Cloud Nine

‘Stop, honey,’ Alice said, grabbing her wrist, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Changing your name won’t bring him back.’

‘He just loved it so much,’ she went on as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Falling out of the sky, lying on the docks. He didn’t care. Snow. He died in September, so I was September, and he always kept my secrets, so I was Secret, and he loved, loved, loved snow, so I’m Snow.’

‘Oh, God,’ Alice said, burying her face in her hands and starting to sob.

‘Can’t you say something to your daughter?’ Julian asked harshly, wrapping his arms around Alice as he glared at Will.

Will didn’t speak. He took his daughter’s hands, held them in his. Looking deeply into her eyes, he tried to reach her. She was wild, crazy with grief for Fred. Will felt it too, and so did Alice. Will had been so wrecked, he had resigned from the navy before they could kick him out. The overpowering loss came over him again now. His heart pounding, he tried to pull his daughter close, but she wouldn’t let him. She faced Julian with hatred in her gaze.

‘Don’t you talk to my dad that way,’ she said.

‘Listen,’ Julian said. ‘I’ve had about as much as I’m going to take with you disrespecting your mother. If your father won’t say it, I will. You’re hurting your mother, Susan. If you need to go back to Dr Darrow, we’ll see that you do. But cut the name bullshit right now.’

Will didn’t even feel it coming. The punch started somewhere in his gut, and by the time it got to his fist, Julian was laid out on his driveway, blood from his nose turning the snow pink. Alice was screaming, the mechanic was rocking back and forth on his heels, and Susan was crying. Will’s knuckles hurt, as if he might have broken them. His head pounded, an emotional hangover starting already.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said calmly, standing over his ex-wife’s husband. ‘But I can’t have you speaking to my daughter that way.’

‘Fucking maniac,’ Julian said, struggling to sit up. ‘No wonder the navy kicked you out. Fucking menace to society.’

Will considered holding out his hand to help the man up, but he didn’t want to add insult to injury. He gazed at Julian for an instant, making sure he could move okay, that he hadn’t broken anything. He glanced at Alice, ashamed of himself for making her cry harder. Then he turned to his daughter, tried to reassure her with a smile.

‘Sarah thinks it’s a beautiful name,’ his daughter said, her eyes wide, full of panic, looking as if the world had betrayed her, as if she had just walked away from a cloister or asylum and been horrified by the real world, what she found outside. But she had said the name Sarah, and Will felt something give. The anger drained out of him. He wished he were with her now, flying wherever she wanted to go.

‘Sarah? Who’s Sarah?’ Alice asked, but no one answered her.

‘Come on, Snow,’ Will said, his hands shaking. ‘Time to leave.’

Without another word, the pair climbed into Will’s old blue Jeep, and they drove away.

The Cologne Philharmonic was playing in the Marcellus College Concert Series that night, and Julian was a subscriber. But his nose was broken, and his mood was foul, so he was lying on the sofa with an ice pack and a bottle of Courvoisier while Alice tried to read. They were in the library, listening to Sibelius. A fire crackled in the fieldstone fireplace.

When she heard Julian start to snore, Alice lowered her book. She placed it on the low tiger-maple table and gazed at her sleeping husband. He loved her so much and tried so hard. Kissing him, she tiptoed out of the room. She wandered through the enormous house, listening to the wind outside. This was her home. She kept telling herself that, walking past portraits of people she had never met. Moving here, she had believed she was going to be so happy. She had found love, and it was going to save her.

At certain terrible moments in life, she had learned to make choices. At thirty-five years, set in ways she had been establishing for years, surrounded by people she thought she knew. Building a family with a man, raising his children, using his name. Going along, not happy, not unhappy, when the bottom just fell out.

Her only son died. They were all together when it happened. The scene was a nightmare, with no one doing what she would expect them to do and no one waking up in time. Everyone reacted in unexpected ways.

Nothing would bring him back, and Alice was left with the wreckage. A daughter who couldn’t stop crying, a husband who lost his mind.

Lost in his own hell, her husband turned neglectful. Had she ever loved him to begin with? She wasn’t sure. Being ignored when she had needed him so much made her start to hate him. He took his retirement, uprooted the family, and moved them far away from anything comforting or familiar. She had begged him to snap out of it, and he didn’t even hear her. She got a job just to get out of the house. She loved her new job, she loved her new boss.

And her new boss loved her. He treated her like a queen, a lover, a woman. They had an affair, but suddenly he was her whole world, so ‘affair’ didn’t begin to describe what they felt for each other. This was right, this was what she was born for, this was what God intended. So much so, she was willing to break her husband’s heart. Break up her daughter’s family. Her son was buried, but she imagined him giving her his blessing. He would want his mother to be happy.

Did I do the right thing? She would ask herself that question for the rest of her life. She loved her new husband, cherished him with all her heart, lay beside him at night and thanked her lucky stars. She quit her job to volunteer at the hospital because she was now so rich. But there was so much pain. She saw it every time she looked into her daughter’s face; she saw the broken man she left behind and blamed herself for all his sleepless nights. She knew he had them, because she knew him better than anyone else alive.

Walking through the big, empty house, Alice couldn’t stop thinking of Will’s rage, the fury in his eyes as he decked Julian. He’d been storing it up for a long time, just waiting for the right excuse. She blamed herself. Just as she blamed herself for Susan’s crazy name-changing, just as Will blamed himself for what happened to Fred.

Her feet felt warm in her fleece-lined slippers as she strolled the dark halls like a tormented sleepwalker. With Susan at Will’s, now might be the time to look through her drawers and see what she needed for clothes. With Christmas coming, she knew Julian wanted to buy her some special things.

But when she got to Susan’s room, she stopped still.

There, standing in the hallway, leaning neatly against the walnut wainscoting, were the two Gainsboroughs that Julian had given her. Alice stared at them, the beautiful paintings in their large gold frames. The little girl, the two small dogs. She remembered what Julian had said in the car on their way to the auction, about Will not being able to afford paintings like these, and she closed her eyes.

This was too much for her. She felt the weight of her daughter’s unhappiness bearing down on her shoulders, and she sank to the floor. Cold drafts of air blew through the rooms. Hugging herself, she lowered her head. Constantly preoccupied with Susan, she was too upset to be the woman Julian had fallen in love with. She was going to lose it all: her new marriage, her security, her daughter’s respect.

Sitting there, alone in the upstairs hallway of Julian’s stone chateau, she whispered one word: ‘Help.’

6 (#ulink_ad9647cf-fc34-5435-a4a7-26087b051d51)

Sarah had just opened her shop on Saturday morning when she heard the bells above her door tingle. That fresh white-yellow early light was in her eyes, so she leaned down to see around the sunlight. Will Burke and his daughter stood there, holding two white bakery bags.

‘We came last night, but you had already closed,’ the young girl said.

‘You caught me,’ Sarah said. ‘I wanted to go to the movies in Wilsonia, so I closed a little early. What do you have there?’

‘We brought you breakfast,’ Will said. He looked tan and sexy, bundled up in a hunter-green ski jacket. His ears were red from the cold, and the corners of his gray-blue eyes crinkled in the sunlight.

‘You must have read my mind,’ she said, grinning. ‘I’m starved!’

‘Are you really?’ the girl asked.

‘Yes, Snow,’ Sarah said. ‘My stomach is growling.’

Snow’s intake of breath was loud and dramatic. The teenager stood there, one mittened hand over her mouth; she looked pale, with dark circles under her eyes. ‘How did you know I’d changed my name?’

‘You told me you wanted to be “Snow” for winter, didn’t you? Just look outside,’ Sarah said, pointing at the snow-covered street, the new powder lying on all the rooftops and evergreens, on the statue of General Jameson Cromwell standing on the town green.

Snow and her father looked at each other. Some violent feeling was clouding the girl’s eyes. She had been practically wringing her hands, but she began to calm down. She took a deep breath. Removing the plaid muffler from around her neck, she trailed it across the damask-covered bed.

‘Let’s sit back here,’ Sarah said, clearing a place on her desk for the doughnuts, coffee, and juice. Doughnuts weren’t on her list of healthful foods, they were too sugary and fried for her, but there was no way in the world she wasn’t going to have one just then.

With Snow and Will watching her, she selected a French cruller and tasted it, letting herself enjoy every bite. That was her motto: Once you decide to do something, you might as well love it. Such ease of mind didn’t always come freely, but it was always worth the effort.

‘You’re going to Maine, I hear,’ Snow said, placing a small white bag on the desk. Sarah moved to open it, but Snow gestured for her to wait till later. Curious, Sarah slid it aside.

‘Maine? Yes, I am,’ she said.

‘The five-day forecast looks cold but clear,’ Will said. ‘No storms in sight.’

‘Why all the way to Maine?’ Snow asked.

‘To see my son.’

‘You have a son?’ Snow asked, nearly dropping the doughnut she had just chosen.

‘Yes. Mike. He’s not much older than you.’

‘He doesn’t live with you? How come? Does he live in Maine with his father?’