Cover of Snow (2 page)

Club Mitchell arrived, gun at the ready; I don't know when, or how he knew to come. He was Brendan's partner, and his best friend before that. Maybe Club and Brendan had developed some karmic connection. Maybe I called him. He might've heard me keening—there was no other word for it—on that back stair.

Club scooped me up in his well-muscled arms and carried me to our couch. Then he must've gone back to where he found me, because the next thing I heard was cursing.

“No. Oh no. What the fuck did you do?”

I screwed my fingers into my ears, but I couldn't block out the sound of Club Mitchell starting to cry.

My parents and sister arrived next.

Again, I had no idea how they'd been summoned. I let them in, trembling in clothes I didn't remember putting on, awash with outdoor chill. The wreath I'd made was still hanging on the front door, its gay ribbons motionless in the still air.

“Oh, Nora, darling.” My mother stuck out both her arms, like tongs.

I stared over her shoulder as she enfolded me. My unblinking eyes settled on my sister, Teggie. She was shivering, her grass-blade arms wrapped around her narrow torso.

“Time,” said my dad, his voice throaty, but brisk. “Time is what you need.”

Unbelievably, fatigue was smothering me, and I yawned mightily.

“Heals all wounds,” Teggie murmured, her tone so affable that only I would've heard the bite.

“That's right,” my dad said, giving her a surprised, grateful look.

Teggie walked over to me. “Sit down,” she said. “I'll make you some coffee.”

“I can do it,” my mother offered.

My father crossed the room and embraced me, his arm a weight around my shoulders. I fought not to shrug it off, and my sister rescued me, leading me over to a chair.

“Nora,” my mother called from the kitchen, an apologetic note in her tone. “I'm just having a little trouble finding the—”

“It's all right,” I barked. Then I dropped my voice. “Right now all I want is to sleep.”

My father and sister glanced at each other, a rare private exchange between them.

My mom came back in. “All right,” she said softly. “That sounds like a good idea. Need any help getting upstairs?”

I squinted at her, my mother's face suddenly unknown to me, a stranger's. “No,” I replied in a tone odd to my own ears. “I don't need any help.”

I mounted the front stairs and sank into the yawning sea of our bed. After a minute or two, I got back out. My throat was filling up, my nose too; I couldn't breathe. I curled up on the wood floor, where it didn't seem to matter if I suffocated, down low, a place nobody would ever think to look. After a while, I reached one hand up and pulled a blanket down over me.

The sole, lone thing I cared about, in the entire shimmering universe, was
why
.

On the day of the funeral my family members appeared before me in a dark blur. I couldn't remember what I had put on, whether it was black, green, or nothing at all.

“Mom?” I asked. “Am I—okay?”

She didn't seem to understand what I meant. Her gaze didn't drop to my outfit; it offered no reassurance. In that moment my mother's face told me only one thing.

And all I could think about for the rest of the day—while snow splattered the cemetery and the Wedeskyull police strode over the rock hard soil, doing their stately, mechanical dance; when they lowered my husband's casket into a frozen rift in the ground, before gathering stiff as tin soldiers at our tiny farmhouse—was my mother's expression. How she had once loved Brendan like a son, but now she'd come to hate him.

Club was the last cop to arrive at our house afterward. Once he came, there didn't seem to be enough space for everyone else. He was a solid man, filling a good chunk of the living room, and he sloshed coffee into a cup for me. I accepted the drink without question, knowing I wouldn't take a sip. Club had brought his huge black Lab, as he always did. I was allergic to dogs, but today I craved the lighter, easier side Weekend brought out in his master.

I felt as if I had an invisible force field around me. Our small house was packed with family, friends, the gray-uniformed bodies of Brendan's fellow police officers, people who had known my husband all his life. But I managed to roam between them, cutting wide swaths of space, before settling, alone, in a corner.

Weekend trotted over. He butted my hip, liquid eyes downcast. Force field cracked by one brave soul, I thought.

Club was standing next to Police Chief Vern Weathers, who oversaw the room as if it belonged to him, and he had to bear the hurt for everyone in it. I tried to gather together a greeting for Vern while Club cradled his holster in his palm, eyeing me. These were Brendan's people, not mine, and while I felt comfortable enough with everyone, I'd never really become a part of them.

Weekend's rough sheet of tongue lathered my fingers.

When my nose began to run, I sniffed, but didn't take my hand away from the dog.

Not until Brendan's mother arrived.

I was still staring at the tight knot of gray-clad men, their expressions frozen in a way that couldn't be explained by the temperature, and that I didn't quite believe was caused by the circumstances either. These weren't emotional men. I didn't think grief would immobilize their features, make them move as if their joints were rusty, and cement themselves as far away from me as our small farmhouse would allow.

Icy air sheeted in, and I looked up to see my mother standing at the front door. It was dark out already. Two women came inside, their arms linked.

“Hello, Eileen,” my mother murmured, the name tolling like a bell.

Eileen had arrived with her sister-in-law, Jean, a retiring presence despite her bulk.

I'd always thought that my mother-in-law and I would have a lot in common. She had a love of archeology; I had majored in art history and restored old houses for a living. But Eileen Hamilton despised me from the moment Brendan brought me home with him from college.

Her black dress was stiff, and its style somehow wrong: oversized flaps at the collar, the hemline long. Funeral garb might be understandably outdated, but all of Eileen's clothes tended toward this, like a wardrobe from a different age.

“I'm sorry,” I told my mother-in-law, feeling as if I'd just admitted to something. Then I sneezed. Weekend rubbed against me.

My mother-in-law's mouth was the size and shape of a frozen pea. “Thank you.”

“I am too, Mrs. Hamilton,” Teggie said. “Brendan was the only brother I ever had.”

Eileen's mouth whittled further. “What do you intend to do now, Nora?”

I was trying to muster some compassion for my mother-in-law. She'd had one son die before Brendan. She was childless now, and a widow, too. “I'm sorry?” I said again.

Weekend twitched beside me.

A cough rattled in Eileen's throat. “Well, this isn't really your place, is it? Brendan's perhaps, although frankly, I was always surprised that he came back here.”

She was voicing the same thoughts I'd had earlier, but her words, their tone, made my skin grow chill all over. I patted Weekend, thinking hard, at the same time trying not to think.

“It's not even your house,” Eileen went on. “Jean must own nearly all of it still—”

Jean was standing in front of a table laden with serving plates and bowls, her wide back turned, and she offered neither protest nor affirmation. I watched out of the corner of my eye as she walked off.

“Mrs. Hamilton,” Teggie began. “I think you'd better—”

“This isn't the time,” I interrupted.

“No,” Eileen said after a pause. “Perhaps not. Give yourself a few days then. I suppose final decisions can wait. “

My sister's mouth opened again, but for once I spoke before she did. “It won't be the right time for me to decide anything for a while. Not until I find out what happened.”

“What happened?” Eileen echoed.

“To Brendan,” I replied unnecessarily.

Eileen frowned. Then suddenly she leaned forward, taking my hand in both her bony ones. It wasn't a touch; it was a way to keep me still. I could feel each slender digit, the points of her knuckles.

“Why do you think a man kills himself, Nora?” she asked, each word unflinchingly delivered, a jab in my ribs. “What reason do you imagine people will come up with?”

“I don't—” I had to work to swallow. Weekend's whine was a vibration in his throat. When I brushed my hand along his flank, he stilled. “I don't know what you mean.”

“Everyone else will though,” Eileen said shrewdly. “The police have been giving you a break in deference to Brendan, I imagine. But I'm sure they have questions about his last days.”

I stared at her, ruing the expression of incomprehension I knew must be on my face.

“Unhappy men commit suicide, Nora. And what makes a man unhappy—especially one who is widely known to love his job?” She spoke quickly now, words gathering momentum, like a train. “Why, trouble at home, of course. With his marriage. His wife.”

“You heartless bitch,” Teggie burst out. “They buried your son today—”

For just a second, I started to turn away. Teggie could take care of this. She would finish Eileen off, with her razor-sharp tongue, her fearless stare, better than I ever could. As a child, Teggie had her mouth honest-to-God washed out with soap more times than I could count. My father used to joke that the devil himself would turn away when Teggie got on a roll.

I swiveled back around.

“That's not why Brendan did this,” I said, ignoring the shaking in my voice. “We were happy, and everybody knew that, as surely as they knew he liked his job.” I paused to take in breath. “Did you think I wouldn't look further, Eileen? Because
it's not really my place
?”

On trembling legs, I turned and left the room, Weekend at my heels.

My bedroom was the only place in the house I could think of to go. When I got there, the door had been pushed open. Weekend gave a lone bark as we entered.

“Jean?” I said, coming upon Brendan's aunt by the dresser.

She turned with uncharacteristic swiftness. “Oh, Nora,” she said softly. “I'm sorry. I just—needed a little space.”

“Yes,” I murmured. “Me, too.”

Jean's soft face folded and tears seeped from beneath her eyelids. I looked away momentarily. The dog began to snuffle around the spare pieces of furniture in the room—bed, trunk, dresser. I felt a brief pat on my back, and when I looked up again, Weekend and I were alone.

I woke the next morning alone in bed, and I knew it must be true.

For a moment I couldn't think how to put one foot onto the floor, then the other; how I'd ever do something as simple as get up again.

True, then.

Someone had come in the night and sealed up my whole body in clay. If I moved, I'd crack apart. What did I do now? My face splintered, broke, as I wailed aloud. At least, I thought it'd been out loud. I lay there, waiting for the patter of my family's feet.

But no one came. That one thought—
What do I do?
—kept flapping and cawing in my head like a bird, until I remembered the Wedeskyull P.D. I clutched at the memory like a buoy. Brendan's fellow officers had stayed so silent yesterday, retreating as if they'd never known me at all. And not in a stammering, well-meaning way either. In a way that was wary.

I could start with them.

I sat up, my feet slapping against icy floorboards. Had this old wood ever felt warm?

I smoothed the rumpled side of the bed, patting both pillows—one that was damp, one that was arid—into place.

True.

“I'll do it, honey,” I whispered. “I'll find out why.”

My father and Teggie were in the kitchen cleaning up funeral detritus, a hundred half-laden paper plates, and cups sloshing with unfinished drinks. The house hadn't cleared out till late last night, though I'd missed much of it. They worked in silence, my dancer sister upending the cups over the sink with a careless kind of grace, my dad more arduously tipping plates into the trash.

I stared at the scene of uncommon peace, then walked to the fridge to take a look at the leftovers. I would divide up the food and distribute it to the bachelor cops. Maybe that would get them talking to me again.

I noticed my mother as I began rummaging for supplies—Tupperware, tinfoil—in a cabinet. She was busy at the stove. “Mom? What are you doing?”

My father looked up. “Tell Nora about her call.”

“What call?”

“Oh, yes!” my mother said, while stirring a pot. “Looks like you might have a customer, darling.”

“Says his name is Ned Kramer,” added my dad.

It took a moment, but a memory began to build. Ned Kramer was a reporter, fairly new in town. We'd met when he did a human interest piece on the start-up of Phoenix Home Corp.
Local resident opens business
kind of thing. I'd just completed my first big job, the restoration of a church that was being transformed into a residence. Ned had mentioned then that he was in the process of buying one of the historic homes on the outskirts of town.

“His number's by the phone,” my father said. “You could call right now.”

“I don't know,” I replied. “My head's a little far from work at the moment.”

The statement came out with a hitching breath. Only a few days ago a call like this would've been cause for jubilation. Phoenix was still in the process of becoming established; I needed every referral I could get. I would've told Brendan the news and he would've insisted on taking me to Wedeskyull's one nice, candle and tablecloth restaurant to celebrate. The idea that my business might take off had seemed like a dream back when I was an admin assistant, stuck trying to dig a local psychologist out from under reams of insurance documents. But now Phoenix Home Corp. felt a little like a favorite doll from childhood, something you knew you'd once loved but couldn't quite remember why.

My mother's hand was slowing down. She pulled the spoon around in her pot. I imagined something meaty and thick, a sludgy brew.

“I understand,” my father said, in a tone that said he didn't at all. “Unfortunately, life doesn't slow down for us.”

I began to slice a pie into triangles, wrapping each one in tinfoil. A small, tempting parcel to trade for information, and I never once wondered what I would be asking, nor why I should have to barter for it.

The phone rang.

I snatched it up. “Hello?”

My whole family was facing me.

“Hello?” I said again. Then I clicked off the phone and returned it to its console, shrugging. “Nobody there.”

“I'm making soup,” my mother said. “And there's also lasagna, chili, all labeled in the freezer.”

Understanding dawned. “You're leaving.”

“We know you must want things back to normal,” said my father.

Suddenly I stashed my bag of leftovers on the ice-cold cellar steps. My mother's recitation of dishes, not to mention the thought of all those wedges of pie, bleeding fruit, had turned my stomach. I wasn't up for a confrontation with the cops today.

“The store.” My mom was still speaking. “Your dad will have customers complaining. But I'll come back whenever you need me. Right, Jack?”

“I'll stay,” Teggie added. “I have an audition but not until the third.”

Later that evening, my sister served one of my mother's meals, and we sat over it for a while, neither of us eating. Teggie had never eaten in a way that could be called hearty, certainly not since she had started dancing professionally. But I had once enjoyed food.

She glanced over her shoulder toward a little porch. “What's out there?”

I pushed aside my full plate. “That's our balcony.”

Teggie stood up. “I know that, but what's
out
there?”

The smell of the food was too strong. I got up to clear the plates. “What do you mean, what's out there?”

“Looks like glasses.”

“Oh,” I began.

“Nor?”

“Brendan and I had a drink out there the night he—the other night. It was really too cold but …” I turned, refusing to look. Nor did I add—it would've been unnecessary, a detail that would only make Teggie feel the sting of her solitary life—that as we went outside into the frigid air, wineglasses held aloft in our hands, I had known I would be warm soon enough, with my husband in our bed.

Brendan had touched me on the small of my back; he'd called me Chestnut. He joked that instead of cocktail hour, we were having a cocktail minute. Brendan was always the one to suggest a dive into the lake, or a sudden look at the stars. Without him, I saw myself turning into a person I didn't like, wretched and worn, someone who didn't take delight in anything.

Teggie unlatched the door, and white pellets instantly blew inside, stinging and small. We kept a small table and chairs out there, but they'd been unusable for months. The chairs wore extra seats of snow, twelve inches high, and the table was similarly capped.

“What the hell were you two drinking?” Teggie asked as she came back inside.

“Close the door!” I begged, hugging myself. “What do you mean? Wine.”

“One of you at least,” she added.

“What are you talking about?” I asked again.

“Weird, isn't it?” Teggie said, holding up a glass. “It's not just frost—that's what I thought at first.”

I reached for the cold glass and stared at it. It was coated with a cloudy white film. The other glass was clear except for a scum of crimson at the base.

I brought the filmed glass to my nose, and sniffed, the act accompanied by an icicle of panic. That awful morning. How late I'd slept, my thick-headed stupor.

“There's something in this glass. In my drink. It knocked me out.”

“Who would've drugged your drink?” Teggie asked, uncharacteristically naïve. But then my sister had always reserved unique faith for Brendan. “Oh, no. You think that Brendan—”

“He must've known what he was going to do,” I whispered, cutting her off. The way he'd stroked my fingers after, instead of just dropping like a stone into sleep. How I'd felt him studying me in the dark. “And that he'd need privacy for it.”

I didn't realize that my grip had loosened until Teggie snatched the glass out of the air, just before it would have splintered on the floor.