Falling From Grace (31 page)

A branch careened off the back passenger door with a thud. The rear end of the car jerked and pivoted. The back wheels floated free and the car listed downstream.

“Drive!” I yelled and Grace stepped on the gas. The engine roared and the back of the car slewed side to side while the crew cab churned up the hill, wheels spinning. Rainbow whimpered. The front wheels hit the far bank and the vehicle bounced and heaved from the water. The tires bit into rock and earth. The car came to a stop on solid ground. We sat in stunned silence, breathless.

A figure loomed outside Grace's door like an apparition and tapped on the glass. “You all okay?” The man stooped at the window and flipped back his hood. “Faye?” Roger Payne peered into the car. “What in God's name are you doing out here in this weather?” Behind him waited the second man, rain gear covering all but a soggy beard dripping with water.

“We need to get Faye and Paul to the hospital.” Grace's voice quavered. “Paul's unconscious. Faye's bleeding. It's an emergency.”

“They can come with me,” he said. “The truck will be faster on these roads. I'll radio for an ambulance to meet us at Midnight Bay.”

Roger turned and spoke to his companion.

“My partner here can drive the station wagon,” Roger offered.

“No!” Grace shouted.

I stopped halfway out of the car and gaped at my mother. “It's a logical idea, Grace. It's pouring. You're beat. There's not enough room in the crew cab for all of us.”

Grace rested her forehead on the steering wheel and mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Pardon?” Roger leaned forward.

“Take Rainbow,” she repeated. “Go”—she flapped her hands with irritation—“go.”

“I'll drive slow, ma'am,” the man said. “Don't worry.”

They transferred Paul with care to the back of the crew cab. “Careful.” I hovered close by. “Don't hurt him.” My whole body trembled. “Watch his head.” They lifted me into the front seat, Rainbow following close behind. She curled up beside me. Roger honked the horn and we drove into the night.

I let my head flop back against the upholstery. “Thanks,” I said, too fatigued to talk.

“No problem. We should reach the lake in a half-hour,” Roger assured me. “You shouldn't be out here this time of year and in your—” He shook his head in disbelief. “It can snow through to the end of the month. You were lucky Donnie and I came out to see if it's clear enough to start timber cruising.”

At his words, the losses of the past year poured down on me like the deluge outside, threatening to overwhelm me, drown me under their weight: the trees, our study, the nests, Paul's health, our baby. “Isn't it difficult to assess the value of standing timber in a clear-cut?” I snapped.

“Oh no,” he said. “We don't cruise in cut—” He stopped talking without finishing his sentence and concentrated on the road ahead.

An uncomfortable stalemate followed. The big four-by-four sped along the road through the rain on its heavy suspension, absorbing the shock in a way my old station wagon couldn't. Rainbow slept curled up against my side. I wanted to yell at the man beside me, berate him for his lies, for aiding and abetting the demise of park trees and our study site, but I didn't have the energy. I focused on the baby inside, willing it to send us down another path from death and loss to life. My thoughts turned to Grace in the vehicle we'd left far behind. Had she ached for my life this way when I was a newborn? She wanted this baby as much as I. And I had forced her out here, put us all at risk. Guilt pricked at me as I recalled the fear on her face as we drove off. Her reaction to Roger's thoughtful offer was uncharacteristic.

My heart lurched with a sudden realization. “What was your partner's name back there?”

“Donnie?” Roger glanced in the rear-view mirror. “Donnie Ransom. He's a faller, and a wizard woodsman. He lost his wife last month. I hired him to cruise early this year as a distraction. Guy can track a deer through a snow storm and live for weeks with nothing but a knife.”

Or a crossbow?
The mangled bow was packed in the back of my car. The car that carried my mother . . . and Don Ransom.

“Stop.” My yell startled Rainbow bolt upright. “Go back.”

Roger looked over his shoulder at me. “What's got into you?” he said, then peered ahead through the windshield. “There's the ambulance.” The truck slowed and bumped onto blacktop; the ambulance materialized out of the rain at the side of the road in front of an abandoned gas station.

“You need to go back,” I repeated over and over as two paramedics hustled Paul, then me onto stretchers and wheeled us into the back of the ambulance, Rainbow in front with the driver. As the siren came on and the ambulance turned toward town, a bewildered Roger climbed into the cab of his truck, doing as I demanded, and headed back. I tried to sit up, to go to Paul, but the attendant, who was fitting an oxygen mask to his face, cautioned me back. “We'll get through this,” I whispered. “You'll be all right.” But I didn't believe my own words.

I awoke the next morning in the Duncan hospital to find my mother at my bedside, holding my hand. Grace appeared older, her hair loose and unbrushed, lips and cheeks without makeup.

“You're here,” I mumbled.

“Where else?”

“Ransom,” I said. “He didn't hurt you?”

“No. He was harmless. We talked about his kids.” She handed me a plastic cup of juice with a straw. “Drink, you need fluids.” Dark circles shadowed her eyes.

“You don't need to worry. The doctor said I can go home tomorrow, but lots of bed rest and no exercise until the baby comes.” I drank gratefully, my body hungry for the cold, wet, sweet liquid. “You recognized him, didn't you?”

“He used to come by the blockade and swear at us.”

“Do you think he's the one who hurt Paul?”

Grace paused. “Who knows? I didn't ask and I can't imagine he would have told me. If I'm not mistaken, the police don't consider him a suspect.”

“He didn't mention the blockades?”

“Not a thing.” Grace adjusted my blanket. “I doubt he remembered me.” She paused. “The poor man's grief-stricken.”

I sank back into the pillow and studied the pattern of lines in the tiled ceiling. An eye for an eye? I felt ashamed. The police knew nothing, the man likely guilty only of a nasty temper. “How are Paul and Rainbow?”

Grace fussed with my blanket. “Your father fetched Rainbow home about two hours ago.” She gestured to a bag on the floor by the door. “He brought clean clothes.”

“I had an ultrasound last night.”

“Did they tell you the sex?”

The technician had shown me the monitor, the fetus curled like a fiddlehead inside my womb, the tiny disproportionate limbs apparent, the broad, flat nose. “Yes, Mother.” I lifted Grace's long, elegant fingers and kissed each one. “She's a girl. But what about Paul?” I said. “You didn't tell me about Paul. Is he okay? Can I see him?”

Grace turned her face away.

“Grace.” Alarm blossomed in the pit of my stomach. “Where is he? How is he?”

“He's gone, sweetheart.” Grace gripped my hand. “He's gone.”

29

Camille Grace
Taylor Pearson was born on March 19, in an operating room at the Victoria Hospital, in the early morning hours most inconvenient for surgeons. She surprised us by arriving days earlier than planned and I experienced a few hours of escalating contractions at home and later at the hospital as the infant's too large head inched along the birth canal. The doctor—a kind woman with liberal leanings— checked the baby's heartbeat, then mine. “Everything's fine,” she said. “The nurses will get you prepped for surgery.” She ducked out the door to another birth.

Grace hovered close with offers of ice chips, massages, advice on breathing. Mel and Rainbow wandered in and out during the brief period of labour, Mel charged with keeping Rainbow—who had insisted on attending the birth—happy and occupied. In reality, Rainbow looked after Mel. Whenever he appeared unsteady, Rainbow hustled him into the corridor for a glass of water or another cup of coffee. She fell asleep on the couch in the hallway during the surgery, Mel with strict orders to “wake me up when my sister is coming.”

I knew my daughter's precise instant of birth, 3:26
AM
, the slippery body lifted from an incision in my pelvis by the confident hands of the paediatrician. I had opted for an epidural, awake when the doctor announced, “It's a girl,” and handed her to Grace. The baby wailed and we laughed with relief at the lusty cry. In the recovery room after the stitches, Grace unwrapped her and eased her onto my chest. I felt my daughter's weight outside my body for the first time, her vernix-covered skin slick like butter beneath my fingers. We watched in awe as she crawled froglike toward the mound of breast, mouth rooting for milk. She latched on to the nipple, sucking hungrily. As the baby nursed, I inspected every square centimetre of her, her dark wet hair, her broad forehead and thick neck, her fat arms and legs.

“Her limbs don't appear abnormal,” Mel commented.

“It's often hard to distinguish the bowing at birth,” the doctor explained.

Grace stroked the baby's forehead, a tiny hand clutched around her free thumb. “Amazing.”

I remembered every detail: the flavour of the frozen blueberries Grace fed me during labour, the cold, sweet juice in my mouth, the smell of antiseptic, the surprise of the curious nurses who dropped by to see the unusual infant and exclaimed, “But she's so pretty.” The assurance in the doctor's expression as she announced the baby a healthy little girl. “We'll have to keep close tabs on her limb development and no question her air passages are small,” she added, “but you've been fortunate.”

“Excellent genes,” Mel said from the chair in the corner. Rainbow stood on a stool at my bedside. “I have a sister,” she boasted. “I think she has Paul's forehead.”

We had buried him in the city graveyard by the sea under an ancient Douglas-fir. The forest defenders were all present, including Marcel, who flew in from Hudson Bay. Paul's sister had sent a telegram, expressing her remorse at not being able to leave her own family to be present. It had taken Sue a solid week to track her down. The unexpected arrival of Roger Payne and Don Ransom caused a stir in the group, but the men only stayed for the short service, declining Mr. Kimori's invitation to his home for tea afterward.

Sergeant Lange had appeared as the pall bearers lowered the coffin into the grave. He waited for me by the car and offered his condolences. “Anything new?” I said, not knowing what else to say. I had presented him with the crossbow a few days after Paul died.

“Sorry, the winter rains washed away any fingerprints.”

I had cornered Billy and Chuck at the reception. “Did you ever see Donnie Ransom with anything suspicious?”

“Like what?” Chuck fidgeted with his drink.

“A bow, rubber-tipped arrows.”

“Nope,” he said. “He talked a lot about hunting, but only with guns.”

“The police asked us all these questions last year, Dr. Pearson,” Billy had added. “I'm sorry. If I knew who hurt him, I'd tell you.”

I fingered the soft flannel receiving blanket swaddled around my daughter. Poor fatherless thing. I stroked the downy swirl of hair at the crown of her head. Rainbow was right. The baby had Paul's high forehead. Her pupils, the opaque blue of infancy, might turn lichen-green over time. Would she share Paul's happy-go-lucky attitude to life? A sense of humour was an asset for a dwarf. The ability to shed teasing like water off her back. On the bedside table a vase of mums and roses overflowed with colour. A gift from Bryan.

Mel was last to hold the baby. “What if I drop her?” he said from the easy chair in the corner.

“You won't,” Rainbow insisted. “You're a dad, aren't you?”

Grace lifted the baby from my arms and carried her over. “Take extra care with her head and neck,” she instructed as she transferred the infant into his arms.

“Her brilliant brain must be larger than average,” Mel said. He shifted in his chair and peered into his granddaughter's face, at the thick eyelashes that fanned across her cheeks, as if she were a difficult mathematical equation he couldn't quite grasp. He removed his glasses with his free hand and bent closer. “She has my grandmother's nose,” he said. “I wonder if she'll excel at math?”

“I'll teach her.” Rainbow balanced on her stomach over the arm of the chair as if she couldn't get close enough to both of them.

We all laughed.

“Do you have a name picked out yet?” Mel asked, attention focused on the baby.

I hesitated. “How about . . . Camille?”

“What?” His head jerked up and he blinked, then returned his glasses to the bridge of his nose. “Camille was my grandmother's name.”