The Snow Falcon (42 page)

“Listen.” He pointed back the way they’d come, toward the wide-open sky and the ranges beyond the valley. “That’s her world. That’s where I first saw her, and it’s where she belongs. I know you want to keep her, and a part of me does, too.” He shrugged helplessly, unable to think of anything that was going to make Jamie feel better. “The thing is, Jamie, I never told you this, but I made a pact with her. The first night I had her, after I brought her back from the vet, she was weak and hurt and I thought she was going to die. She wouldn’t eat anything, and it was like she’d decided she wasn’t going to go on living if it meant being shut in a woodshed, having these jesses put on her legs. So I made her a promise. I said that if she would just eat and get strong, I’d help her to get well again, and then, when she was ready, I’d let her go. Well, now it’s time I kept my promise. You wouldn’t want me to break it, would you?”

Jamie turned to Cully, standing on Michael’s fist, her crop stuffed with the rich dark meat of the duck. She gazed back at him, then flicked open her wings and held them there in the breeze for a second, her sharp eye turned to the mountains in the north. Eventually Jamie shook his head and turned away.

DURING A WEEK OF TRADING, HE HAD taken in a total of fifty-six dollars and twenty-two cents, from three customers. He’d spent a lot of time recalling the hours he’d worked in the store when he was growing up. It was the only place he’d been alone with his dad, and he saw now why his dad had wanted him there. Despite the fact that they hardly ever talked about anything, they had at least been together. Maybe his father had hoped that someday things would change, or maybe he’d just been content that he got to spend some time with his only child.

Midmorning, he was just getting off the phone with his supplier in Kamloops, who’d been both sympathetic and pragmatic. He hung up as the door opened and a woman entered. She stood at the threshold, looking all around, a kind of wistful smile on her face. After a while, he recalled that he’d seen her before, at the cemetery a week ago.

She met his eye, and her smile deepened. “It looks just the way it did when your dad was alive,” she said. “Except that it was never so tidy, of course. Did you plan it that way?”

“The tidy part, or the other?” he said, surprised at her question.

“The other.”

Michael looked around. “I guess I did,” he admitted.

“I thought so.” She came over to the counter and put her bag down. Her voice was strong, and she walked with a straight back despite her years. “Did you really think it would work?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”

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She seemed pleased at his answer. “I hoped you’d say that. I wouldn’t like to think you’d wasted all that time and effort, not to say money. I take it you haven’t? Wasted it all, I mean.”

“No, it’s not wasted.”

“I’d like to ask you why you did it. Would you think that’s none of my business if I did? You can say so if you like.”

Michael looked at her carefully, thinking back to when they’d crossed paths in the cemetery. Now she was in the store. He began to think that maybe it was her business. “Did you know my father?” he asked.

She smiled and extended her hand. “I’m Eleanor Grove, not that it will mean anything to you. And you, of course, are Michael.”

“That’s right.” He shook her hand.

She studied him carefully. “I’d still like to ask you why you opened this store.”

He looked around at the bright lights, the full shelves, the wooden floor. “It was just something I needed to do,” he said. “How well did you know my dad?”

“About as well as it’s possible to know somebody. Would you like to hear about it?”

Michael opened the counter and pulled up a stool for her. “How about some coffee?” he asked. “I don’t think we’re going to be disturbed.”

Eleanor told him she’d met his dad when Michael was quite young, perhaps four or five. “We didn’t plan to fall in love,” she said. “Sometimes these things just happen.” There was no note of apology in her tone, and the way she looked at him made him see he shouldn’t expect one. The affair had continued until the day his father had died, she explained, and throughout that time they’d loved each other.

“I wanted your dad to leave your mother when you were young,” she told him. “I expect that shocks you, or else you dislike me for it.”

“I might have once,” he answered.

She raised an eyebrow slightly. “You know, you’re not at all what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

She gave a small apologetic smile. “Perhaps I expected somebody less sure of himself.”

“You mean, a little crazy? Like my mother?”

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At that, Eleanor became serious. “John should have had your mother committed, you know. I always told him that.”

It was strange hearing his dad referred to by his first name. His mother had always said “your father,” in a way that conveyed her warped prejudice.

“There’s something I’d like to ask you,” Michael said. “Why didn’t my dad leave?”

Eleanor looked surprised. “You don’t know? He wouldn’t leave because of you. He tried to once, and told your mother he was taking you with him. He wanted her to get treatment, but of course she wouldn’t.”

Suddenly it all seemed simple, and he wondered why it hadn’t appeared that way when he was young. “Did my mother know about you?” he asked.

“I think she suspected,” Eleanor said. “She was determined that John wouldn’t leave, and she used you to make sure he never did. She turned you against him before you could understand what was happening. John was afraid that if he left you with her, she’d make sure he never saw you again. Your mother knew he wouldn’t commit her, you see. She was certainly deranged and unstable, a very manipulative person, but she was aware of what she was doing.” Her voice had become tainted with a bitter edge that she couldn’t hide. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t talk about your mother like that.”

He waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s okay, I think I’d worked it out myself anyway.”

Suddenly his life seemed clearer. Maybe he’d always known, at least subconsciously, that the way he’d felt about his dad was the result of his mother’s manipulation. In his teenage years, he’d thought his mother crazy and his dad remote; he thought that he came from a loveless family. He’d been too screwed up by then to recognize the ways his dad had tried to reach out to him.

“You know, I never saw him again after my mother died,” Michael said.

“Of course,” Eleanor said.

“I felt guilty about that, deep down. I didn’t know if I loved him or hated him, but I was pretty sure he had never loved me. I think it was only when I heard he was dead that all this stuff I’d buried started coming out. I started thinking about this store a lot: how I’d worked here over the years after school, the two of us in here

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together. After he died, I guess I knew I’d never be able to reconcile myself with him.”

“And you had a mental breakdown?”

“Something like that. I mean, it wasn’t that simple; there was more to it.”

He looked around at everything in the store. Fixing the place up had been a way of turning back the clock, he supposed, or maybe a physical expression of a need he still had to connect with his dad. Perhaps it had worked. He imagined his dad continuing on in the store after he’d left, and a question occurred to him.

“How come you didn’t marry each other after my mother died?” he asked Eleanor.

She smiled sadly. “We used to see each other every Thursday and on Saturday afternoons, that was our time. We kept it that way right up until John died. You see, I married, myself, eventually, once I knew John would never leave your mother. I won’t go into that, but it never changed anything between me and your dad.”

Once again there was no apology in her tone. Michael saw how much this woman and his dad must have loved each other.

Eleanor stood and said she ought to go. He walked her to the door, where she asked him what he would do now.

“I’m not sure,” he told her honestly.

“But you won’t stay here?”

“No, I won’t stay here.” Something occurred to him. “Dad used to build these model ships. Did you know about that? He spent hours on them.”

She nodded. “He burned them all. Built a big fire in the garden and set light to them.”

They were both silent, each contemplating the pathos of that act. All those wasted hours. There was still one question Michael needed to know the answer to, and he couldn’t let her go without asking.

“The night my mother died,” he said at last. “Was he with you?”

She looked into his eyes for a long time, then finally said, “No, he wasn’t.”

“Do you think my mother intended to kill herself?”

“No,” Eleanor said. “I think she was afraid she would lose both you and your father, and that was the only way she knew how to deal with it. It just went wrong.”

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“Because Dad wasn’t home at his usual time. He was always home except on Thursdays, when he was seeing you.”

“I know what people said about him,” Eleanor told Michael, “but I never believed it. I never even asked him.”

Her eyes held his a moment longer, and he knew that was the only answer he would ever get.

“I feel him here, you know,” she said.

Michael looked around the store. “I know. So do I,” he said.

She smiled. “He loved you very much. He always thought it was the greatest sin of his life, to allow your mother to destroy what there should have been between you. He never blamed her. Only himself.” She took a final look around. “And he never blamed you, either, for never coming back here. He wanted you to, of course, just to visit. He wanted to meet your wife and his grandchild, but he never said a word against you. Remember that.”

She left, closing the door behind her.

SUSAN WAS WORKING when the door to her office opened. She looked up, and there was Michael. Her thoughts scattered, and she felt the blood rush to her face, which made her angry more than anything. Dammit, why did she have to think of that night every time she saw him? She’d had too much to drink, that was all. She’d been feeling sorry for herself and lonely without Jamie there, and she just hadn’t been thinking. Maybe it would be better if she just came out and told him as much. Then she could just forget about it.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“I’ve decided to sell,” he said. “I want to put the house and store on the market.”

It took her a moment to absorb what he was saying. “You mean, you’re leaving? I mean, already? You only just opened, I’m sure if you give it time…”

“It’s not that. There’s nothing here for me now. You won’t need to sell the store as a going concern; the place I got the stock from will take it back for a five percent fee, and the building ought to fetch a decent price. You might try Ron Taylor. I think he was interested at one stage.”

She nodded dumbly, still struggling to take in everything he was

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saying. She felt as if something was collapsing inside her, and in her mind’s eye she saw his house standing empty and silent. She would look out her bedroom window across the woods, and there would be no smoke rising from the chimney. Michael would be gone, but she and Jamie would remain; their lives would go back to their previous rhythm. The prospect seemed bleak.

“What abut Cully?” she asked suddenly.

“Jamie and I are going to let her go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? So when were you hoping to leave? I mean, things don’t start picking up around here for a few more weeks yet. It could take a while for the house to sell.”

“I won’t wait for that. I’ll let you have a forwarding address as soon as I can. Could you mail the forms to me, whatever I need to sign?”

She was stunned that he would be gone so fast. A sudden irrational anger rose in her. She wanted to ask him who the hell he thought he was to arrive in her life, in Jamie’s life, the way he had? And then to just up and disappear when he felt like it, just like that. She thought about how Jamie was going to be without Cully, pictured him sliding back into his insular state. She felt unbidden angry tears she didn’t want him to see pricking her eyes. The humiliation of going over to his house that night returned with force, sweeping over her so that she felt heat rising to her cheeks. She just wanted him to leave, to get out so that she could be alone.

“Fine,” she said, and abruptly held out her hand. He looked surprised. Then they shook briefly, businesslike.

“I’ll leave the keys in my mailbox,” he said.

She watched him go out to his car and drive past her office along the street, which suddenly appeared gray and empty.

MAIN STREET WAS AGLOW WITH COLORED lights strung across the street, giving the night a festive air. Michael parked across from the diner, noting that traffic was barred from going farther. Stalls that had been set up earlier in the day were closed for the night, but there were still a few families milling about, eating hot dogs and getting ready to go home. Music came from Clancys back along the street, and in the other direction the hotel was decorated with multicolored lights strung across the front and a banner proclaiming the annual winter dance.

It was a cold night, a reminder that spring hadn’t really arrived yet, and Michael turned his collar up, his breath appearing in frosty clouds in front of him while his feet crunched on snow. The bar door opened, and the sound of music swelled and spilled with the light onto the street. He stood aside to let three guys stagger out drunkenly, then went in and bought a beer. The place was busy with people who’d been drinking for most of the day; in the press of bodies and the noise of music and voices, nobody paid him any attention. He found a table in the corner by the window, awash with beer and cigarette ash, and sat down. He gazed outside without taking anything in, thinking instead about everything Eleanor had told him. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he didn’t feel as if something lay coiled tightly at his core. This had all happened gradually, a result of coming back to the town, of living in the old house, and of fixing up his dad’s store, but he also saw that it had as much to do with something he had discovered in himself through Cully. The