The Snow Falcon (39 page)

She gave an ironic smile. “When I met Pete, he was just out of the army. It’s probably hard for you to appreciate, but he was different then. He wanted to make something of himself, and he was kind of sweet.” She was hardly able to reconcile Pete as he was now with how he’d been then. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d decided she loved him. “I was young. If I’d waited, got to know him better, I might have seen his weaknesses, but we never do at that age, right?”

“Not even at our own,” Michael agreed.

“People change. They become whole different people,” Rachel said. “Makes it hard for marriages to last a lifetime when that happens, don’t you think?”

“I’m not the person to ask,” he said.

“I’m sorry. I was just thinking about myself.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s true, anyway.”

He’d felt it that night in Clancys, that she was unhappy and looking inside herself for answers, but he knew now that she hadn’t found them yet, that asking him here had been part of her search.

She looked at him across the table. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. He couldn’t tell her he was wondering what it would feel like to hold a woman again, to feel the softness of her skin, the warmth of her body, to hear his name spoken with tenderness and passion.

They had finished their meal. Rachel said, “We could leave. I could come back to your house if you like.” She thought her voice sounded unnatural, but she held his eye. There was a tremor in her throat, and she kept her hands clasped on her lap so they wouldn’t tremble.

“I’d like that,” Michael said.

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OUTSIDE, THEY WALKED across the lot together, pausing as Michael pointed out his Nissan.

“I’ll follow you,” Rachel told him. Headlights swung into the lot, sweeping over them, and a truck stopped by the side entrance. She saw Ted Hanson get out and go around to unload something from the back, probably a deer he’d shot and sold to the restaurant. She turned her face away and hurried on before he saw her.

It had begun to snow very lightly. Michael drove with the window down, even though the cold air numbed the side of his face and snowflakes drifted inside. Every now and then, he looked in the rearview mirror to make sure her lights “were still there. Now that he was alone and had time to think, he didn’t know if this was the right thing to be doing. He found himself thinking about Susan.

When they reached the house, they stood on the porch for a moment, looking out across the clearing. She was shivering inside her parka, and he put his arm around her and drew her close. Her arms went around him in response, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

A shape flitted in the air, and he thought it was the owl he sometimes saw hunting its territory. As if in answer to his thought, it hooted from among the trees. The light snow that had been falling began to drift in the breeze.

They went inside, and Michael poured them both a drink. He stoked the fire, threw another log on, and turned out the lights except for a lamp in the corner. They sat in chairs, watching the flames cast flickering patterns and sparks shoot up the chimney.

Rachel sat with her legs curled up beneath her, holding her glass in both hands. The light from the flames emphasized the dark yellow in his hair, she thought, and caught the blue of his eyes. He was strong; his arms around her had wakened feelings in her, warmth in her belly and breasts. She wanted to let herself go, to stay with him for the night. She felt that then she might know for certain what she should do about her life, and yet she also felt reluctant. She knew what her decision would be if she slept with Michael; it would be like closing a door, a confirmation that what was past was irretrievable, because then she could never stay with Pete. She couldn’t cheat on him.

“Can I have another drink?” she asked, breaking the silence that had fallen over them.

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He brought the bottle over, and she arranged cushions on the floor. He sat with his back against a chair and let her lean against him.

“Can we just talk for a little while?” she said.

Michael pulled her close, feeling her warmth, smelling her hair, and watched the flames.

STANDING AT HER kitchen window that evening, Susan watched the snow falling outside. It was very light now: She could watch individual flakes as they floated to the ground. Earlier, she’d gone outside to watch the sky as the light faded, but the clouds were too thick for her to be able see anything and she’d come in again. She sipped at the glass of wine she’d poured from a bottle she’d opened fresh, wondering how Coop and Jamie were faring in this weather. It was supposed to be worse up where they were. She smiled, imagining them in a Denny’s eating hamburgers and fries before going back to a motel to watch TV all night. Maybe Coop should have waited until spring, she thought.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had the house to herself, and thought it had to be when David was alive and had taken Jamie away for a couple of days. The house was silent; she realized it was the absence of the TV blaring in the other room that she noticed. Otherwise, nothing much was different. Her son moved around the house like a ghost sometimes, unnaturally quiet.

She finished her wine and poured another glass, looking vaguely at the refrigerator and wondering what she could make to eat. She felt hungry but didn’t want to cook. The wine on an empty stomach was making her light-headed. She decided to put a frozen pizza in the oven, then went to a cupboard where she kept a pack of cigarettes for emergencies or times when, like this, she just felt like smoking. She lit one and inhaled, hating the taste and the nicotine rush but perversely enjoying it, too.

She considered putting on some music, unsure that she wanted silence, but couldn’t quite decide. She wondered what it would be like to have a house full of kids, running around making all kinds of noise. A few years ago, she and David had started trying to get pregnant again. After he’d died, she’d grieved for a daughter she’d imagined in every detail who would now never be born. Of course, she was still young enough to have children.

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The pizza tasted bland, like processed everything, and when she tried to liven it up with herbs and pepper, then a little chili sauce, she overdid it and ruined it. It went in the trash with barely a slice out of it, and she smoked another cigarette. Outside, it had become dark, with no moon or stars. She couldn’t see ten feet beyond the window. She wondered what somebody might think looking in on her, framed in the bright, warm window. Would a stranger wonder about her life and why she stood getting drunk and smoking alone? Would he think she was beautiful, or wonder what she looked like naked? She shook her head a little, bemused at herself.

In the afternoon she’d been busy for once, because she’d sold a house to a couple moving here from the city and they’d wanted one last look around. Later, she’d gone over to the diner and watched the winter festival decorations being put up, transforming Main Street. On the last night of the festival there would be a dance in the hotel; it was an annual event, the only real event in the town. Almost everybody would go, and she’d agreed to help with the arrangements. She’d spent the last hour of the afternoon making lists of things to do and buy and wishing she could be home to enjoy the quiet time she’d been given. Only now that she had her wish, something was wrong. It was too quiet and she was feeling melancholy.

She thought she might run a bath and soak, then have an early night. She could light a candle and carry the wine upstairs, but she saw that the bottle was empty. David’s picture looked down at her from the bulletin board. He was grinning, but half his face was hidden behind a reminder note to pick up some yogurt. It occurred to her that if she didn’t want to be alone, she could go out somewhere, but she was too drunk to drive. Still, she found herself getting her coat and pulling on boots to take a walk in the fresh air. When she opened the door, Bob looked up from his basket, then flopped back down again when he felt the cold. Outside, the air was still and the snow had stopped falling.

She stood on the porch, and her thoughts turned toward Michael. It was like pushing open a door that had already been open a crack, letting it swing wide without resistance, and his image entered her mind as easily as if he’d stepped into a room where she was sitting. She’d been dwelling on the fact that he’d soon be finished training Cully, and though she wondered what that would mean for Jamie, she admitted that she also wondered what it might mean for her.

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She wondered if he really intended to open that store, recalled the way he’d looked at the pictures of property for sale on her office wall and asked how business was. Did that mean he would leave? She reacted to the thought, inside, and knew she didn’t want that to happen.

She went through the woods, refusing to pause and think about where she was going or what she’d do when she got there. When she reached the edge of the clearing, she stopped. A dim light came from inside Michael’s house. She was beginning to feel cold, and the air had sobered her a little. Just then the front door opened and he stepped out onto the porch. She watched him as he stood there. She didn’t move, staying close to a tree, afraid that he would see her. He was too far away for her to see his face, but she could imagine his eyes, the way she could see his loneliness in them.

The wine had made her bold, and she decided she would just go and talk to him. As she stepped out of the trees into view, he saw her and froze, peering at her in the darkness, and she wondered if he could tell who it was. As she took another step closer, a greeting forming on her lips, another figure appeared in the doorway behind him, silhouetted in the dim light.

FOR A MOMENT Michael thought he was seeing a ghost, a spirit. He didn’t move, surprised and yet accepting, and then he felt it was only a person. Peering into the night, seeing only a dark shape, he wondered who it could be, and thought that whoever it was had been watching him. He could feel that now, and he realized it had to be Susan. Before he could think anymore, a shadow fell across his own and Rachel stood behind him. She stepped close and arranged herself and the blanket she was wrapped in around him.

“What are you doing out here?” she said quietly.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the figure was gone. He wondered if he’d imagined it. “You fell asleep. I didn’t want to wake you,” he said.

“I’m sorry, it must have been the wine. I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”

“It’s okay,” he said, turning to her.

“Anyway, maybe now wasn’t the time for either of us,” Rachel said, and she looked beyond him to the clearing.

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He wondered if she had glimpsed the figure, too, but when he looked at her questioningly, she just smiled faintly and went inside. Before he followed, he looked back to the trees, but if Susan had been there before, she was gone now.

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THE SOUND OF A VEHICLE COMING DOWN toward the house woke her, and Susan opened her eyes to sunlight coming through the window. Her mouth was dry; and when she moved, sharp pains shot through her temples. A heavy, dull ache settled in the back of her head.

She made it to the window and saw Coop’s truck outside, and Jamie getting out. For a moment, she was confused about the time. The clock said it was almost noon, which meant she’d slept really late, but she still couldn’t figure out what they were doing back so soon. She hadn’t been expecting them until late in the afternoon.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and hurriedly brushed her hair, briefly horrified at the way she looked in the mirror. She opened the door to see Coop putting Jamie’s things down on the porch.

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting to see you guys until later.” She tried to sound happily surprised, but her voice came out like a croak.

“We decided to come back early. The weather wasn’t so good,” Coop said.

She looked from his set, enigmatic expression to Jamie, who hung back and avoided looking at her, and guessed there was more to it.

“Go and get washed up,” she told Jamie. “Then I’ll fix you something to eat.”

He went past her, head down, and she waited until he was out of earshot.

“So what really happened?”

Coop scratched his head. “Well, we got to the cabin okay, and

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everything was going fine. I mean, Jamie wasn’t acting like he was having the time of his life or anything, but he was fishing anyway. I thought he might ease up a little once we got the barbecue going. Only there was no food to cook.”

“What do you mean? You forgot to take the food?”

Coop looked uncomfortable. “I don’t think that’s what happened.”

Susan tried to read what he meant, but her head was still hurting and she was finding it hard to think. Memories of the night before were starting to crowd her mind. A bottle of wine, a whole bottle, on an empty stomach.

“You okay, Susan?”

She focused her thoughts. “Sure, I’m fine.” She managed a smile. “You were saying about the food?”

“It was right there when we left. I packed everything away in the cooler. There was steak and potatoes, some ham, eggs, coffee, everything.”

“Maybe you forgot it,” she suggested.

“The cooler’s still there in the back of the truck, but it’s empty.”

This was just getting too hard for Susan to follow. “What are you trying to say?”

“Only thing I can think is that when we stopped for gas on the way, Jamie must have got out while I was in the store.”

Finally she saw what he was getting at. “Jamie dumped the food? Oh God, Coop. I’m so sorry.” She took his hand. “Come inside, I’ll put some coffee on.”