The Edge of Winter

by Luanne Rice

  Lying on her bed, feeling the room spinning around, Mickey pictured him in all sorts of terrible situations: hiding, scared, even kidnapped. Or—and this was almost the worst—on a secret vacation with the woman he now loved more than Mickey and her mother. Was he drinking again? The thought was a knife in her back. Not only that, but Mickey now had to worry about the owl and the U-boat, and what it all meant.

  “Hurry, honey,” her mother said. “We have to go.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to wait,” Mickey said. “I can get on the bus myself.”

  “I’m going to drive you,” her mother said.

  “No. Jenna’s meeting me on the bus,” Mickey said.

  Her mother hesitated. Mickey’s stomach was a hard knot. She had heard her mother on the phone with Chris, and also with Nicola. There was a warrant out for Mickey’s father’s arrest—just because he hadn’t been able to pay child support. Mickey swallowed hard—why couldn’t she get everyone to understand she didn’t need money, didn’t need that kind of support? Her father was a wanted man, and Mickey felt that the world was ending. Her mother and the court were giving him reasons to keep running, drinking, staying away. Mickey didn’t want to add to that.

  “Mickey, I know you’re upset,” her mother said.

  “Just tell the judge we don’t need the money,” Mickey begged. “You work—and I’ll get an after-school job.”

  “Honey, aside from the fact that we do need the money, it’s out of my hands right now. The problem is, your father defied a court order….”

  “But if you hadn’t taken him to court in the first place, none of this would have happened!”

  “Mickey, I know you’re upset, but you don’t understand. Divorce is hard on everyone—hardest on you, I know. I’m sure your father will explain when he comes back from wherever he is….”

  “He could be hurt! He could have amnesia!” Mickey shook, all the awful scenarios coming back now. She had called her father’s house, cell, and office numbers many times in the last two days. She had even tried his girlfriend’s cell phone, but it was turned off, and all she’d gotten was Alyssa’s soft voice saying “I’m not here right now, you know what to do….”

  “I think he’s fine,” her mother said. Something about her tone made Mickey even more upset: it was as if her mother was trying to reassure her while not letting her father off the hook.

  “He can’t be fine. Otherwise he’d have called me. I left him messages about my wrist—he wouldn’t ignore those. He must be hiding, so scared about being arrested. Mom, you have to tell the judge you’ve changed your mind, you don’t need the money anymore. Please!”

  “Mickey. He missed some payments on our insurance, so now we’re not covered. Do you know how much that hospital visit cost? I don’t like to talk about the details of this with you, but I want you to understand—I’m not happy that your father is in trouble. It makes me sad….”

  Just hearing those words made Mickey’s heart feel as if it were flooding with tears. They were trapped there, in her chest, unable to make it to her eyes. She thought back just three years, to when her father had still lived at home. They had been such a good family. Yes, he drank, but they had all loved each other. She looked at his spot at the table; even now, she never stopped hoping he’d sit there again.

  “I’m late, I have to get to the bus,” Mickey said, closing her eyes because she couldn’t look anymore, and she couldn’t listen either. Her broken wrist throbbed, and she felt worried about the beach, but those things were nothing compared to this.

  “Do you need money?”

  “No,” she said, thinking of the school trip. “I don’t need anything at all.”

  Her mother helped her bundle up against the cold, kissed her as she walked out the door. Mickey could feel her eyes on her back as she hurried down the sidewalk, could almost feel her mother’s concern enveloping her like a big wool blanket. She both needed it and wanted to shake it off. In a way she wished she’d let her mother drive her, and in a way she wanted to just disappear from sight and go searching for her father—get to him before the police did.

  The yellow bus rumbled into sight, rounding the shady snow-banked wooded corner, stopping for Mickey. She climbed on, feeling a blast of heat. Saying hi to the driver, she made her way up the aisle. She wished Shane took her bus, but he lived on another route. Kids greeted her, commenting on her cast. She walked all the way to the back, looking for Jenna.

  But when she got to the seat where they usually sat, Jenna was there with Tripp Livingston. Mickey stared, startled, took the empty seat across the aisle. She glanced over, saw them holding hands.

  “Hey, Mick,” Jenna said. “You made it today.”

  “How’s it going?” Tripp asked.

  “Fine,” Mickey said, stung. How could her best friend not have told her she’d made it to the holding-hands stage? She’d long known that Jenna pined for Tripp from afar, texted with him a couple of times, had even hung out with him at the beach—where juniors and seniors went to drink—one Saturday night. But holding hands on the bus? And letting him sit in Mickey’s spot? She felt as if she’d swallowed a hot coal, and it didn’t help that Tripp was best friends with the kid whose father was trying to remove the U-boat.

  She sat alone, gazing out the window. The ground was still covered with snow from last week; the beach pines slanted in the winter wind. She heard Jenna and Tripp softly whispering across the aisle. They were talking about Washington, what they’d do on the school trip. Mickey pictured clouds of pink-white cherry blossoms, shimmering around the alabaster monuments. Her eyes blurred with tears. She had been to Washington with her parents once; they had held hands, climbing the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

  When the bus passed the narrow road that led to Refuge Beach—the site of Mickey’s accident and the location of the snowy owl—Mickey’s heart bumped. In spite of all the awful stuff going on, and the fact that she was going to miss going to Washington, she dried her eyes and took comfort in thinking of the owl—just as Shane had told her to do the day she’d fallen off her bike.

  Mickey and Jenna had seen it together. It was the best bird either of them had on their life lists. Turning toward Jenna, to smile and lock gazes and share that amazing memory, she saw her best friend looking away.

  “Jenna,” Mickey said. “Remember—the dunes?”

  “Huh,” Jenna said.

  “What about the dunes?” Tripp asked. “What’s there?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” Jenna said. “Just an owl.”

  Just an owl? Mickey stared at her, but Jenna wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Aren’t you a little old for bird-watching?” Tripp chuckled.

  “We weren’t bird-watching,” Jenna said. “We just happened to be taking a bike ride.”

  Mickey turned away, shocked. She stared out the window as the bus rambled along the coast road, watching the blue Atlantic flash through the thick scrub pines. She caught a glimpse of one perfect wave breaking, and she imagined she saw a surfer riding its crest, in toward the beach and the owl that lived in the dunes. She thought of her father, somewhere far from home, in a world that had already fallen apart, and the tears came back.

  Tim O’Casey sat at his desk, trying to get through all the postings that had come in from rangers at other parks during the night. Caffeine from the big cup of coffee he’d picked up at the twenty-four-hour gas station after his dawn patrol kicked through his veins. He felt wide awake in some ways, dead numb in others.

  Driving Mickey Halloran to the hospital, meeting her mother, had brought him more alive than he’d been in a long time. He knew he’d screwed up with Neve, coming on too strong with his opinions. It was a trait he’d learned here at the beach—fighting for what he believed in, what he knew to be important. He was probably ten years older than Neve, ten years ahead of her on the continuum of life, and as a parent.

  He glanced over at the book he’d bought. Filled with beautiful photographs of snowy owls
on the Manitoba tundra, it reminded him of a book he’d known and loved as a boy. He’d received it from his father, the man who had taught him to love nature with a burning passion. Tim’s father and uncle had grown up loving the Rhode Island woods and shore, and they’d passed that on. Tim was a ranger because of them, and—he had to admit, when he faced facts in the middle of the night—in spite of the long silence between him and his father, the reason he had requested being right here, at Refuge Beach.

  The book was for Mickey. Well, he wanted to give it to both of them—as a get-well gift for Mickey, and a peace offering for her mother. No time like the present, he thought, standing up. He had the info he needed, could drive over to the Hallorans’ house right now. Mickey probably wasn’t back to school yet, and he wasn’t sure of Neve’s employment situation. He had just started wrapping the book in some leftover Christmas bird-motif paper when the door opened.

  “Hey.” Shane West, the surfer vandal, stood there, hands in his pockets. Tim stared at him, taking in the windblown hair, the winter sunburn, his cracked lower lip, the surfer T-shirt under a heavy black jacket. The kid reminded him so much of Frank, he almost couldn’t speak.

  “What are you doing here?” Tim asked. “I thought I told you to stay out of the refuge. Two offenses and you’re out. Didn’t the cops tell you this is off-limits?”

  “Um, you might not like this,” Shane said.

  “Like what?”

  “Well, after the cops took me away—in handcuffs, in case you didn’t see…”

  “I saw,” Tim said.

  “Did that make you happy?” Shane asked. “The police hauling me in as if I was a murderer? Perp-walking me in front of that girl, jamming me into the squad car?”

  “What’s the difference whether it made me happy or not? We found you with a homemade flamethrower, right there by the truck. You got arrested all on your own, kid.”

  “You’re telling me you like the idea of raising the U-boat, messing up the ecosystems, all those fish and crabs and stuff that congregate down below? You’re the park ranger, man—you’re supposed to be fighting for the wild things. Not caving in to jerks who think every place should be a pretty, pristine park, with everything safe and sanitized.”

  Tim had his own way of fighting to keep things wild, and his own reasons for caring about U-823, and he didn’t need this scruffy surfer telling him his business. Besides, he wanted to get to the Hallorans’ house before Neve left for work, so he took a menacing step toward Shane West, hoping to back him out the door.

  “I don’t need a lecture from you on how to do my job,” he said. “Now, why don’t you go home, go to school, do whatever you’re supposed to be doing. Okay?”

  “Uh, that’s why I’m here,” he said.

  “This isn’t school,” he said.

  “No, I know. I’m suspended—the principal didn’t like hearing I got arrested again, so I’m out. I’m court-ordered to community service.”

  “Then go do it.”

  “Yeah—I am.”

  Tim met the young man’s stare. The kid’s eyes were huge, unblinking. They were assessing Tim, almost more than the other way around, and Tim felt himself getting red in the face.

  “No,” he said. “They didn’t assign you—”

  “Yep. Right here. I’m ordered to do community service for you and the Salt Marsh Refuge. Ninety days of it. Since I’m suspended for the rest of the week, I figured I’d report for duty now. So, what do you want me to do?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Tim said.

  Shane shrugged. His gaze traveled to the owl book on the desk, and he looked up, smiling. “That’s cool! You should show it to Mickey. She was pretty crazy about seeing the owl on the beach. Is it still here?”

  “Look,” Tim said, thrown off base by Shane’s announcement. He realized that he’d been too busy checking e-mails from other rangers to have read the one in his in-box from the county—official e-mails were usually just stuff about requisition forms, or paving the parking lot, or, lately, unwelcome news about the progress of the plan to raise the U-boat. He generally ignored them as long as possible. Today’s bulletin had probably contained news about Shane West being sent here for community service. “I have some things I have to do. Why don’t you go home, and come back tomorrow?”

  Shane looked shaken—Tim saw emotions just below the surface, watched the boy trying to control them.

  “So you can call the court and get me reassigned?” Shane asked after a minute.

  “I won’t lie to you—yes,” Tim said.

  “Why? You think I’ll try to sabotage things?”

  Tim nodded. “I don’t trust people who resort to violence,” he said. “And I only work with people I trust.”

  “I care about this place,” Shane said huskily. “I’m sorry about the flamethrower. I won’t do it again.”

  Tim stared at him. He didn’t know the kid well enough to know whether he would keep his word or not, but with at least two arrests under his belt at such a young age, he wasn’t betting on it.

  “I hope you mean that,” Tim said. “But I can’t take the chance. Check in with the court later—they’ll give you a different assignment. Now excuse me—there’s somewhere I have to go.”

  He finished wrapping the book, then locked the door behind him. Shane stood in the parking lot, staring at Tim as he drove off—just as Frank used to do after some of their fights. The memory gave Tim a lump in his throat, and as he watched him recede in the rearview mirror, he wondered whether maybe he was selling this kid short without giving him a proper chance.

  Screw that, he thought. He’s someone else’s son—let them take care of him.

  He put Shane West out of his mind as he left the beach road, driving slowly through a small neighborhood behind the elementary school. He looked for house numbers on the mailboxes, specifically, 640 Bittersweet Lane.

  This was a real family area—the evidence was everywhere. Basketball hoops nailed above garage doors, birdhouses hanging from tree branches, white picket fences bordering small yards. Lots of hopes and dreams contained within those white picket fences…

  He had looked the address up in the phone book, and there it was: N. Halloran.

  The number 640 had been hand-painted on a metal mailbox out by the street; he pulled up to the curb and peered toward the house, a small Cape Cod with salt-silvered white-cedar shingles and blue shutters. Birch, pine, and oak trees filled the front yard; instead of a white picket fence, there was a wild hedge running from the street back to dense woods behind the house.

  The sight of the house struck him hard, and he realized that it reminded him of his beach office. The place his ex-wife called “the shack.” This wasn’t quite what he had expected. Hearing that Neve Halloran was in court, he’d figured she was fighting for more money. He’d pictured a big house with a big mortgage, lots of expensive landscaping, a fancy car in the driveway. Instead, there was an old 245 Volvo station wagon.

  He climbed out of his truck, tucked the package under his arm, and walked toward the house. The yard was February-brown, with patches of snow lingering in the shadows of tall trees. He followed a winding walk of chipped blue flagstones embedded in the hard earth to a shallow stoop. Taking the steps in two long strides, he knocked on the door.

  Footsteps sounded inside; curtains moved, and he felt her eyes on him. He could almost feel her deciding to not answer the door. A moment later he heard the lock clicking, saw the door being opened. Neve Halloran stood there, staring at him.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hi,” he said. Her blue eyes were enormous, and she just stared at him so directly, waiting for him to speak, that he felt a shiver run down his back and couldn’t remember what he wanted to say.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked after a long moment. He noticed that she was wearing black slacks and a soft gray sweater, and he figured she had to get to work.

  “I brought something for Mickey,” he said. “Is s
he here?”

  “She’s gone to school,” she said.

  “Really?” he asked, surprised. “I thought she’d be laid up for a few more days—that was a pretty bad break.”

  “It was,” she said. “But Mickey wanted to go. She never misses school—if it weren’t for this, she’d be on her way to another perfect attendance award. She’s had them almost every year since first grade…except twice—when she had the chicken pox, and when her grandmother died.”

  “Conscientious girl,” Tim said.

  “Oh, extremely,” Neve said, smiling, softening slightly for the first time since she’d opened the door—in fact, since the first time Tim had met her. The sight of her smile caught him off guard. He took it in, wondering why he felt so rocked. Was it because most of the people he encountered lately were so serious? Winter beach aficionados were a moody and contemplative lot—Tim among them. And the kid, too—Shane West.

  Neve stood there, arms folded across her chest, as if she was trying to give herself warmth. Her smile lingered, touching her lips and the corners of her bright eyes, then shifted to puzzlement.

  “The reason I’m here,” he said, pulling the package out from under his arm. “Right.” He handed the bird-paper–wrapped book to her. “Just something for Mickey, to tell her I hope she heals quickly, and comes back to the beach.”

  “Thank you for thinking of her,” Neve said. “I’m sure she’ll love whatever this is.”

  “She told me you taught her to love the beach and nature,” he said.

  “It’s in our blood,” she said. “My mother taught me—Mickey, too. We used to go all together, when Mickey was young. She and I go still. I keep waiting for her to outgrow it, but it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Some kids hold on to loving nature their whole lives,” Tim said, his chest feeling heavy.

  “It’s a gift,” Neve said. Although her expression was serious, her eyes twinkled, as if she held the gift inside, close to her heart. It showed in her expression, her bearing.