The Snow Falcon (26 page)

She made her way carefully through the woods, trying not to make a sound, her steps largely muffled by the snow. She spotted Jamie from fifty yards back, standing just inside the trees with his back to her. Making her way around him, she found a place beside a pair of cottonwoods at the far end of the clearing where she could watch

what was going on without being seen herself. Jamie hadn’t moved; she could see the blue and red flash of his jacket; his face was turned away, watching what was happening at the other end of the clearing.

Michael was on the porch, wearing jeans and a dark coat. He changed position, and she saw the flick of wings as his falcon stepped onto his fist from what appeared to be an old-fashioned set of scales. For a moment he stood there, the open doorway of the house behind him, stroking the falcon’s breast. Then, looking across the clearing, he raised his hand in a quick gesture of greeting. Susan pressed herself against the trunk of the cottonwood, afraid that she would be seen, imagining how he might interpret her sneaking around the woods to spy on him. Just as she’d moved, she thought she saw Jamie acknowledge Michael’s greeting, maybe with a half-returned wave of his own, but when she looked again, he remained in the same spot.

The sound of her own breathing seemed loud, emphasizing the quiet. Her nose was so cold it had become numb, and her legs and feet were slowly turning to ice, but she resisted the temptation to move. After a short time she forgot about her discomfort. There was something oddly touching about the scene she was witnessing. It had to do with the distance Jamie kept. Despite his obvious fascination, his eyes glued to what was going on, he moved no closer. Michael went about his own routine, involving Jamie just by his greeting but accepting his reserve. There was a calmness to the unfolding scene, a kind of natural rhythm presided over by the beautiful pale falcon.

Michael lowered his fist, and with another flick of her wings the falcon stepped onto the porch rail. Leaving her there, Michael began walking toward Susan across the open snow, though his attention was focused on what he was doing with the bag at his side, taking something from it. When he was abreast of Jamie, he paused and said something to him, though Susan couldn’t hear what it was. Then he walked on, his feet crunching through the surface of the snow, his breath clouding before him. Back on the porch rail the falcon waited, watching Michael intently.

Susan shivered as a breeze touched the back of her neck. Overhead, the sky was leaden, the cloud base low, shrouding the tops of the mountains. The old house stood back across the clearing, snow on the roof, the porch steps sagging a little, no longer appearing abandoned but still a little forlorn. In the clearing, Michael stopped. He was close enough that she could make out his features clearly. If he looked

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directly at her, he’d see her, but she couldn’t make herself move out of sight behind the tree trunk. She wanted to see everything that happened, intrigued not just by the sight of this man training a wild falcon but by some other quality in this quiet, unhurried ritual. What fascinated her, she decided, was the relationship that existed among bird, man, and boy, something she felt but couldn’t articulate. Michael appeared different when she looked at him, his expression smooth, unlined, his eyes unguarded, and even from this distance she could see that Jamie, too, was somehow changed.

This is all there is for them right now, she saw. Nothing else existed for them. That’s what it was.

Michael raised his arm and called to Cully. The falcon left the rail and flew across the snow, wing tips almost brushing the snow, barely making a sound, moving fast. Then, when she was several yards away, she swooped up dramatically with her tail spread wide and her feet reaching out for the glove.

Susan smiled to herself, then backed away through the trees and turned toward her house.

LINDA KOWALSKI CLIPPED an order above the grill where her husband could see it. “This guy’s in a hurry, Pete,” she said.

Pete glanced up and flipped hamburgers on the grill. The diner was quiet, but it would start to fill up in fifteen minutes or so as the lunch trade filtered in. Linda poured two cups of coffee and sat down, lighting a cigarette as she did.

“May as well take a break while I can,” she said to Susan. “You and Coop haven’t forgotten about tonight, have you?”

Susan came to, distracted, then smiled. “Dinner at eight. We’ll be there. Do you want me to bring anything?”

“It’s all under control. Maybe some wine.”

“Wine it is,” Susan said.

She could have had coffee in her office, but when things were quiet, she liked to sit and talk, keeping half an eye on her office from her stool at the counter. It was one of the things she enjoyed about her life. Sometimes she tried to picture herself back in Vancouver, wearing a business suit, working long hours, perhaps becoming ruthless from necessity. It had been David’s idea to leave the city, and he’d brought her up here for a weekend to persuade her to give it a

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try. She could picture it now, his eager, grinning expression as he’d asked her what she thought, and how she’d had to admit it was a pretty spot.

“Okay,” she’d said, “but on one condition. We give it six months. If it doesn’t work out, we’re out of here. And I get to start my own business. Deal?”

“Deal,” he’d said, then winked at Jamie in the backseat.

That had been five years ago. She’d been twenty-eight then, Jamie almost five. David had brought her to his hometown in spring, when the snow was gone from all but the high ground and the meadows along the river were lit with sparks of yellow and red from the wildflowers that grew there. She’d felt an enormous trepidation about living in a small town again. Little River reminded her of the place she’d grown up. All her life she’d dreamed of traveling, living in exotic cities, forging some kind of career. The career part had been a vague ambition, more about achieving independence for herself instead of becoming like her mother, who’d never worked after she married Susan’s father. He’d been a slave to the company he’d worked for most of his adult life, only to be made redundant in his middle fifties. After that, both her parents had seemed consigned to a kind of helpless bewildered existence, their lives without direction, neither of them with a clue as to what they ought to do about it.

She’d done the traveling, or at least some of it, mostly in Europe in her late teens; then she’d come back to a job in Vancouver with a real-estate company, meaning to get qualified and then travel again. Sometimes plans go awry, as they had for her when she’d met David. He’d relentlessly pursued her until she just didn’t have any resistance left. Getting married at twenty-two had never been part of her plan, even less that she would have a child a year later, but both had happened anyway. The pregnancy had been a mistake, but she’d never contemplated an abortion. When Jamie was born, they were suddenly a family, which had both pleased and mystified her.

She’d continued working while David had started out in an architectural firm, and they’d agreed they wouldn’t have another child until their careers were settled. She lived a frenetic existence, trying to juggle work and Jamie so that both got the attention they needed. She’d been determined to hang on to her career, but now she remembered being exhausted much of the time. She’d sometimes en-1 75

vied mothers who did more than feed and bathe and take life at a constant run, mothers who had time with their kids. She would drop Jamie at his child-care group and experience pangs of guilt and longing, wondering what it would be like to have the time to sit in a park on a summer’s day and watch him play. David had said they could manage without the money she made, but it wasn’t just about money.

When she’d begun to sense that David wasn’t happy in his job, she’d waited for what she knew was coming with a mixture of relief and fear. It had been tempting at times to surrender herself to his desires, to remove the burden of decision from herself. He’d always been uncomfortable in the city, trying to fit in when he still lived with a different internal rhythm. His had more to do with the sky and the trees in the changing seasons than the morning snarl of traffic and late-afternoon meetings, a life where the ambitious vied for recognition and didn’t get home until late.

When David had finally told her he wanted to move, she asked herself if she was really happy. There had always been an undercurrent of doubt. She’d wondered if she was missing out on something, and in arguments she’d blamed David for changing her whole life. She’d told him she’d never wanted to get married and that he should have just left her alone, and then she’d felt guilty when she saw that he wondered if she really meant it.

She was cool but unsurprised about his desire to leave the city, and when he’d brought her to Little River, his tales of growing up there had depressed her initially, because they reminded her of her own upbringing. But she’d hidden that and allowed herself to be swayed by his picture of Jamie growing up by the river in the house they’d found.

“You must have some good memories about where you were born?” he’d said.

She’d had to concede that was true. She’d recalled herself and her friends roaming woods and hills as kids, and admitted that video parlors and shopping malls might not be such a good substitute.

“Imagine it,” David had enthused.

He would have his business, designing barns and houses. (“Barns?” she’d said.) She would start a real-estate firm of her own, but she’d arrange things so she’d spend more time with Jamie and they would

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all take regular trips to the city. She’d found herself wondering if this wasn’t what she’d wanted after all, and if her moments of unhappy doubt were simply a reluctance to admit it.

So they had moved, and almost to her surprise it had worked out. David had been happier, and he’d wanted her to be happy, too. Astutely, he’d known there wasn’t anything he could do about the deficiencies of living in the country, so instead he’d concentrated on making sure she felt loved. He brought her flowers; they went for walks and he held her hand, told her she was beautiful. It worked, and even though she knew what was going on, she also knew he meant it, and they laughed about it and he never stopped doing those things. Then, three and a half years later, David had died. A year and a half after that, she was still there.

Her marriage hadn’t been idyllic, but she’d loved him, never really knowing how much until she saw Coop’s face that day as he climbed out of his car, not meeting her eye, and knew in advance what he was going to tell her. Sometimes, though, it seemed a long time ago.

“So, how’s your neighbor?”

Linda’s question penetrated her thoughts, and Susan looked up from the coffee she’d been stirring idly, creating swirls of motion in her cup. She followed Linda’s look, and through the window she could see the store with the papered-over windows and Michael Somers’s dark blue Nissan outside.

“He’s got everybody talking about what he’s doing over there,” Linda said.

“Did you know him when he lived here before?” Susan asked.

“Not really. I remember him, but that’s not the same, is it? He was quiet, I think. I remember his parents better—especially his dad, because he still ran the store until he died about ten or twelve years ago. He was a nice guy. His mother was a little strange, I think.”

“In what way?”

“She didn’t come into town much. She was always sick or something,” Linda said.

After following Jamie a couple of days earlier, Susan had decided to find out for herself the truth about Michael. She’d had to drive all the way to Prince George, where in the library she’d sat viewing microfilm of the Toronto papers from nearly seven years ago, and

now she knew the facts of what had happened. The things people said about what he’d done were misinformed at best, malicious at worst. All the same, he had shot somebody, apparently meaning to kill him. His defense had claimed temporary insanity, though the jury had rejected the argument.

“Jamie’s been going over there to watch him train his falcon,” Susan said. “Every morning, and again when he gets back from school.”

Linda looked surprised. “Jamie is?”

Susan looked back across the street and pursed her lips in thought. “Do you think I ought to be concerned about that?”

“What do you think?”

“I see Jamie’s face when he comes back, how excited he looks.” She paused. “No, I don’t think I should be concerned.”

“Then don’t be. You don’t have to feel bad about that. What does Coop think?”

“Coop?”

“He does know, doesn’t he?”

He didn’t know. Susan was struck by the fact that Linda automatically assumed she would have expressed her feelings to him, sought his opinion, and then she wondered why she hadn’t. He was a friend and he was a cop; who better to talk to?

She felt Linda watching her. “I have to go,” she said, finishing her coffee and sliding off her stool. “See you tonight.”

As she left, Linda’s thoughtful gaze followed her out the door.

Across the street, she hesitated, then turned and walked to the door of the old Somers hardware store. From inside, she could hear the sound of hammering. She knocked when the hammering paused, and a moment later Michael opened the door and stood blinking in the light. Beyond him she could see wooden debris littering the floor, the light angling inside capturing dust in the air. He regarded her with a faint questioning look.

“Hi, I was just passing,” she said. “I thought I’d stop by.” It sounded lame, but she couldn’t think what else to say. “Can I come in?”