She’d sold a house that afternoon to a couple moving out from the city so she had reason to celebrate. Did a cigarette and a couple of glasses of wine qualify as a celebration? Perhaps if she had somebody to share the occasion with, she mused.
When she finished her cigarette Susan went back inside. She thought she might run a bath and soak, then have an early night. David’s picture on the noticeboard caught her eye. He was grinning, but half his face was hidden behind a reminder note to pick up some yoghurt, which struck her as a telling but poignant reminder that life continued. The past faded behind the trivia of the present. She looked towards the window and the trees beyond and thought about Michael Somers alone in his house. She wondered what he was doing. Before she could question her motives too closely, she went to the hall and pulled on a coat and boots.
As she made her way through the woods, a light was visible from Michael’s house. Susan was beginning to feel cold and the air had sobered her a little. When she was near the edge of the clearing the door opened and Michael stepped out on to the porch. She watched him. Her resolution failed her. She had no idea what she was doing there other than she had drunk too much wine and was feeling melancholy and lonely. Part of her wanted to turn around and go back home, but another part wanted company. She moved away from the tree where she had paused and he looked over at the sound. She started to say something, but then another figure appeared in the doorway behind him, silhouetted in the dim light, and she stopped in her tracks and the words died in her throat.
***
For a moment Michael thought it was an animal he saw in the trees, and then he realized it was a person, and at the same time knew it had to be Susan. Before he could do or say anything a shadow fell over him and Rachel stepped close and folded 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 Susan was gone. ‘You fell asleep, I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘I’m sorry, it must have been the wine.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, turning to her.
She looked beyond him to the woods. ‘Was somebody there? I thought I saw something.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
She looked at him with a faintly puzzled expression, as if she picked up some undercurrent in his tone.
‘It’s cold,’ he said. He guided her back inside.
CHAPTER 28
In the morning, Susan woke to the sound of a vehicle coming down the track. She opened her eyes to sunlight coming through the window. Her mouth was dry and she had a headache.
She made it to the window and saw Jamie getting out of Coop’s truck. For a moment she was confused about the time. The clock told her 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 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 as Coop put 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.
Jamie hung back and avoided looking at her and she guessed there was more to it. ‘Go and get washed up,’ she told him. ‘Then I’ll fix you something to eat.’ He passed her with his head down, and she waited until he was out of earshot before asking Coop what really happened.
Coop scratched his head. ‘Well, we got to the cabin okay and everything was going fine. I mean Jamie wasn’t acting like he was having the time of his life, but he was fishing anyway. But when I started thinking about making supper there was no food.’
‘What do you mean? You forgot to take it?’
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 from the night before were starting to crowd her mind.
‘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.’
‘So what happened?’
‘The cooler’s still there in the back of the truck, but it’s empty. Only thing I can think is 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.’
She did her best to make it up to him. She cooked some eggs and sat with him at the table and he told her they’d spent the night in a motel. He hadn’t seen any point in staying after that, so this morning they’d driven back.
She was angry with Jamie. Coop was trying not to show it but she knew he was deeply hurt.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘What am I going to do with him?’
‘He’ll come around. Give him time.’
She could hardly believe his patience. She didn’t know why he persevered when all his efforts met with the same response. Except she did know why.
‘So what did you do all by yourself?’ Coop asked her.
The empty wine bottle was still on the counter and she knew how she must look. ‘Nothing much,’ she said.
She saw herself standing on the edge of the clearing as Michael turned to look at her just as a woman appeared behind him.
‘Susan?’ Coop looked at her worriedly. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. Just a headache.’
She couldn’t meet his eye, and stood up to clear the table. She felt humiliated. For an instant she clung to the idea Michael might not have recognized her, though it was a faint hope. She thought about having to face him again, and her headache got worse. She also wondered who the woman was.
‘I guess I should be going.’ Coop rose to his feet.
‘I’m really sorry, Coop,’ she said, aware that she was repeating herself. She went with him to the door.
‘It’s okay. He can’t hold out for ever.’
The underlying implication in that bothered her, but she couldn’t face thinking about it right then. She waved as he left then shut the door and leaned against it, her eyes closed.
She felt as though her life had drifted from her control and she didn’t know what she was going to do about it.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 29
By the first week in April the store was finished. The floor was sanded and stained, successive coats of polyurethane lending a deep luster and the walls were all painted. The sign outside had been taken down and a new board put in its place, dark green but otherwise blank. The counter ran along the back wall as it had when Michael was a boy. The shelves and fixtures he’d built were all empty and waiting.
There was no money left to buy merchandise, so Michael went to a bank in Williams Lake and took out a mortgage on the house and used the money to place an order with a wholesale supplier. A week later a truck pulled up loaded with cartons. As Michael helped the two guys unload he was aware that people across the street paused to stare.
It took him three days to check everything off against the invoice and display it all on the shelves and fixtures. Afterwards he put some signs up in the windows, which were still blanked out with paper, announcing the grand opening.
When everything was ready he locked the door and drove to the church on the edge of town, where he sat in his car staring across the graveyard. A bunch of spring daffodils from California lay on the seat beside him. Eventually he picked them up and walked back towards the cottonwood where his parents were buried. A figure emerged out of the landscape of headstones and angels and as they me
t on the path she looked at him briefly and smiled. She was an elderly woman with fine wrinkled skin and bright eyes, her white hair pulled tight beneath a hat. For an instant he thought she was going to stop and say something to him, but then she looked away and walked past.
When he reached the grave he recalled that the last time he’d been there, a few months earlier after his release, he had been overcome with a confusion of tangled emotions. Now, he felt calmer and he could think about his parents and the past with a sense of understanding and acceptance that he’d never had before he came back. He unwrapped the daffodils, and only then did he notice there were already fresh flowers in the vase. Remembering the woman he passed, he looked around for her, but she was gone. It struck him that the last time he was there, there were flowers in the vase then too. Eventually he laid his own flowers on the ground. As he returned to his car he kept thinking about the woman he’d seen, and wondered who she was.
CHAPTER 30
Main Street was strung with banners and lights for the festival. It was a highlight of the calendar in Little River and people were looking forward to the weekend, especially the dance.
In the diner Susan sat at the counter. Coop had asked her to go with him to the dance and though she’d agreed she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t just rather miss it that year. She had her seat turned around so she could see out to the street and Michael’s newly opened store.
‘I haven’t seen anyone go in there for an hour,’ she commented.
‘Nobody’s been in there all day from what I’ve seen,’ Linda said.
‘And they won’t either,’ Carl Jeffrey chipped in as he took a seat. ‘Let me have a piece of that blueberry pie and some coffee, Linda.’
Susan turned around. ‘You sound as if you’re pleased.’
Carl shrugged. ‘It’s not a case of being pleased or otherwise. I’m just stating a fact. I could’ve told him right from the start he was wasting his time.’ He took a mouthful of pie. ‘His dad barely scratched a living selling hardware, so how the hell he thought he could do better beats the hell out of me.’
Susan frowned. She didn’t particularly like Carl, he was just too smug. He liked to think he was an upstanding member of the community but it was well known that Carl’s car was sometimes parked around the back of the Sunset Motel when the waitress at the highway truck stop had the afternoon off.
All the same he was right, she admitted. She couldn’t understand why Michael had decided to open a hardware store when there was an Eagle store twenty minutes away.
‘He should’ve taken the offer I took him when he had the chance,’ Carl commented. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up to find his wallet. ‘It was a fair price. More than fair.’
Susan watched him go, his suit jacket stretched across his broadening back. ‘Asshole,’ she muttered.
Linda grinned. ‘He may be an asshole, but you have to admit he’s got a point.’
‘I know. I just don’t like that he’s enjoying being right.’ She slid off her stool. ‘I should get going too. I’ll see you later.’
Back in her office she sat behind her desk and tried to work, but she couldn’t concentrate. After a while she got up and went down the street, pausing briefly to look in the window of Somers Hardware before she went inside. Michael was leaning against the wall behind the counter reading a magazine. He looked surprised to see her. Things had been awkward since the night outside his house. It was never mentioned when he came by to pick Jamie up, but she was certain that he’d seen her.
She grabbed something at random from one of the fixtures and put it down on the counter. ‘I’ll take this.’
‘Are you sure you want square-head?’
She looked at the container of screws wondering what he meant. ‘Definitely. What do I owe you?’
‘You’re got a square driver then?’
‘Yes.’ She had no idea what he was talking about. She met his eye and felt her cheeks starting to heat up. ‘I’m kind of in a hurry, actually. So how much is it?’
He pushed the screws over to her. ‘There’s no charge.’
‘That’s not a good way to make money.’
‘You’re my first customer. That means you get your purchase for free.’
She didn’t know what to say. ‘Thanks. It’ll get busier when people get to know you’re here.’
He smiled. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t seem worried about it.’
‘Well, it’s not always about the money is it?’
‘I guess not,’ she said though she had no clue what he was talking about. ‘You’re sure I can’t pay for these?’
‘It’s fine, really.’
‘Okay. Well thanks again.’
Outside she paused. That hadn’t gone quite as she’d anticipated.
***
From the diner, Linda watched Susan come out of the store and go back to her office. She poured Coop a coffee, and guessed that though he was pretending not to look, he’d seen Susan too.
‘So, what’s new?’ she asked brightly.
Coop sipped at his coffee. ‘We’re busy, you know. Getting ready for the weekend.’
‘How’s that young guy working out, what’s his name?’
‘Miller.’
‘That’s right, Miller.’
‘He’ll be okay, once he stops quoting the rule book at me.’
She left him to take an order and when she came back Linda saw he was looking over at Somers’ store, and she wondered what he was thinking. There had been a certain note in Susan’s voice when she was defending Michael Somers to Carl Jeffrey, and it struck Linda that it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. Jamie had been spending a lot of time with Michael Somers and his falcon, and Coop hadn’t been his normal self lately. None of it added up to anything specific, but Linda had a feeling about it all. Three months ago she would have bet that Coop and Susan would end up getting married, once they both stopped skirting around the edges of things, now she wasn’t so sure.
She sat down next to him. ‘Are you taking Susan to the dance?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah.’
‘You don’t sound too happy about it, Coop.’
‘I’ve just got some things on my mind, that’s all.’
That much Linda could tell. He seemed preoccupied and the way he kept looking over to Susan’s office it wasn’t hard to guess with what. Linda could picture Coop and Susan together. She knew Susan had her doubts about him but maybe that was because she made comparisons to David. Coop was a good guy. He had his faults, but then who didn’t? One thing was certain; he loved Susan and would be good to her and Jamie. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy either. There were a lot worse around. Coop’s problem, and his undoing, Linda thought, was that he needed to speed things up a little.
‘Can I offer you some advice?’ she said.
‘What kind of advice?’
‘You can tell me this is none of my business if you like…’
His expression became wary. ‘I probably will then.’
She smiled. ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you sorted things out with Susan?’
He considered her question for a moment. ‘If I did think that,’ he said after a while, ‘how do you think I might go about it?’
‘Well, you could just figure out what it is you want to happen and then just ask.’
He nodded slowly. ‘You mean I should ask her to marry me, don’t you?’
‘That’s the way these things usually happen.’
Linda saw the uncertainty in his eyes. ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?’ she asked. ‘She might say no, right? But wouldn’t it be better to know that now?’
‘I’ve just never wanted to rush things.’
‘Which I think was the right thing to do at first,’ Linda agreed. ‘But sooner or later you just have to take the bull by the horns.’
Coop thought about that, and nodded as if she was confirming something he’d been thinking about himself. ‘May
be you’re right.’ He got up. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’
‘Any time.’ Linda smiled to herself as he left, and wondered if Susan would thank her for what she’d just done. When she got up, Pete was watching her out of the corner of one eye while he scraped down the grill.
‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘Hey, I didn’t say a word.’
***
When Coop got back to his office Miller was writing up a report.
‘Listen, we need to get something sorted out for the weekend,’ Coop said. ‘It can get a little rowdy during the festival.’ Miller looked at him blankly. ‘I mean, we need to figure out who’s on duty when,’ Coop explained. ‘You might want to spend some time with your family.’
‘Jen would like that, she wants to bring Katie,’ Miller said.
Coop wondered how somebody so young came to have a wife and child when he wasn’t much more than a kid himself. He’d mentioned it once and Miller had said he and his wife had decided to start a family early so they would be young with them. They married right after they finished high school, and Miller’s wife worked while he attended college. As soon as he finished she fell pregnant, right on schedule. Like everything else, Miller seemed to have it all worked out and planned ahead. Unlike Coop’s own life, which lately had felt like it was going nowhere fast.
‘If there was something you particularly wanted to do, maybe we could work our shifts out around that?’ Miller suggested.
‘There’s the dance,’ Coop said. ‘Think you could manage things around here on Saturday night by yourself?’
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