Sea to Sky (10 page)

“Oh! You’re Mike’s…” Alora was stunned.  With all of the people boarding lifts at Whistler on a Sunday, she was sitting next to Mike’s widow. She didn’t know what to say, but wanted somehow to express her sympathy, and more than her sympathy, her sense of kinship with the woman. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, then reached over and laid her hand on the woman’s arm. “I truly am sorry.”

“I’m Kelly,” the woman said. “Your name’s Alora, isn’t it?”

Alora nodded. She peered at the two skiers on the other side of Kelly. Young boys, German flag emblems on their toques. They rode in silence for a minute. A group of young snowboarders on the chair ahead broke into the chorus of Queen’s ‘We are the Champions’. No time for losers. It occurred to Alora that it was an appropriate anthem for her and Kelly today.

Kelly spoke again. “I— uh— Beth, Mike’s mother, doesn’t understand why you left him.” She smiled sadly. “But I do.”

“I’m so sad for your children. How are they taking it?”

Kelly sighed. “They’re so young. We told them that Daddy went to Heaven. Corenna — that’s the two year old — she keeps asking when he’ll be back. Jordan’s five. He put his little arms around my neck and said, I’ll look after you now, Mommy. I won’t make you cry, he said.” She wiped a tear away with a gloved knuckle. “He’s my little man.”

Alora squeezed her arm, and they fell silent. The chair approached a tower, with a louder hum and a soft clunk, then the noise receded and they were gliding through the cold, clear air. The two teenage boys sitting to Kelly’s left stared straight ahead, their skis bobbing gently to unheard rhythms. Alora saw wires leading from under their toques into their collars.

“What will you do now?”

“I guess I’ll have to go back home and settle things. There’s the house, three cars, all of Mike’s things. Beth volunteered to take the kids, but I don’t know. I’d like to sell everything as soon as possible and move to Seattle, start fresh in a new city.”

“Don’t you have family?”

Kelly shook her head, staring up toward the highest peak. “Only Beth and John, and my kids.”

They watched in silence as three snowboarders expertly carved their way across the wide slope beneath the moving chairs.

“Do you think it’s wrong of me to be skiing today?” Kelly didn’t look at Alora as she spoke.

Alora shook her head. “No. I understand. I can’t imagine sitting in a hotel trying to deal with… something like that.” And then, “If you want to talk about it, please, go ahead. I imagine talking could help you make sense of how you feel.”

“Funny you should put it that way, to make sense of how I feel. That’s the trouble, isn’t it? You of all people can understand me.” She paused as another tower hummed past. “I never thought, even deep inside, that I hated him, and early on for sure I thought I loved him. I
did
love him. I’m sorry that he was the way he was, but as hard as I try, I can’t be sorry that he’s gone. And that makes me feel guilty. I should be sorry. I should be grieving for my husband.”

“I don’t think I hated him either, so much as I hated what he did to me. He made my life ugly and unpleasant. He made me less of a human being, somehow. He should have been a kinder man.” Alora tapped the tip of her ski gently with a pole. “He had it all: a beautiful wife, two beautiful children, a good career. “ She suddenly realized that she was only assuming that Mike was abusive to Kelly. “Did he hit you?”

Kelly’s shoulders slumped and she sighed. “He never hit me, exactly. He would grab me by the arms, or sometimes by the front of my sweater, and push me up against a wall, and yell into my face,” she shook her head and screwed up her face as if she’d tasted something bitter. “Sometimes his spit hit me in the eye. Or he would push me so I stumbled, or throw me back into a chair, or on to the bed. And he would push things into my face — dirty laundry, or a smelly dishcloth, or…“ She paused, pressing the back of a hand to her mouth. “It wasn’t the physical so much. He made me feel stupid and incompetent and… in front of the kids. He took away my confidence, and my freedom, and my friends, for God’s sake! He wouldn’t let me see my friends!”

Alora slipped the ski pole off of her left hand and moved it to her right, then put her arm around the younger woman and hugged her. “I know. I know. You’re free now. It’ll be okay. We’re both free now.” Kelly turned to face her and Alora gave her a reassuring smile. “It’s okay to feel that way. It’s okay to be happy that he’s gone.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Kelly hugged her back, and gave a little laugh. The laugh grew, a small step away from hysteria, and Alora tried but couldn’t keep herself from joining in. The two women stopped abruptly and looked at each other in shocked silence for a few brief seconds, then started to laugh again. Alora felt giddy with a sense of freedom, and would bet that Kelly felt the same.

“It’s only right that you came skiing. Look. Look.” Alora waved her arm first in one direction, then in the other. “What better symbol of freedom than the view from a mountain? The clean snow, the mountain air, the vast distance you can see from here. The sky’s the limit, honey. You’re free to be who you really are. We both are.”

They were still smiling when the chair reached the top.

The Sea to Sky highway between Whistler and Squamish had been plowed since yesterday’s heavy snowfall, and Hunter made good time. The waitress, a cheerful older woman with a stubby pony tail, was just warming up his coffee from a fresh pot when Dan Sorenson burst through the double doors, stamped the snow off his boots, and strode up to the booth.

“What’s the special?” he asked the waitress. Even when he was using his inside voice, Sorry sounded like a boom box. He looked taller than his six foot three, had a massive chest above a slight paunch, and even when not riding his old Harley, he dressed like the biker he was. He slid onto the bench across from Hunter. “What’re you having?”

Hunter shook his head in wonder. They hadn’t seen each other for months, and all Sorry could talk about was lunch. The waitress told them there was no special. Hunter ordered a bowl of clam chowder and a toasted shrimp sandwich. Sorry ordered the chowder with a Triple-O burger, fries and a Caesar salad.

“Oh, and a milkshake. Chocolate,” he added as the waitress turned to go. “One bill. You’re buying, aren’t you, Hunter?” Sorry shrugged out of his jacket, pulled a large envelope, folded in four, out of the inside pocket. “Here’s some stuff from the fat broad,” he said.

“Elspeth. Her name’s Elspeth, and she’ll be signing your paycheck,” said Hunter, extracting two sheets of paper from the folded envelope and trying to smooth them out on the table. There were three photographs on the top page, two on the other.

“But don’t she remind you of the Fat Broad in the comic strip? Hey. Who’s the kid?”

Hunter didn’t answer. He was studying what was probably a school portrait, in the black and white quality typical of a fax, of Adam Marsh. Ken’s son. Helen’s son. He hadn’t seen Adam since the boy was eight — maybe nine — round-cheeked, always grinning and full of energy. Until Ken’s funeral. At the cemetery the boy had taken a cue from his mother and stood quietly, somber — stoic even. He felt a heaviness in his chest as he pictured Helen, sadly dignified, dry eyed, acknowledging the condolences of Mounties in red serge, himself included. “I’m sorry,” he’d said, holding her hand a little longer than the others did.

“Thank you,” she’d said, and a look passed between them. They shared a secret.

The boy whose head and shoulders appeared in the photograph had grown mature enough to exhibit his father’s mouth and jaw, his father’s nose, and his mother’s eyes. In a second photo on the page, the boy stood holding a bicycle with fat tires. He wore the rebel uniform of a nineties teenager. Limp oversized shirt, unkempt hair, the look on his face was impatient, a little annoyed, as if he were saying, “Hurry up, Mom, I’m late.” A third photo was of two boys — Adam and a taller, dark-haired boy — and the hand-written note across the photo identified the second boy as Nathan LeBlanc. Nathan’s sleeves were rolled up to reveal heavy tattoos. Adam, if not smiling, at least looked pleasantly at the camera, but the other boy’s face displayed a dark scowl. They both looked so young to Hunter, and he couldn’t help reflecting how much more worldly teenage boys had become since his own youth. What happened to playing scrub softball and going bowling and watching TV westerns in your spare time?

“Who were your heroes growing up?” he asked Sorry. His own heroes were the Lone Ranger and Roy Rogers. Becoming a Mountie seemed like a modern alternative to a crusading cowboy.

“What makes you think I’ve grown up?” Sorry threw back his head and laughed at his own joke. His hair was so blond it was almost white, and it fell in unruly waves almost to his shoulders. He sported a blond moustache but no beard. El had once referred to him as the Biking Viking.

“No. Seriously. When you were fourteen or fifteen, who were your role models?”

The biker’s face grew thoughtful. In a surprisingly soft voice, he said, “Fourteen? I only had one role model.” His fingers grabbed a packet of sugar from a little ceramic dish on the table. “My dad. You know. The guy who knew how to throw a football, catch a trout, use a shotgun, all that stuff I used to think was important.”

Hunter watched Sorry’s face closely. His eyes were on the sugar packet but his thoughts seemed far away.

“Are you a lot like him?”

Sorry looked up. “Not a bit.” He shook the sugar packet and ripped the corner off, held it over Hunter’s coffee cup. “More sugar?”

Hunter shook his head and covered the cup with his hand.

“Nope. Last time I said more than two words to my dad, he told me I was a waste of skin. Had to be over twenty years ago.”

Hunter raised his eyebrows. “Is your dad still alive?”

“As far as I know. I talked to my mom at Christmas, and she didn’t say he’d died or nothin’.” He tipped his head back and poured the contents of the sugar packet into his mouth, then made a face as he swallowed it.

“You had a fight?”

Sorry shrugged. “When I left high school. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I wanted to explore the world. He wanted me to work in the family business. A hardware store. Can you imagine me spending my life in a small town hardware store?”

“So you left town on your bike.”

“Nope. I had an old woody. The bike came later, after I moved north.” The waitress returned with Sorry’s milkshake and he took a long sip before continuing. “I’ve dropped in to visit my mom at least every few years, and I’ve hardly said fuck-all to my old man.”

“His choice or yours?”

“He pretends to be busy at that damn hardware store all day, and I just visit with my mom at their place, never stay for dinner. That’s not like me, is it?”  He snorted and stroked his moustache. “I guess we’re more alike than I thought.”

“Make the first move, then.”

“What if he doesn’t want to see me? I’m a waste of skin, remember?”

“Come on. Twenty years is a long time to get hung up on one single remark. If your dad dies before one of you does something to mend the rift, you’ll regret it. You’re a father now yourself. You love your kids. You don’t just switch off how you feel about your own child.”

They fell silent as the waitress set down their meals. Hunter tucked the papers back into the envelope. 

“Besides, didn’t you ever say something to Mo or the kids that you didn’t really mean because you were hurt or angry? Or maybe just tired and frustrated?”

“I guess. But you know me. I’ve got a big mouth and nobody takes me seriously anyway.” He picked up his burger, pulled out a piece of lettuce that was hanging loose, and opened wide to take a bite, then paused. “You’re right. You’re always right. How can you live with yourself?”

Hunter was busy with his clam chowder and felt no need to answer anyway. He couldn’t help reflecting that he usually didn’t take his own good advice. Although they hadn’t fought, he hadn’t spoken more than a few words to his own father in the past year. His parents had moved to Hawaii, something his father had insisted on in return for agreeing to move back to the Canadian prairies so Hunter’s mother could be close to her parents in their declining years. He had spent the seven years prior to his retirement as a railway executive in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Hunter only kept in touch by telephone on special occasions, and his mother usually did most of the talking.

“So what’s happening with this murder thing?” Sorry asked between bites. “Are you really a suspect? Did you do it?”

“Of course not! But yes, I could be considered a suspect. I had a … sort of a fight in public with the victim the night before he was killed.”

“How did he die?”

“The police won’t discuss it with me, but they let slip to the friend I’m staying with — he’s also ex-RCMP — that he’d been shot in the back of the head, right at the top of the spine. Instant death, no hope of survival.”

“Sounds like an execution. A professional hit?”

“Could be. I’m trying to get the lowdown on his business dealings. It makes sense that that’s the most likely scenario where a professional killer would become involved.”

“I saw a show on TV the other day where the wife hired some guy to kill her husband for the insurance. She thought so, anyway. Turns out she was trying to hire an undercover cop.” He laughed loud enough to turn heads.