Anna From Away Read Online Free PDF Page B

purchase for its feet, or some way to fly. It was dead, forget it. Food for crabs, for fishes, its bones might wash up on the shore, picked white, she’d draw them, turn them into art. This was not for her to solve, there was nothing to work with except shock and pity, a dead end, forget it, an incident linked to nothing else in this place, to no one she knew.
    She drove home in a daze, the deserted road rocking her numbly until her high beams picked out a man striding determinedly along the shoulder, his back to her, hands deep in the pockets of a dark topcoat, his hair black and slicked as she swerved past him, he was not hitching, his hand was not out, but it frightened her, coming upon him, his long black coat and his black hair, bare-headed on a night like this, how could she have offered him a ride anyway, it made no sense, strangers, both of them, and even though he was much too far from the bridge even to have seen the dog in the air, Anna drove on, she was not capable of the kind of conversation that would have to take place, though yesterday she might have stopped, because after all, where could he have been going but to one of the few houses that had lights in them in the evenings, like the little house across the road from Willard’s, lights in its windows now, late, a car out front that hadn’t been there on her way out. Her whole body ached as if she herself had fallen from the bridge.… I live here. This is where I live.…
    A small dog turning slowly through the night air had altered everything for a few days, she had to erase it, but that was proving difficult. She searched her own frozen shore for the corpse, hoping to find it, but afraid too to see it maybe mangled, half-eaten, bobbing in grey slush. She interpreted shapes wrongly, sometimes crazily, creeping up on a clump of driftwood sticks or dirty brown carpeting, her heart in her mouth.

V.
    A NNA’S INSTINCT WAS TO IGNORE the knock, as she would have back home in her studio, working, but now a rare and actual someone might be at the front door. Maybe only Willard Munro, caretaker cum handyman. A few things did need his attention.
    Through the frosted pane she saw a splash of colour, and she opened the door to a young woman with striking red hair curling from beneath a stocking cap of royal blue. In her arms she held a small child of maybe three or four.
    “How are you today?” she said. “I’m Breagh Carmichael, from up the road? Will you look at that,” she said, laughing. She pointed behind her to a small worn sled listing in the snow. “One of the runners came loose but we got a long way on it, didn’t we, Lorna? Could I use your phone for a minute?”
    “Come in. Mine’s sometimes on the fritz but I don’t phone much. I’m Anna.”
    The woman brought into the hallway a rush of energy and youth, her face bright with cold. The child wore a pink snowsuit with cheerful polar bears on it, the hood drawn tightly around her curious, brown-eyed gaze.
    “The phone’s in there,” Anna said, “on the kitchen wall.”
    Breagh set the girl down while she dealt with the telephone. Her conversation, with someone she called Liv, was short and tense, Liv had not shown as expected. Anna knelt by the little girl who gave her a reluctant smile. Her cheeks seemed flushed. “Yes, I might be out in the sticks,” Breagh said, “but I’m not about to sit around for you until you’re good and ready,” and she hung up.
    “We were going to stop at our Uncle Red’s,” she said, “he’s just over the way. Weren’t we, honey? Not really our uncle, is he, but he’s like one. Not home or not answering, I guess. We don’t see much of him since his woman passed away.”
    “His wife?”
    “Girlfriend. Well, she was more than that. It’s been a big hurt, losing her.” She bent down and kissed her daughter on the cheek. “This is my Lorna.” She pulled out a tissue and wiped the child’s nose. “She has a bit of a cold, don’t you, honey, but