‘Sure.’
Coop had his doubts. Some people drank a lot more than they should during the festival, and occasionally there were fights at Clancy’s. If Miller needed him the hotel was only along the street though. Coop thought about Linda’s advice. She was right. Things with Susan were going nowhere. If anything he’d seen less of her lately, and when he did call in at her office or meet her in the diner she seemed slightly remote in some indefinable way. The weekend fishing trip with Jamie hadn’t exactly worked out either, though it irked Coop that Jamie didn’t mind spending time with Somers and his falcon. He wondered why Ellis hadn’t done something about that, and decided Ellis must have been too drunk to remember their talk.
Coop tried to picture himself asking Susan to marry him. Maybe if she understood how serious he was she’d see things in a different light. He felt she needed to let go of the past and think about what was the right thing for her and Jamie. Once they were married, Jamie would accept it. He’d see that there was no point in hiding from whatever happened. Coop knew how important that was to Susan. All he had to do was convince her.
And the dance, he thought, would be the ideal time.
CHAPTER 31
Early in the morning Michael and Jamie climbed the open slope toward the ridge where they paused to look down on the lake in the valley, its surface an ice blue reflection of the sky. They waited until a pair of specks appeared high up to the south.
‘Ducks,’ Michael said and pointed so Jamie could follow their progress. Michael timed them to see how long the ducks took to reach the ridge above the valley. Thirty five seconds later they passed overhead and began dropping towards the lake.
‘Come on,’ he said and as they started back towards the road he explained what they were going to do.
‘We know Cully can catch the lure without too much trouble, now we need to see if that wing is strong enough for her to catch one of those ducks. We’re going to let her go near the road so she can get up high and we’ll try and keep her up there until another one shows up.’
The idea was for Cully to make her move before her quarry reached the ridge, otherwise they ran the risk of losing her in the valley. Within ten minutes three more ducks had appeared, following the same path, their wings whirring in the still air. Cully watched them, her feet tensing on the glove, flattening her feathers against her body. She was hungry. Michael let the ducks pass overhead. He waited until they were out of sight before he removed the leash and jesses.
‘Ready?’ he asked. Jamie nodded, his expression lit with a mixture of excitement and anxiety.
Michael raised his fist above his head and Cully opened her wings, allowing the breeze to tease her feathers, and then she launched herself into the air and began rising with rapid wing-beats. Together they watched her circle and gain height as she found a thermal to carry her aloft. Within a minute she was barely visible, no more than a distant speck. To the south a pair of ducks appeared flying rapidly above the trees.
‘Look there,’ Michael said, pointing them out. All they could do was watch, spectators to a natural drama that would determine Cully’s fate. After all her training she was strong again. It only remained to put her wing to this final test.
As the ducks flew overhead they were unaware of the falcon’s presence high above them towards the ridge where she had drifted. Then, without warning they appeared to sense danger and they abruptly broke formation and began to lose height. Aware that safety lay in the forested slopes of the valley across the ridge, they dropped towards the snow, where experience or instinct told them they were a more difficult target. But Cully was a wild falcon with plenty of her own experience, and she had already singled out the duck whose path presented her with the best angle of attack, and in an instant her wings folded and she plummeted towards the earth.
She was travelling so fast that she was no more than a blur, and her desperate target seemed to know its fate hung in the balance. Several times in the course of a few seconds it changed direction slightly in an attempt to disrupt the falcon’s aim. Each time Cully responded with a minute adjustment of her own so that for a fraction of a moment she appeared to waver. It was over incredibly quickly. The duck abandoned its tactic and made a headlong dash for the ridge, but before it could get there the two shapes merged in a blur of motion. From the ground it looked like Cully had missed. She flew right past, leveling out with rapid wing strokes as she began to turn. Behind her a puff of plumage fluttered in the breeze and the duck was no longer flying, but instead hurtled downward.
Though it happened too fast to see with the naked eye, Michael knew from accounts he’d read that the duck was already dead. When Cully struck, her powerful back talons had broken the duck’s neck. Now she turned and with perfect timing caught the corpse twenty feet above the snow and carried it down.
When they reached her, Cully had already plucked part of the duck’s breast, exposing the flesh beneath. They let her eat. She was a wild falcon again, Michael thought. There was no longer any reason to keep her. He could use his knife to cut away the bell and the leather anklets her jesses fastened to and they could simply stand back and watch until she finished. She would take to the air and fly out over the valley and the task he had undertaken would be finished.
Jamie’s eyes shone with excitement. Michael tried to recall if he had ever told him that one day they would let her go. He wasn’t sure that he had, at least in so many words.
‘She’s ready,’ Michael said. Jamie looked at him questioningly and then comprehension darkened his eyes. Michael gestured towards the distant valley, the wide open sky and the mountains beyond. ‘That’s where she belongs.’
Jamie nodded his understanding, but his eyes glistened with tears, and Michael thought it wouldn’t hurt to give him a few days to get used to the idea. They ought to make it an occasion.
‘How about we do it this at the weekend, okay?’ he said. ‘We’ll bring her up her and you can put the glove on and you can be the one to let her go.’
Jamie nodded again, his eyes on Cully, and Michael was sure that Jamie understood it was the right thing to do, that it was what it had all been for. Michael reached over and laid a reassuring hand on Jamie’s shoulder. Together they had made a journey of sorts, Michael thought, and perhaps they had also made journeys of their own. He felt a swelling of affection for Jamie, who reminded him of himself as a boy. They were almost like a father and a son, Michael thought.
CHAPTER 32
During a week of trading Michael had taken a total of fifty-six dollars and twenty-two cents from three customers. He spent his time reading, and sometimes just looking around at what he’d created with a sense of bemusement.
He was making coffee when he heard the door buzzer. He looked around the corner as a well-dressed woman paused at the threshold, looking around the store wearing a kind of wistful smile. She looked to be in her sixties or seventies, and the beauty she would have been in her youth was still evident. He had seen her before, at the cemetery a week ago.
She saw him and her smile deepened. ‘It looks just the way it did when your dad was alive. Except that it was never so tidy of course. Did you plan it that way?’
‘I suppose I did,’ he admitted. He wondered if she had been one of his dad’s regular customers, but he guessed she had been more than that.
She came over to the counter. ‘Did you really think it would work?’
‘As a business?’ He hesitated then shook his head. ‘No.’
‘I had a feeling you’d say that. I’m glad.’
‘You are?’
‘Yes, I wouldn’t like to think you’d wasted all that effort and money. I take it you haven’t? Wasted it all I mean.’
‘No, I don’t think I have.’
‘Can I ask you why you did it? Or would you think that’s none of my business? You can say so if you like.’
Michael looked at her carefully, searching for a memory that he couldn’t find. ‘Did you know my father?’
He shook her hand. ‘Have we ever met before?’
‘No, though I feel I know you.’
‘I saw you the other day at the cemetery. Was it you who left flowers on my parents’ grave?’
‘Yes, that was me. I’m sorry I didn’t stay and talk to you then, but I wasn’t sure it was the right time or place. I’ve been thinking about coming in here all week. You know, you didn’t answer my question. About why you did this?’
He looked around at the bright lights, the full shelves, the wooden floor. ‘That’s not an easy question to answer,’ he said. ‘How well did you know my dad?’
‘About as well as it’s possible to know a person, I think. 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 get disturbed.’
‘Thankyou. That would be nice.’
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.’
She regarded him frankly, and though he detected regret in her tone, there was no hint of apology. Their affair had continued until the day his father 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 and I wouldn’t blame you. And so since you probably have a very poor opinion of me I might as well tell you I tried to persuade John he should have had your mother committed.’
It was strange hearing his dad referred to by his first name. It made him seem like someone else that Michael hadn’t known. ‘Why didn’t he leave when you asked him?’
Eleanor looked surprised that he should ask. ‘Don’t you know? It was because of you. He tried to leave once, and told your mother he was taking you with him. He wanted her to get treatment, but of course she wouldn’t. That’s why I thought he should have her committed. There simply was no other way anybody could help her.’
‘Did she know about you?’ Michael 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 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, but she was also a very manipulative person. She was aware of what she was doing.’ Eleanor’s voice had become tainted with a bitter edge that she couldn’t hide. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t talk about your mother that way.’
‘It’s okay,’ Michael said. He remembered when he told his mother he was going to college. He knew she didn’t want him to leave, and he knew it had nothing to do with her being afraid of being left alone with his father as she’d tried to make him believe. He thought he must’ve understood even then, albeit subconsciously, that the way he’d felt about his dad was the result of his mother’s manipulation. He’d been too screwed up by then to recognize the ways his dad had tried to reach out to him.
‘Did you know I never saw him again after my mother died,’ Michael wondered.
‘Of course,’ Eleanor said. She hesitated. ‘Did you ever regret that, Michael?’
‘I felt guilty. I didn’t know if I loved him or hated him. It was only when I heard that he was dead that all the emotions I’d buried started coming out. For a long time it was easier to believe what my mother always wanted me to, or at least to pretend to believe. Somewhere along the line it got to a point where it was just too hard to admit that everything I thought about him was wrong. I was only a kid. I remember being here in this store with him after school, and I wanted to talk to him, I wanted to break down the wall I’d built up between us, but I didn’t know how. So in the end, after I left, I kept it all buried. I tried to make up for everything that happened by having the perfect life, the perfect family.’
‘That’s a lot to live up to.’
‘Too much.’
‘What happened to you?’
‘It’s hard to explain. Something snapped in my head. I guess I had kind of a breakdown, but it wasn’t that simple.’
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 an expression of the need he still had to connect with his dad. In some sense it had worked. He imagined his dad carrying on working 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 got married myself eventually, once I knew John would never leave your mother. I won’t go into that but it never changed anything between myself and your dad. That wasn’t fair on my husband but he never knew.’
Once again there was no apology in her tone, though Michael imagined she carried her own burden of regret and guilt. He saw how much this woman and his dad must have loved each other.
They talked for several hours, and by the time Eleanor said she ought to go he knew he didn’t blame her for any of what happened. The truth was, nobody was to blame. Often, he thought, the consequences of the things people do are unintended.
‘What will you do now?’ Eleanor asked before she left.
‘I’m not sure,’ he told her honestly.
‘But you won’t stay here?’
Michael shook his head. ‘No.’ That much he knew. Something occurred to him. ‘Dad used to build model ships. Did you know about that? I can remember how he used to spend hours on them, locked away in his study night after night. But I’ve looked all over the house and I can’t find them.’
‘He burned them all,’ Eleanor said. ‘One day he 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 having a different connotation for them both. There was still the one question to which Michael needed to know the answer and in the end he couldn’t let her go without asking. ‘The night my mother died. Was he with you?’
She looked into his eyes for a long time then shook her head. ‘No he wasn’t.’
‘Do you think my mother intended to kill herself?’
‘No. 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.’
‘It went wrong because dad wasn’t home at his usual time,’ Michael pointed out. ‘He was always home except on Thursdays, when he was seeing you.’
‘I know what people said about him,’ Eleanor said, ‘but I never believed it. I never even asked him.’ Her eyes held his, and Michael knew that was the only answer he would ever get. ‘I feel him here, you know,’ she said looking around the store.
‘I know. So do I.’
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. But he never blamed her. Only himself. He thought he was doing the right thing by not having her committed. Your mother was terrified of what would happen to her, and in the end he couldn’t do it. I never understood really, but now I realize it was because he still loved her. At least he loved what he remembered she was like when they were first married.’
Eleanor took a final look around. ‘You should know he never blamed you either, Michael, for never coming back here. He wanted you to of course. He wanted to meet your wife and his grandchild, but he never said a word against you. He loved you. Remember that.’
He would, Michae
l thought. But he had always known it anyway.
***
Susan was thinking about closing up when the door to her office opened, and when she looked up Michael was there. Her thoughts scattered, and she felt blood rush to her face. 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.
‘Hi,’ she said, hiding her thoughts. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Actually, I want to talk to you about putting the house and store on the market. I’ve decided to sell up.’
She gaped at him, completely taken aback. ‘You’re selling? But you only just opened, I’m sure if you give it time ...’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not that. I’m finished there. I feel like it’s time to go now. You won’t need to worry about selling the store as a going concern. The place I got the stock from will take it back for a five percent fee, so it’s only the building you have to sell. It ought to fetch a decent price.’
She nodded dumbly, still struggling to take it in. ‘What about your falcon?’
‘We’re letting her go this weekend. Didn’t Jamie tell you?’
‘No,’ she said, though suddenly she understood the mood Jamie had been in for the past few days.
‘So when were you thinking about leaving?’ she asked. ‘The market doesn’t really start to pick 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 probably go next week, but I’ll let you have a forwarding address as soon as I can. Just tell me what I need to sign and mail the rest.’
Susan was stunned that he would be gone so fast. She imagined Jamie sliding back into his insular state and felt unbidden tears pricking her eyes. A sudden irrational anger reared up inside her. She wanted to ask Michael who the hell he thought he was to arrive in her life, in Jamie’s life, the way he had? Just to up and disappear when he felt like it. But she knew she was being irrational and unfair, and Jamie wasn’t Michael’s responsibility. It made no difference though and she just wanted him to leave so she could be alone.
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