Cloud Nine. Luanne Rice
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flying the Fergusons’ friend Sarah Talbot to Maine.’
‘That’s who you’re taking?’ she asked with apparent amazement, staring at her small package.
‘Do you have your inhaler?’ Alice asked, pulling her away from Will for a hug. Seeing his ex-wife hold their daughter brought too much back for Will, and he had to look away. Glancing toward the carriage house, he saw Julian walking out with a man wearing a blue mechanic’s uniform. Time to go.
‘You ready, Secret?’ Will asked, hoisting her bags.
‘Please,’ Alice said. ‘I hate that name. You two can play make-believe when you’re alone, but when you’re around me, I can’t have it.’
‘You don’t have to call me Secret,’ she said. ‘I’m changing it. As of midnight last night, I’m Snow.’
‘Susan …’ Alice said dangerously.
‘Well, hello,’ Julian said, walking over. He had the tall, lean look of a man who worked out or ran a lot, with a stupid ponytail that looked idiotic with the lines on his face. He had to be fifty years old, Will thought. He wore an expensive suede jacket with his race car logo embroidered on the chest.
‘Hi, Julian,’ Will said, shaking his hand.
‘You know why I’m Snow?’ his daughter asked, her voice high and tense. ‘Because of Freddie. He adored winter, it was his favorite season.’
‘Susan, honey, stop …’ Alice said.
‘Sledding, skiing. Remember when we all went to Mt Tom? How much he loved it, he refused to stop all day, even for lunch, he skied and skied until the lifts stopped running and it was dark and we couldn’t find him?’
‘I can’t bear it,’ Alice said, her face bright red.
‘He taught me how to make angels in Newport. We lay in the snow at Trinity Church, looking out over the harbor, and we lay on our backs and spread our arms and legs and waved at the sky over and over until our prints were in the snow. Remember?’
‘I remember,’ Will said, gazing into her glittering eyes.
‘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