, it had scared her, but Dr. Carey had said not to worry, that it was just

Jamie’s way of coping with the visits, that it would pass. Only it hadn’t. Every time she brought him here it was the same routine.

She knew what to expect when they got home. Often he was difficult, angry with her, and sometimes he broke things. The last time it had been a Florentine vase he knew she treasured. Another time, he’d spilled hot coffee over her.

“He doesn’t want to come here, and he blames me,” she said to Dr. Carey.

“So how do you feel about that?”

She gave him a wan smile. How did he think she felt? Hurt, unsure that she was doing the right thing making Jamie attend these sessions. Sometimes his anger even scared her a little.

“It’s not that I’m afraid for myself,” she explained. “It’s just the situation. I’m afraid he’ll start to hate me.”

Carey nodded with understanding. “But this only ever lasts for a few days?”

“Until the next time.”

“And you want to know what I think you should do?” He put down the file and sat in the chair beside her. “You know why he’s doing this, don’t you?”

“Because he doesn’t want to come here,” she said.

“Yes, but that’s only part of it,” Carey told her. “It’s the underlying reason you need to think about. It’s really about the fact that he doesn’t want to confront what happened—the same reason he’s refusing to speak, a form of denial. My guess is that Jamie has blocked out the day of the accident. He wants to pretend it never happened.”

She’d heard this before and it made partial sense, but what she couldn’t understand was why Jamie seemed to have erased any notion that he’d ever had a father. Why was he oblivious to David’s pictures?

“It’s as if David never existed,” she said.

“We won’t know that until he starts to talk again,” Carey said. “Maybe it’s the only way he can blot out that day. Maybe he’s angry with his father.”

“Angry? Why?”

“Because his dad left him, or maybe it has something to do with the accident, something we don’t know about? It’s impossible to say. How is he with other people?”

“Most of the time he’s okay. I mean, inasmuch as he is with anyone.”

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Carey paused a moment. “How about with your friends? Is there anyone who comes to the house, for instance?”

She saw what he was getting at and thought of Coop. “There’s a guy who was a friend of David’s, he’s the local cop. He comes around now and then. Jamie doesn’t like it. He does his best to ignore him.”

“How do you think Jamie sees this guy?”

“I don’t know. He’s just a friend.”

“But Jamie’s attitude has changed toward him since his dad died, right?”

“I guess,” Susan said. She thought back, trying to recall when it had started happening. It hadn’t been right away, but maybe a month or so after the accident, that Coop had started showing up unexpectedly at the house, just making sure they were okay. Sometimes he’d stay for supper.

“Jamie’s probably afraid this guy is going to take his dad’s place. It’s a conflict he can’t deal with, so he does his best to put him off.”

“But it’s not like that,” Susan said quickly.

“Maybe that’s not how Jamie sees it. It’s his perception we’re talking about here.”

There was a short silence, then Carey got up and walked around his desk. “Look, the way I see it, you have two options at the moment,” he told her. “Jamie hasn’t made any outward progress since you started bringing him here, am I right?”

“In some ways he gets worse, like the way he is now.” She pictured him in the waiting room, his gaze vacant. She’d had a nightmare once in which he just stayed like that forever, locked in his own reality.

“Okay, here’s what I think,” Carey said. “You can keep coming here and hope that one of these days Jamie’ll start to trust me, or else you can give it a break for a while and take the pressure off him.”

“And if I take the second option, what do you think will happen?”

“Maybe nothing. But the same could be said for the first. To be honest, I don’t think a break is going to hurt right now. Jamie’s stubborn and he’s a bright kid. All he ever does is stare at the wall when he’s here. He knows what’s going on, and he’s just decided he doesn’t want to play ball. He could do that forever.”

It was the last thing Susan wanted to hear. It was her greatest fear

that Jamie would never speak again, that he’d gradually withdraw from the real world and sink ever further into himself. She voiced her concerns to Dr. Carey.

“I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” he said. “I think he’ll find a way to deal with this in his own way. Take him home and tell him he doesn’t have to come here anymore, and let’s see what happens. Try to treat him as normally as possible, and don’t make allowances for him. You’re still not letting him sign?”

“I try not to.” At one time she’d thought she ought to consider having him taught sign language, but Dr. Carey had advised her not to. It would just make it too easy for him, he’d said, and she’d gone along with that.

“Good,” Carey said. “Let’s give it three months, and call me if you need to. And another thing: Don’t let him stop you from seeing anybody. That’s not going to help him in the long run.”

She was surprised and started to say again that it wasn’t like that with Coop, but she stopped herself, uncertain. Instead, she smiled and shook his hand as he led her to the door. Outside, Jamie sat in a chair, staring blankly into space, not even blinking when Carey crouched down and said good-bye. Then, as Susan bent down to him, she saw a flicker of puzzled response in his expression.

“Dr. Carey says you don’t have to come here anymore.”

She held out her hand and hesitantly he took it, watching her as if this were some kind of trick.

“Come on, let’s go home,” she said.

CATCHING SIGHT OF A REFLECTION IN THE plate-glass showroom window, Michael had to look twice to recognize himself. The last time he’d worn a suit on a regular basis had been seven years ago, when he’d worked in an office on the fifteenth floor of a glass and steel tower in downtown Toronto. Back then he’d been the agency’s most successful account manager, and in return for his skills, the company had provided him with a BMW and paid him a ridiculously high salary. He was literally the blue-eyed boy: clean-cut, six feet and lean, wearing thousand-dollar suits, and outwardly confident that it would all last forever. He didn’t look much different now, despite the intervening years and all that had happened. A little older—mostly around the eyes, where the lines were etched deep— the hair darker and a little longer; seeing himself was like encountering a ghost.

The suit was an old one, but it was still conspicuous in a place like Little Biver. If people here wore suits at all, they bought them at a department store in Williams Lake for $125 on sale.

A guy came over, smiling curiously, wearing a sport coat and pants that sagged at the knee. “Morning,” he called cheerfully. “Something I can help you with today?” He sounded doubtful, maybe thinking that Michael didn’t look like their regular truck-buying clientele.

“I’m looking for George Wilson,” Michael said, adding, “I’m here about the job.”

The salesman’s smile stayed curious as he gestured through the

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doorway. “Just ask the girl behind the desk over there, she’ll find him for you. He’s around here somewhere.” He looked Michael up and down while trying not to show it, taking in the suit, the silk tie, and the loafers.

“Thanks,” Michael said.

“Anytime.”

The job of promotions manager had been in the paper next to the twice-weekly full-page ad Wilson’s ran to sell their cars. Michael had read about the job and looked over the ad with the eye of somebody who’d spent a lot of time in the advertising business, and he’d thought he had something to offer. A phone call had secured him an appointment. The girl behind the reception desk looked up as he approached.

“Hi, there. May I help you?”

“My name’s Somers. I have an appointment with Mr. Wilson.”

She ran her finger down her diary, where Michael could see three or four other names. Her expression gave no sign that his name meant anything to her, other than that he was there about a job. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

He took a seat while she spoke into the phone. “He’ll be down in a couple of minutes,” she told him. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, maybe?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“Okay.” She seemed reluctant to go back to whatever she’d been doing and fiddled with her pen for a moment. “It’s not so cold out today,” she ventured.