The Snow Falcon (28 page)

It was why the whole town was buzzing with talk about Somers now that he was back. They said that his mother had been crazy and that finally she’d killed herself, though there were others who wondered about that, remarking that it was strange how John Somers had happened to be out late on a Wednesday night, which was unusual for him. With that kind of history, Somers was on a no-win ticket. His mom had been crazy; his dad, according to rumor, had as good as killed her. No wonder, people said, he’d turned out the way he did. Some even asked Coop why he couldn’t make him leave town, as if Little River were the Wild West or something.

When he’d done cleaning his boots, Coop drove to Susan’s house. When he arrived, she was on the porch, wearing jeans and a shirt, with her hair swept back. Behind her, Wendy Douglas was standing in the doorway, and as he arrived, the two stopped talking, though they continued to wear odd expressions.

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“What’s up?” he said, getting out of his car.

“It’s nothing,” Susan said. “We were just looking for Jamie. He must be around somewhere.”

There was some intonation in her voice that he couldn’t identify. It was dark, late for Jamie to be outside. “You don’t know where he is?” he asked.

“He can’t have gone far.”

Coop felt he was missing something. Susan and Wendy exchanged glances. “I’ll go look for him,” he suggested. He hesitated, unsure which direction to go, then fetched a flashlight from his truck.

“He might have gone that way,” Susan said, indicating the woods.

“Toward the Somers place?”

“He’s been going over there,” Susan said, almost but not quite casually.

“What for?”

“He goes after school to watch Michael’s falcon. He came back earlier, but then he just went again.”

Coop felt as if he’d lost his footing. There were eddies and streams in the air, rhythms he couldn’t make sense of. “Michael’s falcon.” The way she said his name sounded like they were friends, which he didn’t know about. And this thing about Jamie going over there threw him. He just nodded, wondering what else he didn’t know about.

“I’ll go find him,” he said, turning away, aware of the way Susan watched him, not saying anything, biting her lip.

Coop thought that some people have an antenna for danger, for when something comes along that might threaten the status quo. He had that feeling now. Just a sense that a subtle change had altered the balance of things.

He didn’t know if he’d planned the way everything had happened with Susan, right from the day Dave had been buried, or if it had just happened. He liked to think the latter, but his conscience told him differently. It had happened gradually. First he’d just made sure that she and Jamie had everything they needed, helping out where he could; as time went by, he’d started staying for supper now and then. They’d sit up talking at night after Jamie had gone to bed, Susan doing most of the talking while he just listened. She talked a lot about Dave, and he thought that was why she’d been able to

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speak to him, because he’d been Dave’s friend. He even wondered if in some way she thought she was actually talking to Dave, through him.

She missed Dave, and because of the way Jamie had taken it, she felt more alone and uncertain than she might have otherwise. She’d confided that she hadn’t always been sure she wanted to be married to Dave, which had surprised Coop. It was a chink in their relationship Coop hadn’t known was there. They’d fought like any other couple, but she’d also had doubts that went deeper, though it had all been in the past.

Occasionally she’d cried on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do this,” she’d say.

“It’s okay,” he’d tell her. “You don’t have to apologize.”

There were times he’d wanted to tell her how he felt, tell her he loved her. He could feel she needed somebody right then, and he’d thought that if he made a move, she might have responded the way he wanted, though it would have been from need and not a clear head and it wouldn’t have lasted.

Instead, he’d held back and been her friend. He’d done his best with Jamie, too, though no good had come of that yet. As time had gone by and Susan had come out of herself, little by little, he knew that she’d come to understand what he felt for her. He hoped she respected the fact that he’d never pressured her with his feelings, that he’d never tried to rush her. He understood her confusion. It was partly because of Jamie, he felt. His silence was like a reminder of David, and Coop had thought for a long time that when Jamie finally accepted him, Susan would, too.

As he went through the woods toward the Somers place, there was a lot going on in his mind.

MICHAEL WAS ON the porch, wrapped up in a jacket, drinking whiskey while he watched the night sky.

The clearing was almost ethereal when there was a bright moon, he sometimes thought when he was out there in the freezing air. The snow was silver gray; the moonlight cast deep shadows where the trees fringed the clearing’s edge. It felt as if this corner of the world had slipped a little out of sync, that subtle changes had taken

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place. The physical had melted away and he could feel himself surrounded by spirits, the ghosts of trees and animals. He wondered if he was tuning in to ancient forces that were all around. He’d once heard a theory that organized religion had missed the point, and that God and nature were one and the same. The idea had appealed to him. He thought that through Cully he was connected to the natural world.

From the porch, the sky seemed curved, like a massive dark outer sphere that encased the world. He saw the white flash of a shooting star, a chunk of ice and rock, and he wondered where it had come from before it burned up in the earth’s atmosphere. How long had it spun and traveled through space?

An owl flitted across the clearing, a swift dark shape in pursuit of some victim, its wings moving with absolute silence. Owls, he knew, had given up the protective coating of oil on their feathers to achieve silent flight. Caught in a downpour, they would become sodden, unable to fly. A price for everything. Michael drank his whiskey and thought of Susan Baker coming to the store, and his brow furrowed in thought. He pictured her face, her eyes like the sea.

At the bottom of the porch steps, a figure emerged from the darkness soundlessly and was there. It startled him so that he almost dropped his glass. One second there was nothing, then a pale face materialized. He thought he was either drunk or seeing the ghost of a boy, maybe himself. It was Jamie. Michael’s heart was thumping like a hammer.

“Where did you come from?” He wondered how Jamie could have crept up so close without making a sound. Michael decided he must have been lost in thought.

Jamie held something out, and placed it on the porch. Michael saw that it was the book he’d left him in the tree.

“Did you read it?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer, but Jamie nodded, and in the second it took Michael to absorb this response, he realized this was the closest Jamie had ever come to the house.

“Did you like it?”

Again there was a nod. Then Jamie was peering into the dark recesses of the porch.

“Looking for Cully? She’s in the woodshed, asleep by this time.

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She doesn’t like to stay up late.” He grinned, and in the moment that followed he was sure the ghost of a smile passed across Jamie’s expression.

The sound of somebody approaching through the trees, crashing against the undergrowth, reached them, and it occurred to Michael that Jamie’s mother must be wondering where he was. Then a voice called out, and he recognized Coop. Michael saw him enter the clearing and take in the scene.

“Jamie? Your mom’s worried about you, son.” Coop looked toward Michael. “It’s late for him to be out here.” He stepped into the pool of light spilling from the porch.

Michael noted the way Coop was dressed, as if he had recently showered and changed. He wondered if maybe Susan and Coop were involved in some way. Coop’s tone had sounded accusatory. Michael gestured to the book and picked it up. “He was just bringing something back that I loaned him.”

There was a long silence that seemed to stretch for minutes. Coop’s hand had dropped to Jamie’s shoulder, but there was something awkward in the way they stood. The space between them seemed too large, and Jamie looked at the ground.

“We’d better go, son,” Coop said.

As he started to leave, Jamie cast a quick glance back toward the porch.

“Come over in the morning,” Michael said.

Coop looked a moment longer, then wordlessly turned away.

“YOU’RE A LUCKY woman,” Susan said. “A man who can cook at all is a rare enough find; one who can cook like this, that’s really something. You better take care of him, Linda, or one day some woman in this town is going to steal him away.”

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Pete agreed.

“You wish.” Linda got up and started to clear plates from the table, bending to kiss her husband on the cheek as she passed. “You’re not so bad, I guess.”

He put his arm around her waist and drew her close, grinning up at her and planting a kiss right on her mouth. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

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Susan watched them with an affectionate smile. They’d been married seventeen years, not only living in the same house but for many of those years working together as well. The way they were around each other, the way their lives were so entwined, it was hard to imagine one without the other. They still exchanged glances across the diner when they were working, grinning at some joke they shared, touching each other frequently, a brush of a hand against the waist or an arm, a brief, almost unconscious squeeze—more intimate gestures than any passionate kiss, in their way, though Susan was sure there was plenty of that kind of passion in their relationship, too. She envied them their total comfort with each other. Would she and David have been this way if he’d lived? she wondered. Maybe not in the same way. Having Jamie had turned their attention outward from each other; probably they would have tried for another child. Linda and Pete had only each other; perhaps if they’d been able to have kids, they would be different. It was all a question of focus, she thought. She knew how much they regretted being childless, but watching them, she wondered if they fully realized that what they had together was a rare thing in itself. Would they have given a part of it up if they had the choice?

“Let me help you,” Susan said to Linda, collecting Coop’s plate. He gave her a brief smile, and as she went around him, she squeezed his shoulder. He looked up at her with an expression of pleasant surprise.

As she put plates into the dishwasher while Linda prepared dessert, Susan imagined a domestic scene full of kids and a husband, noisy suppers and then quiet nights in front of a fire when the children were all in bed. This contrasted with the way she and Jamie sat down to eat, the only voice her own, a wrench inside every time she looked at him.

“Penny for them?”

Susan broke from her reverie. “My mother used to say that.”

“All mothers say it.” Linda took some fresh glasses from the cupboard and poured chardonnay from a new bottle. “How is everything?”

Susan sipped her wine, thinking that she ought to take it easy, she was already feeling light-headed. In the dining room, she could see through the glass doors, Coop and Pete were laughing at some joke. It was the happiest Coop had appeared all night.

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“Everything’s fine,” she answered. Linda made no comment, but her disbelief was evident. Susan explained what had happened earlier, when Coop had arrived at the house. “Apparently, Jamie went over to return a book, but he didn’t tell me he was going.”

Linda nodded. “So Coop went over to get him?”

“I think he was put out that Jamie was over there. You know how Jamie is with him.”

“He’s been kind of quiet tonight. I thought maybe you two had an argument.”

Susan shook her head. “Poor Coop.”

“Why ‘Poor Coop’? Jamie would be that way with any man he thought you were getting involved with, you know that, Susan.” Linda paused. “Or did you mean something else? I mean, everything is okay between you two, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course. I mean, we haven’t had a fight or anything.”

“But?”

Susan sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Coop is a sweet guy, and I appreciate everything he’s done for Jamie and me. I just don’t know if I can ever feel anything more than that.” She watched him as she spoke, the way he lounged back in his chair, relaxed and at ease, his long legs comfortably stretched under the table, the strong line of his jaw. He hadn’t said anything about what had happened at Michael’s house, but she’d seen in his eyes as he watched Jamie go into the house that he was hurt. It had pulled at something inside her. It was all so confusing sometimes.

“I never told you this before,” Linda said, “but when I was young, I dated Coop. I used to think one day I might marry him.” She laughed at Susan’s expression of shock. “Oh, it was a long time ago, before I ever met Pete. We were just kids, really.”

“You dated Coop?” Susan couldn’t believe it.

“Like I said, it was a long time ago.” She looked down, fiddling with her glass. “You know, when Pete and I were trying to get pregnant and nothing was happening, I used to wonder sometimes how it would have been if I had ended up with Coop. Don’t look so shocked. I never would have exchanged Pete for anyone; it was just that I was thinking all kinds of things at that time. It wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway—turned out the problem was with me. I’m just saying I used to think about it. I think Coop would’ve made a terrific husband. Oh, I know he’s sort of quiet, and he’s

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