The Snow Falcon Read Online Free PDF

dad died. There’s enough to start somewhere new.”
    Luck, Michael thought, had nothing to do with it. Back then the last thing he’d wanted was anything that had belonged to his dad. He wouldn’t have cared if the house and store had just fallen apart.
    Carl was warming to his new approach. “I wish sometimes I’d got out of here when I was younger the way you did. I don’t know why you’d want to think about living in a place like this. What would you do, for a start? You were in advertising, weren’t you? I mean, there’s not much call for that kind of thing around here.”
    “I doubt I’d be much in demand these days,” Michael said.
    “Well, maybe not in Toronto. There’re other places. New York. California, maybe.”
    The mention of the States made Michael think of Louise and Holly again. The last he’d heard, his wife had remarried and was living in Boston.
    “I wasn’t planning on going back to the advertising business,” he said.
    “What will you do, then?”
    “I don’t know. I’ll get a job of some kind, I suppose. It doesn’t matter what.” The fact was, he hadn’t considered the practicalities of his situation too much. What was uppermost in his mind was that he needed to be here, he needed to reconcile his life, and after that, he didn’t know. He didn’t know if there would even be a time after that.
    Carl changed tack, adopting a cautionary tone. “You’re turning down a good offer, Michael. I mean, it might not be so easy to get a job around here.” There was the ring of prophecy in the way he spoke.
    “Because I’ve been in prison?”
    “It’s not that. Jesus, there’s other people around here had their brush with the law. But, well, you know how people are.”
    Michael thought about Carl’s secretary and the way she’d acted around him earlier, the way Carl was acting now. He thought he was beginning to see how people were. “I grew up here, Carl,” he said, not entirely sure what point he was trying to make. Maybe it was an appeal of sorts, for some kind of understanding. He started to try and explain a little of how he felt, why he’d needed to come
     
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    back here, but Carl was already talking again, Michael’s words barely registering.
     
    “Little River is a small town, Michael. People aren’t like they are in the city, you have to remember that. Think about how long it is since you lived in a place like this. I mean, I guess you left here in the first place because you hated it, and let’s face it, you haven’t exactly been back here on a regular basis now, have you? Before you got locked up, I mean.”
     
    That was true enough, but Michael’s reasons for not coming back went a lot deeper than that, something he knew now he wasn’t about to explain. “Do people here know about me, Carl?”
     
    Carl seemed surprised by the question. “Do they know about you? Hell, of course they do. It was in the papers.”
     
    It had been a faint hope, Michael saw now, to think the news hadn’t traveled this far. “Maybe they don’t remember, or they don’t care. It was a long time ago.”
     
    “In a place like this, people have long memories.” Carl paused. “Listen, think about this. If you sold up, you could just go somewhere where nobody knows you. The papers here didn’t get their facts exactly straight when they reported your case, Michael. Plus, you know how things get twisted when stories go around. Murder is a touchy subject.”
     
    “I didn’t kill anybody,” Michael pointed out.
     
    “Doesn’t mean you weren’t intending to,” Carl said flatly.
     
    Michael didn’t say anything for a moment, and suddenly he thought he’d been foolish not to have foreseen this. “This isn’t about the town, is it, Carl? I mean, you’re not just talking about how the people out there feel about me?” He gestured toward the window. His tone had become bitter with disappointment, and maybe Carl misinterpreted that as