The Snow Falcon Read Online Free PDF Page B

something else. Just for a second, something flashed across his face, a flicker of apprehension.
     
    “You have to understand this thing from other people’s point of view,” Carl said.
     
    Michael stood up to leave. He guessed he could see what their point of view was. “Thanks for your time, Carl.”
     
    Carl followed him to the door. “I think you’re making a mistake here, Michael,” he called after him.
     
    Michael didn’t reply. As he left, Carl’s secretary looked up from
     
    her screen, then quickly looked away again without meeting his eye. He paused momentarily, saw her shoulders stiffen against him, her back resolutely turned his way, and for a second it seemed like a portent of things to come, the way his life would play out, and he was suddenly deeply saddened by that.
     
    THE HOUSE WAS situated off a country road a couple of miles out of town. An unpaved track wound down between the trees, full of potholes and, at the moment, inches thick with snow. At the bottom there was a clearing surrounded by woods, and a quarter of a mile beyond that flowed the river from which the town took its name.
    Michael turned off the engine and let the silence settle over him, punctuated by the pinging of hot metal. Just then the sun burst through cloud and lit the mountains, chasing a shadow down across the snow-covered slopes and the forest all the way to the clearing. The house was awash with light, and for a few moments it was as if somebody had thrown back dusty curtains in an old room. It was a two-story weatherboard place with a porch running along the front and side, and despite the paint flaking like burst blisters, it looked solid enough. He absorbed the feeling of being there again and felt a shadow of the past behind him. The sun vanished as the cloud closed over again, plunging the landscape into gray. The sky seemed low, pressing down, and the house all at once was desolate.
    The memories he had of growing up here were forbidding, and he pushed them out of his mind. Inside, the air was dank and still, and the walls felt cold to the touch. He wandered through the rooms, pulling sheets from the furniture. He thought the place might have altered after his mother had died, but it remained largely the way he remembered it.
    Upstairs he went into his mother’s room. The bed where she’d died was still there. She’d swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, late on a Wednesday afternoon when she knew his dad would be home, as always, around six. Their lives had revolved around long-held routines; for years, the only night he came home late was Thursday, when he stayed at the store to do the paperwork. It was just a month
     
    after Michael had gone back to college after the first break. He’d found a holiday job, which meant he’d come home only for a weekend. He remembered telling his parents the job meant he might not get home again until the summer, and he could still see the shock of disappointment in his mother’s face. The way something behind her eyes collapsed was testament to the fact that she’d been counting the days until he came home. She’d never wanted him to go to college; he’d always known that, and despite himself, he’d felt guilty at leaving her. He couldn’t imagine how she and his dad would get along together, and he’d guessed that was her reason for not wanting him to leave her alone. The truth was, he’d been glad to go, to be free of the claustrophobic atmosphere of this house, and once he’d left, he’d never wanted to come back again, not even for the holidays. He hadn’t needed the job—his mother had said she would give him the money—but it had been an excuse to stay away.
    The night she died, his dad had come home around eleven, inexplicably breaking the routine of a lifetime. When he’d found her, she was unconscious, and by the time the paramedics arrived, she was dead. There were rumors that he’d come home earlier, found her, and then gone right back out again,