Snowfall at Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  “Pardon me,” Sophie said to him.

  He turned back, seeming more agitated than ever.

  You’re a waiter, she thought, get over yourself. She held out the champagne glass. “Can you please take this? They’re about to begin.”

  He all but snatched it from her and stalked away. Touchy fellow, she thought. We just liberated your country. You ought to be happier about that. She dismissed the incident from her mind. Focus, Sophie, she told herself. You’re about to meet a queen.

  Four

  The group on the raised dais at the end of the ballroom consisted of three of the justices from the International Criminal Court, another from the Court of Justice, a liaison from the United Nations and the queen of the Netherlands herself, whose bloodlines went back through seventeen generations of Dutch royalty. Sophie joined the rest of the prosecution team on a lower tier, where the event producer’s assistant had instructed them to wait. This group included Sophie’s best friend and colleague, Tariq Abdul-Hakeem. Like her, he was an assistant deputy to the ICC and they’d worked together on the case. She’d known Tariq from their intern days in London, years ago, and he was one of her favorite people in the world. He was also one of the most attractive, with the kind of looks found in high-fashion spreads—creamy skin and intense eyes, and features that appeared to have been shaped by an idealistic sculptor. He was a gifted linguist and had the most delicious English accent. While working together, they’d become more than colleagues. He was one of the few people in the world she’d opened up to, telling him about the situation with Greg and her children.

  “Are you all right, Petal?” Tariq whispered to her.

  “Of course, I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Quite possibly, you’re somewhat bouleversée by the fact that your ex-husband is getting married today.”

  She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture, even though she knew Tariq would not be fooled. “So he’s getting married. We knew it was coming. He’s a guy. It’s what they do. They remarry.” She gave a small, soft laugh. “Somebody’s got to finish raising them.” Despite her sarcasm, she remembered Max’s text message with a twinge, along with the perennial unanswerable question—was this career worth the price she’d paid?

  “Such a generous opinion of the male sex,” Tariq said. “After tonight’s ceremony, I’m taking you out and getting you so drunk you’ll forget your own name.”

  “Sounds delightful.”

  “Isn’t that what you Yanks do, go out and get—what’s the term?—shitfaced?”

  She sniffed. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You don’t even drink.”

  “But I buy drinks. I’ll take you to Club Sillies after this.”

  Sophie knew she would go, and she’d be the envy of every woman there, at the hottest nightclub in The Hague, a place frequented by the European elite. Tariq never failed to turn heads; he was elegant, with a subtle layer of sadness in his regard. The sadness was real, but few people knew the reason for it. Oxford-educated, one of the top jurists in the free world, he dedicated his every waking moment to the law. Yet as a gay man, and a Saudi, he struggled every day; in his native country, same-sex relations carried a penalty of death.

  “Anyway,” she said, “thank you for the offer. I really should get home afterward. I have work—”

  “Yes, Allah forbid that you should have anything resembling a life.”

  “I have a life.”

  “You have work—at court, and at the office, and in the field—and then you have sleep. Oh, yes. You also have that entirely dreadful sport you do.”

  “It’s not dreadful. Distance swimming is good for me.” She was always in training for some kind of extreme race or another. She never placed first. Ever. But she always finished. Every time.

  For Tariq, whose only athletic activity was a dash for the elevator, her sport seemed madly dangerous.

  “Paddling about in a wet suit in freezing waters is mad. You need to have some fun, Petal. You need a life beyond work. And don’t think I don’t know why you refuse to un-bend a little. Because if you were actually to have fun and enjoy something, that would interfere with your penance.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about doing penance.”

  “Guilt is not the exclusive domain of Christians,” he pointed out. “You feel guilty about your kids, so you refuse to allow yourself to enjoy anything. Simple as that. And clearly it doesn’t do a bit of good. Whether you’re in court prosecuting terrorists or riding a bicycle along Hogeweg during tourist season doesn’t matter.”

  “True. I’m still separated from my kids.”

  “Here is what you’re giving your kids—a mother who cares enough about the world to make it a better place for them. Do you really think they’d rather have you driving carpool to soccer practice and the mall?”

  “Sometimes, yes.” She knew it was unproductive, but couldn’t help wondering if things would have turned out differently for Daisy if she had been more present.

  “My dear mum was there every day, and look at me. A quivering mess.”

  “A well-adjusted person.”

  “An outcast. A heretic.” He spoke jokingly, but she sensed his underlying pain, different from her own yet somehow familiar.

  “Stop,” she said in an undertone. She and Tariq were both career-focused. Trying to escape the person he really was, he had made this court his life. “It’s all I have,” he’d told her many times in the past. “Fortunately, it’s all I want.”

  Sophie couldn’t say the same, so she said nothing. She saw the premier and queen moving toward them, and cleared her throat to warn Tariq. The queen of the Netherlands looked like everyone’s favorite aunt, displaying an abundance of personal charm twinkling in her eyes as she went about her duties, treating each person as though, in that moment, they were the most important person in the world.

  “Thank you very much for your service,” she murmured as the line of dignitaries passed.

  I’m a dignitary, thought Sophie. What do you know, I’m a dignitary.

  When she was presented, she responded with a poise she’d been practicing for days, dipping slightly into a curtsy, addressing the queen as Uwe Majesteit. It was all very solemn and ritualized, no surprises. No one would ever know that deep down, her Inner Girl was exulting. She was meeting a queen, a real live queen.

  Queen Beatrix was a lawyer like Sophie. Maybe the two of them would have talked, compared shoe-shopping experiences, swapped gossip like girlfriends.

  She imagined the conversation. “Have you seen the new George Clooney movie? I like your earrings. Which museum did they come from? What’s it like having an airport named after you? And tell me about your family. How do you make it work?”

  Yes, that was the burning question. The thing Sophie wanted to ask other working women. Here they were watching the rebirth of a nation, and she was fixated on domestic troubles. All she wanted to know was how Beatrix managed to run a country and still keep her marriage intact, her family together.

  Some things, said a quiet inner voice, you sacrifice.

  The queen was a widow now, her children grown. Sophie wondered if she had regrets, if she wished she’d done something differently, spent more time with them, had more parent-teacher conferences, restricted their TV, read them more good-night stories.

  Color guards presented the flags of the UN and the court of the Netherlands and finally, with grave ceremony, the flag of Umoja, planting it like a tree behind the dais. The newly appointed ambassador, Mr. Bensouda, took his place at the microphone. Behind him stood six attendants, each holding a ceremonial medal of honor. By the end of the night, one of them would belong to Sophie.

  “Mesdames et messieurs,” the ambassador said, “bienvenue, les visiteurs distingues….” He launched into the saga of his country.

  The medals were bestowed and praises sung. Her black dress perfectly showed off the token of thanks from a grateful people. Interesting notion for a line of
clothing, she thought, her mind wandering. Garments for dignitaries, with hidden credential pockets and necklines fashioned to display medals to advantage. Then she realized what she was doing—trying to detach herself from this huge moment. She couldn’t help it. Something was missing from her life and she could not pretend otherwise. How could she have a triumph like this without her family to witness it? The thought brought about a flash of resentment toward Greg. This was a big day for him, as well, though she wished she could stop dwelling on that. Still, it wasn’t every day the man who had once been your husband married someone else.

  A podium and microphone transformed normal people into long-winded bombasts, and Sophie was trapped on stage with the crowd of dignitaries. Tonight, she’d foolishly, recklessly had two and a half glasses of champagne. As a result, she listened to speeches about the historic event in a state of supreme discomfort, with a bladder so full that her back teeth were floating.

  No one seemed to be in a hurry to leave the dais. She couldn’t wait another moment. She had to decide which was the bigger diplomatic faux pas—leaving the dais before she was dismissed, or wetting herself in front of the queen.

  Sophie made her move. She took a step back, slipping behind the line of people as she followed the black snakes of electrical cables that connected the lighting and sound. At the back of the dais, she stepped down and slipped out through a side door to an empty corridor.

  She rounded a corner and encountered a pair of men in dark clothing, their shoulders dampened by melting snow. They stiffened and whirled on her, and Sophie froze, holding her hands with the palms facing out. Security agents, she thought. They were suspicious of everything. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m trying to find the lavatory.”

  She followed signs to the ladies’ room. Passing through the antechamber, she smiled briefly at the attendant, a sleepy-looking older woman reading a copy of a Dutch gossip magazine.

  Sophie used the restroom, then went to a sink to freshen up. From one of the stalls came the unmistakable sound of someone being sick. Lovely. What idiot would get drunk at an event like this? Sophie wondered. She had no evening bag, so she had to pat her hair with a damp hand and dab at her makeup with a tissue.

  A girl came out of the stall. It was Fatou, the girl who had sung so beautifully earlier. Despite her dark skin, she looked pallid, yet her eyes were clear, not bleary from drinking or drugs. She stood at one of the sinks, hands braced on the countertop, her hair falling forward. She turned on the water and rinsed her face and mouth but somehow looked even worse when she finished.

  “You seem ill,” Sophie said to her in French. “Should I try to get some help for you?”

  “No thank you, madame,” Fatou replied. “I’m not ill.” She touched her stomach.

  Sophie wasn’t sure what to say to that. The girl was clearly too young to be starting a family, yet there was something about her that Sophie recognized. A tiny gleam of excitement mingling with desperation. Sophie recognized it because she had been there, too, and so had her own daughter, Daisy, for that matter. “You’re expecting a baby,” she said quietly.

  Fatou stared at the floor.

  “Do you have someone to look after you?” Sophie asked.

  She nodded. “I am a student intern. I live with a family in Lilles. I suppose, under the circumstances, that is fortunate. But my hosts are not going to be happy about this.”

  “They will be. Not right away, but…perhaps eventually.” Sophie spoke from experience. At the same time, she felt a welling of sadness and regret. She hadn’t been there for Daisy, the way her own mother hadn’t been there for her.

  Fatou stepped back and straightened her dress, a traditional garment made beautiful by the girl’s youth.

  “Better?” Sophie asked.

  “For now.”

  Sophie placed two euros on the attendant’s tip plate and stepped out into the colonnaded hallway. Through a window in the high-ceilinged corridor, she caught a glimpse of fat white snowflakes coming down fast and thick, illuminated by the floodlights outside. Soon, the courtyard and gardens would be a panorama of winter white.

  “What does it feel like?” Fatou asked softly over her shoulder.

  “The snow?” Sophie made a snap decision. A very un-Sophie-like decision. She took Fatou by the hand and tugged her toward the exit to the courtyard. “Come. You can find out now.”

  Sophie was aware that it was risky to disappear even for a few minutes from a professional event. But she was feeling strange and reckless tonight. The case that had consumed her was officially over. Her children were half a world away in the sunny Caribbean, watching their father remarry. Never had she felt so disconnected yet also aware of how fleeting and tenuous some things were, such as snowfall in coastal Holland. A greeting from a queen. An anthem sung by war orphans. Or the youth of a girl who was pregnant before she was done with childhood herself.

  The arched doorway, shadowed by a pair of brooding security cameras, framed a world transformed. Fatou gasped and said something in her native tongue. Then she balked under the dagged canvas awning. Sophie stepped out into the fast-falling snow, turning her face up to feel the soft flakes on her cheeks.

  “See, it’s harmless,” she said. “Much more pleasant than rain.”

  Fatou joined her in the stone-paved courtyard. Her face lit up with pure wonder, reflecting the glow of the sodium vapor floodlights. She laughed in amazement at the sensation of snow. It now covered everything in a pristine layer of white. “It is, madame,” she said. “It is a wondrous thing.”

  Sophie took a mental snapshot of the girl with her face tilted up to the sky, laughing as snowflakes caught in her eyelashes. The moment with Fatou was a reminder that there was beauty and joy in the world, even in the most unlikely of places. She pointed out the individual snowflakes landing on a low garden wall, each one a tiny miracle of perfection.

  “They look like the smallest of flowers,” Fatou said.

  “Yes.” Sophie took her hand again. Both she and the girl were freezing by now. “We should go back inside.”

  She heard something then, a footfall and a breathy voice, and turned to see a hulking shadow coming toward her. “Go inside,” she said more urgently to Fatou. “Quickly. I’ll join you in a moment.”

  Sophie recognized the set of his shoulders, silhouetted by the exterior lights. André? She frowned at him. Staggering, he lurched around the side of the building, his dark footprints marking a sinuous path behind him. She wondered what had gotten into him. André was an observant Muslim. He didn’t drink. Sophie hurried forward.

  “André,” she said, “qu’est-ce qui ce passe? What happened?”

  “Madame,” he mumbled, and sank to his knees, right there in the snow. Then he toppled sideways, resembling a bear felled by a hunter.

  At some moment, between the time he spoke and the time his head hit the ground, Sophie’s confusion turned to ice-cold clarity. No, she thought, even though she knew the denial was in vain. Oh, no.

  She landed on her knees beside André, scarcely feeling the bite of the cold through her dress and her stockings. “Please, oh, please be all right.”

  Yet even as the words left her mouth, Sophie knew it was already too late. She had never seen a person die before, yet when it happened, she recognized the event on some horrible gut level. He emitted an eerie rattle; then there was a shutting down. A slackening. A release. She clung to a moment of disbelief. She had just spoken with her driver, a man who was dedicated to keeping her safe. Now some violence had been done to him.

  The hot, meaty odor of blood was so strong she couldn’t believe she hadn’t smelled it earlier.

  He was wounded in the chest, the gut. Probably more places than that. She couldn’t tell whether they were stab or gunshot wounds. She had never seen such a thing up close. As she knelt next to him, feeling the amazing speed with which the heat left his body, she felt as though her own blood had stopped circulating and she simply dropped to the ground. He la
y so still, his bulky form limned by the yellowish lights.

  Sophie looked around the area, finding it eerily deserted. She screamed for help, her voice echoing through the courtyard. She was edging toward panic as she tried to pat his torn and bloody overcoat back into its proper place. “Please,” she said, over and over again, with no idea what she was pleading for. “Please.” She pressed herself down on top of him, pressed her face to his as though she could somehow infuse her own life back into him. This was André, her friend, a gentle giant who had never done anything but good in the world, who was dedicated to Sophie, devoted to keeping her safe, wherever she went.

  Keeping her safe.

  Her rational mind pushed past the terrible sense of loss. André had come to find her. Not to seek help or to bid her a sentimental farewell. That wouldn’t be like him. No, he had forced himself to survive his wounds long enough to find Sophie for only one reason she could imagine—to warn her.

  Five

  Sophie had occasionally wondered how she would react in a crisis. Would she be helpless? She didn’t know. She did not disappoint herself by flying into hysterics or folding herself into a whimpering fetal position. Instead, she froze inside, her emotions barricaded behind a stone-cold facade. She felt as if a thick layer of ice insulated her from all feeling. It had to be that way. If she allowed herself to feel one single thing, she would fall apart. She would be lost.

  She heard a sound behind her and jumped up, terror surging through her. “Fatou. You startled me. I told you to go inside.” In spite of herself, she was glad for the girl’s presence.

  Fatou wore an expression of quiet resignation. Apparently none of this was new to her, or even shocking.

  “I am very sorry, madame,” the girl said. “Did you know him?”

  “He was my driver.” He was more than that, a man whose loyalty and dedication she possessed but was never quite sure she deserved. She knew he had emigrated to Holland with nothing and now lived alone in a flat on the out-skirts of the Statenkwartier district, though she had never visited him there. Now she wished she had. These were matters she would grieve in private, when she allowed herself to thaw out and feel something.