Heart of Ice (2 page)

But then the metal floor began to vibrate beneath his feet and the ferry pulled away from the dock. He leaned his head against the cold glass of the window and closed his eyes.

He slept. And for the first time in weeks, he dreamed.

Dreamed of a bald man in horn-rimmed glasses and a blue suit. Dreamed of shooting a rifle that looked nothing like the one he used to hunt deer with his dad. Dreamed of lying naked on a cold steel table in a white room with his intestines pouring out of his gut. And then the bald man was holding up a big bright blue capsule and smiling and telling him that if he just took it all the pain would go away.

He was jerked awake by a jabbing on his shoulder.

He looked up into the red face of an old man wearing a navy peacoat with the ferry line emblem on the pocket.

“Time to get off, son.”

The window had fogged over. He rubbed it with the sleeve of his parka and saw something in the mist. It was the boarded-up pastie shack. They were back in St. Ignace.

“Hey!” he called out to the old man who was heading toward the door. “What happened? Why did we turn back?”

“No choice,” the old man said. “Got out a ways but it was frozen solid. Got a call in to the cutter but she’s working the shipping lines and can’t get here until tomorrow morning.” He turned and started away.

“But I have to get to the island tonight!”

The old man stared at him, then shook his head. “No one’s getting over there tonight, son.”

The old man shuffled off, the metal door banging behind
him. The young man’s eyes went again to the window. His mind was spinning, trying to figure out his options. Stay here and wait? No, because tomorrow would be too late. Go home and try to explain? No, because he couldn’t look his father in the eye and tell him one more lie. Leave and try to start over somewhere new? No, because she wouldn’t be there.

And this was all about her.

Cooper Lange reached for the duffel at his feet but paused. The name stenciled on the green canvas was so faded it could barely be read:
CHARLES S. LANGE
. It had belonged to his father, and U.S. Army sergeant Charles Lange had put in it everything he needed to survive—heating tablets, rations, mittens, compass, bullets, and a picture of his wife and baby son. When he came home from Korea Charles packed it away, emptying it and himself as best he could. Even his wife couldn’t get him to talk about what had happened over there, and when she died three years later Charles Lange withdrew into himself even more. When his son turned sixteen he brought out the duffel and gave it to him.

Cooper had never used the duffel until last night, when he hurriedly packed it with the things he guessed he might need to survive. A change of clothes, matches, some Mounds bars, the three hundred and two dollars from his bank account, his father’s old army compass.

He grabbed the bag and hurried from the ferry. The temperature had dropped since boarding and the cold was a hard slap against his face. He glanced at his watch. Almost four. It would be dark soon. He had to figure out something fast. The dock was deserted and there were no
cars in the lot. Chartering a plane in this weather was out of the question, not that he could afford it.

The weather was getting bad fast, a bank of heavy pewter clouds building on the horizon of Lake Huron. His eyes caught a spot of something dark on the frozen lake just offshore. Then he spotted another dark spot beyond the first.

Trees. The dark spots were trees. That meant someone had started laying out the ice bridge. But was it finished?

There was no time to check. If he was going, he had to go now. He unzipped the duffel and found his gloves. He cursed himself for not bringing a flashlight and screwdrivers—it was crazy to cross the bridge without them—but he hadn’t planned on having to do this.

He hadn’t planned on doing any of this. But she . . .

God, had he forgotten it? Digging beneath the clothes, he found her picture. It was her senior class portrait. Perfect oval face framed by long black hair, somber dark eyes, and not even a hint of a smile. He turned it over to read what she had written even though he knew it by heart.

When love beckons to you follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when he speaks to you believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

—Julie
.

He started to put it back in the duffel but instead slipped it into the chest pocket of his parka and zipped it shut.

He put on his gloves, slung the duffel strap over his
shoulder, and headed across the parking lot. At the snow-covered beach he stopped. Someone had tamped down a path that led to the shoreline, creating a crude entry to the ice bridge beyond.

The huge gray expanse of Lake Huron lay before him. And somewhere out there in the fog was Mackinac Island.

The channel was only four miles across, but he knew what he was up against. He had grown up in St. Ignace and spent the last five summers on the island making good money slapping fudge in the shops on Main Street and cleaning stalls at the stables. When the tourists left in October, the island closed down and the hard winters left the couple hundred residents there isolated and dependent on the coast guard icebreakers. But when it was cold enough the straits between the island and St. Ignace would freeze over. Someone on the island would venture out onto the lake with spud bars to test the ice’s thickness. If he made it to St. Ignace he’d call back with the news that it was safe. The townspeople would take discarded Christmas trees and plant them in the ice to mark the safe path across.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the redbrick coast guard building on Huron Street. There was a light on inside. The coast guard guys didn’t want people out on the ice bridge but they couldn’t stop them, so every year they sent out the same warning—tell someone if you go out on the ice bridge. For a second he thought about going up to the station.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t tell anyone where he was going. That was what they had decided. She wouldn’t tell her parents and he wouldn’t tell his father. No one could know.

He hoisted the duffel and stepped onto the ice. It groaned but held firm. He pulled in a deep breath and headed toward the first tree, just a dark shape in the mist.

At the tree, he stopped and looked back. The lights of St. Ignace were just yellow blurs in the fog. Looking ahead again, he spotted the next tree and started toward it.

The sun was now just a pale pink glow above the gray horizon, and out on the exposed lake the wind hit his face like needles. But he kept moving in a tentative shuffle, trying not to think about the deep cold water beneath his feet.

His head was throbbing by the time he reached the fifth tree. Its web of fake silver icicles danced in the wind. One small blue Christmas ornament clung to a branch.

Seeing it brought back the dream about the blue capsule and he realized now what it had meant. Just one month ago he had sat with his father in front of the TV watching a man pour hundreds of blue capsules into a huge jar. No
Mayberry R.F.D
tonight, just Roger Mudd staring back over his shoulder into the camera and whispering as a man in a suit and horn-rimmed glasses pulled out the first blue capsule.

September fourteenth, zero zero one.

His father, sitting in the shadows, had said nothing, just got up and went into the kitchen. Alone, Cooper watched as they put the little slip of white paper with his birthday on it up on a big board next to the American flag. He had never won anything in his life—except this. The luck of being among the first young men drafted into the Vietnam War.

His eyes drifted left again, toward Canada. He would
be there soon enough, but right now he had to get to the island. Julie was waiting for him.

A loud crack, like a rifle shot.

He froze. Afraid to look down, afraid to even take a breath. Another crack.

Suddenly the world dropped.

Blackness. Water. Cold.

His scream died to a gurgle as the water closed over him.

He groped but there was nothing but water. Everything was getting heavy and darker. He had to get some air. He pushed the duffel off and kicked upward. But his hands hit only a ceiling of ice. He couldn’t find the hole; he couldn’t see anything; he couldn’t breathe.

He could almost feel his heart slowing in his chest, his blood growing colder.

Mom, I miss you.

Dad, I’m sorry.

Julie . . .

Thursday, October 18, 1990

H
e stood at the railing of the ferry, the sun warm on his shoulders but the spray on his face cold.

Twenty-one years ago he had stood at the bow of a ferry much like this one. Then, the air had been filled with the smell of diesel, but now the ferry left nothing in its wake but a plume of white water and shimmering rainbows.

Then, it had all been about leaving behind the ugly memories of his foster homes in Detroit and going “up north” to the magic island just off the tip of the Michigan mitten. It had been about eating all the fudge his stomach could hold, seeing a real horse up close, and racing the other foster kids around the island on a rented Schwinn.

Now, it was all about her.

Louis Kincaid looked down at Lily. She was peering toward the island, so he couldn’t see her face. But he didn’t need to. He knew what this trip meant to her. He wondered if she had any idea what it meant to him.

Only seven months ago he had found out he was a father. It had been a shock, but from the moment he saw Lily he was grateful Kyla had not done what she’d threatened to do that night in his dorm room.

I’ll get rid of it.

And his response:
Go ahead.

He looked down again at Lily’s crinkly curls.

Thank God . . .

The case seven months ago that had taken him back to Ann Arbor had left him no time to get to know Lily. And once he returned to Florida the twelve hundred miles between them had felt like a million. He spent the next six months trying to convince Kyla that he wanted to be a part of his daughter’s life.

He sent Lily postcards from every place his work had taken him, from the glamorous mansions in Palm Beach to the dilapidated Gatorama in Panama City. At first Lily had sent nothing back, but then the letters began. Always short, always filled with drawings, always signed “Lily Brown.”

What had he expected—Lily Kincaid?

What was he expecting now?

He had no idea, but he was just glad Kyla—and Lily—were finally giving him a chance.

He hesitated, then touched her hair. She looked up.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

She shook her head and looked back to the island. It was late October, weeks past prime tourist season for Mackinac Island. Weeks past the date he had promised her he would come for her tenth birthday. But there had been an important case to finish and testimony to give.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come up last month,” Louis said.

“You already apologized,” Lily said.

“I know. And I know how much you wanted to come to Mackinac Island. But we’re here now.”

Lily leaned her head back to look at him. Her caramel-colored skin was damp with mist, her ringlets frizzed around her forehead. She was a pretty girl, with Kyla’s broad forehead and full pink lips. But it was her gray-felt eyes—his eyes—that brought a catch in his throat. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes now but felt the need to explain one more time.

“I was testifying in a trial,” Louis said. “Trials are important things, not just to the person in trouble but for the prosecutors, too. You can’t just not show up if you’re a witness.”

“Was it a murder trial?”

This was the first interest she had shown in his work.

“No,” he said, “it was insurance fraud. Do you know what that is?”

“Some kind of cheating?”

“Yes, it’s when—”

“Daddy solved a murder this week.”

She didn’t wait for his reaction, just turned away and waved to the other ferry that was crossing their wake.

Louis sighed. Lily’s stepfather, Eric Channing, the man who had raised her, was a police officer in Ann Arbor. He was a good man—no, he was more than a good man. He had been the one who convinced Kyla to tell Lily about Louis.

Louis and Lily hadn’t discussed their relationship during the five-hour drive up north. She had talked about school and ballet classes, her mother’s hat business. And about how Daddy had just been promoted to detective and how he now handled the important gross stuff like robberies and shootings and that she sometimes worried about
him getting hurt. She’d also let it slip that her mother had told her that private eyes like Louis didn’t have to worry about getting hurt.

Louis had been tempted at that moment to tell her about his plans.

He had taken the first steps to go back into uniform. Filled out the application for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement police academy to be recertified. Approached Sheriff Lance Mobley about a job with the county. Bought a second gun. Cleaned up his credit. He even joined a gym because he knew that going back in at thirty put him up against ex-marines and kids who had been pumping iron in their basements since they were twelve.

He hadn’t planned to tell anyone until he had a badge on his chest. But he didn’t like that Lily had turned away from him when he talked of his work.

“Look! Look!” Lily squealed. “I see the horses!”

They were close enough to the island now to see the sign for the old Chippewa Hotel. The engines cut off, and Lily broke away from him, heading toward the gangplank. He kept her bright yellow sweatshirt in view and finally caught up with her on the dock. As they walked up to Main Street, her eyes widened.

Victorian storefronts advertising fudge, souvenir T-shirts, fancy resort clothes, and oil paintings of Creamsicle-colored Lake Michigan sunsets. A horse and carriage clopped along the street right in front of them, and Lily watched as if it were Cinderella’s coach.