Snowfall at Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  Wedding Fruit Cake

  Place five pounds of mixed dried fruit (currants, raisins, dates, figs, prunes) in a very large bowl, and cover it with about three cups of Cruzan rum. Set this aside to macerate for two days or up to a week.

  To make the cake, you will need the macerated fruit, plus:

  2 1/2 cups flour

  1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

  1 pound brown sugar

  1 teaspoon cinnamon

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  1 cup molasses

  1/2 pound butter at room temperature

  6 eggs

  Beat the butter in a large bowl and add the sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and molasses. Add the eggs one at a time. Beat in flour and baking powder and then stir in the fruit mixture.

  Pour into two or three well-greased 13”x9” baking pans. Bake in a 350ºF oven for about one hour.

  Six

  St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands

  6 January–Epiphany

  Max Bellamy couldn’t stand weddings. In his family, weddings seemed to crop up on a regular basis, like flu season. Since he was just a kid, he wasn’t allowed to check off “regrets” on the invitation reply card and stay home. But boy, did he regret having to sit through a wedding.

  Sometimes they even made him participate. Twice, when he was really little, he’d been a ring bearer. At age four, he’d thought it was cool until he realized they wanted him to dress up and stay clean and stand still through a ceremony that wouldn’t end.

  At twelve, he was way too old for such an indignity, but his family managed to find a new one. Last summer, he’d been upgraded to usher for his cousin Olivia, who married Connor Davis at Camp Kioga on Willow Lake. That was when he knew for sure all weddings were pretty much the same. Same level of discomfort, in starched clothes and shoes that pinched, same droning ceremony and sappy songs, different couple at the altar.

  His take on weddings—they were long and boring and everyone talked about love and promises, and it was pretty much all a load of crap, as far as he was concerned.

  Today the discomfort came from a different source. Since the ceremony was on the beach, everybody got to wear beach clothes. They looked like a reunion of Hawaiian punch guys, as far as Max was concerned. Which was a lot more comfortable than tuxedos and tight shoes, but that didn’t mean he was having a great time.

  How could he, when the groom was his dad?

  Okay, so Max liked Nina Romano. A lot. She was going to do fine as a stepmother. He wanted her to marry his dad. He wanted them to be married. But he didn’t want to have to sit through all the endless vows and recitations. He didn’t want to have to listen to his dad say stuff like “I offer you my heart” to anyone.

  That kind of stuff just skeezed him out. He wished they had sneaked off somewhere to do it instead of involving families. There were like a gazillion Romanos milling around. Nina had eight brothers and sisters, and most of them had kids, so between the Romanos and the Bellamys, this had turned into some huge deal.

  Cheerful, Italian-American strangers had been coming up to him all week, thumping him on the back and acting like his best friend. They weren’t all strangers. Two of them—who by the end of the day would be stepcousins—were in his grade at Avalon Middle School. Angelica Romano was in his prealgebra class and Ricky Pastorini was on his hockey team. Ricky’s mom was Nina’s sister, Maria. She was the team mother. Although he was Max’s age, Ricky was already shaving and his voice had changed. Big deal, thought Max.

  He tried not to grind his teeth in disgust as another lame song was sung about two hearts beating as one, while most of the women cried. It was just too sweet. He was going to slip into a diabetic coma if they didn’t end this soon.

  He cast a restless eye through the gathering on the beach. Everyone was seated in white folding chairs, their feet in flip-flops, sifting through the white-sugar sand. Max’s hand stole into the pocket of his cargo shorts. He palmed his phone, checked the screen. His mom hadn’t texted him back after he sent her the picture earlier. He’d tried to put a positive spin on it, because his mom was all about trying to act like everything was fine, all the time, even when you had to sit through your own father’s wedding. Max’s message had been that St. Croix was awesome.

  He couldn’t exactly say the same for today’s ceremony. It seemed as though everybody but him was really into it, though. He stuck the phone away, endured another reading. Finally the ceremony was winding down. There was a moment—a split second, really—when Max’s dad looked so happy that Max caught himself smiling in spite of himself.

  During the kissing, he stared at the ground—enough’s enough—and at last, it was over. The ensemble played a reggae rendition of “What a Wonderful World” as Dad and Nina came down the aisle formed by the rows of chairs.

  All the wedding guests filed out behind them to the pavilion with the banquet and dance floor. As they made their way to the feast, Max found himself surrounded by Romanos. Nina sure had a big family. The sun had just begun to set, turning everything in sight a livid sunburned pink.

  His phone rang. He looked at the screen, seeing an international number he didn’t recognize. “I think this might be my mom,” he said.

  Nina’s sister, Maria—the bossy one—gave a sniff. “Unbelievable. On today, of all days.”

  He pretended he hadn’t heard her, and flipped open the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Max.” It was his mom. She sounded…different. Her voice was thin. “Max, I know this probably isn’t the best timing—”

  “It’s all right.” He stepped aside and moved to the shade of a large tree where it was quiet. “I’m glad you called, Mom,” he said.

  “Are you, Max?” She sounded so tired, more tired than he’d ever heard her. He wondered what time it was, over in Holland. The middle of the night. “I’m glad, too,” she said.

  Daisy Bellamy loved weddings. She always had, ever since she was little and got to be the flower girl in her aunt Helen’s wedding. She still remembered the lacy dress, the flowers twining through her hair, the shiny patent-leather Mary Janes, the feeling that she had a critically important role to play.

  Taking a break from her dad’s wedding festivities, she sat on the balcony of her hotel room, looking down at the pavilion that had been set up on the beach for the reception. Sunset painted the sky every color of the rainbow. In a few minutes, she’d take out her camera to get some candid shots of the party.

  All her life, she had fantasized about the day it would be her turn to be the bride. She had actually planned the entire event, right down to the seed pearls on her gown. She could perfectly picture every moment of her special day, from the delivery of the flowers—daisies, what else?—to the roaring send-off, to the Parisian honeymoon.

  The only detail she couldn’t picture was the face of the groom.

  At nineteen, she still couldn’t help dreaming about her own wedding, but there was a difference now. It was only a dream, not an eventuality. That option had been taken off the table last August.

  She glanced down at the infant nursing at her breast and knew that the fantasy wedding simply wasn’t going to happen. Unless Prince Charming was willing to take on Daisy and Charlie both.

  Logan O’Donnell, the baby’s father, kept trying to convince her that he was the one. There was one problem with that. Logan wasn’t Prince Charming. Oh, he looked like a prince, which was what had landed Daisy in trouble in the first place. But now that reality had hit Daisy like a brick to the head, she knew it took a lot more than looks to make a prince.

  She lifted Charlie against her and draped a cloth over her shoulder to catch the spit-up, which was his custom after every meal. Thanks to Charlie, she had missed the very tail end of the wedding. He’d been great right up until the final reading. She’d promised her dad and Nina that she wouldn’t let him interrupt and, true to her word, she’d whisked him away at the first squawk.

  Now she rubbed the baby’s back, standing up
and swaying back and forth on the balcony. “We don’t need a prince, do we?” she whispered in his ear. “We just need to fanta-size about something different. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I mean, I know you’re really little, but I wonder if you’d mind staying with a babysitter for a few hours a week while I take a photography course at the college.”

  He rewarded her with a gentle belch.

  Daisy smiled. “That’s right, I got in. My portfolio was approved for the class, and it all starts in a few weeks. I’m going to feel totally guilty about leaving you, though. Mom left Max and me a lot when we were little. She had to, because of her work. I wonder if she felt like this, too. Just totally guilty—”

  “Hey, Daisy!” Standing two stories below, Sonnet Romano waved at her. “Come on down. They’re about to cut the cake.”

  “Don’t let them start without me,” Daisy called.

  “You want some help?”

  “That’s okay. We’ll be right there.”

  Nina’s daughter Sonnet was the first friend Daisy had made in Avalon, New York, where they’d moved after Daisy’s parents divorced. She was the first person Daisy had told, after her dad, about being pregnant. Now Sonnet and Daisy were stepsisters. She hoped that didn’t mean the end of a beautiful friendship.

  “You hear that?” Daisy said to Charlie as she put her camera into the ever-present diaper bag. “Cake! I love cake.” One of the best things about breastfeeding was that you could eat anything you wanted—cake, peanut butter, cookie dough, you name it—and you didn’t gain weight, because it took a lot of calories to be a milk factory.

  She buckled the baby into his carrier and headed out the door. The hotel had open-air hallways and stairwells, and a warm breeze flowed through, carrying the scent of exotic flowers. Here in the tropics, winter seemed a million miles away.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she headed toward the reception, but stopped when she saw Max running toward her.

  She took one look at her brother’s face and knew something was wrong. Well, whatever it was, they weren’t going to bug Dad about it. Not today, of all days.

  Part Four

  Three weeks later

  Decision

  Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

  —Andrew Carnegie, founding contributor of the Peace Palace

  Seven

  The Hague, Holland

  Three weeks later

  While waiting for Tariq in the courtyard of the Peace Palace, Sophie turned in a slow circle, waiting for the flashbacks to hit like a bolt from the sky. She’d been told by her post-trauma treatment team to expect unsettling reminders of the ordeal she’d suffered here. But nothing happened, not even when she thought about André staggering toward her, bleeding into the snow. She felt a wave of grief, but no panic, no insanity. The sky remained its usual brooding gray. The neo-Gothic walls of the palace, stained by age and pollution, looked the same as they always had, coldly beautiful and impenetrable.

  This was not the first time she’d come here in the past few weeks. She’d been brought here several times, as her doctors wanted to be sure the location did not trigger any sort of trauma-induced reaction. On the contrary, she felt nothing but the usual bone-deep dampness of a typical winter day.

  The screen of her PDA displayed a text message from Max sent the day before. Dad taking us skiing at Saddle Mt 2day. Wish U were here xoxo. She checked her watch, which was always set at her children’s time zone, and deemed it too early to phone the States. There would be time to call after her meeting today to tell them her plans.

  A moment later, Tariq joined her, his Burberry greatcoat swirling fashionably in the wind. Like Sophie, he was shadowed by security agents, whose constant presence was a given these days.

  “You look remarkably calm,” said Tariq.

  They set off together to a meeting at the supreme chamber. Sophie eyed him with a slight frown. “Why do you say ‘remarkably calm’? Why not just calm?”

  “No one would blame you for not wanting to set foot in this place. After what happened to you—”

  “I swear, if I hear that phrase one more time…And what about you? It happened to you, too.”

  He waved away her comment. “I’ve survived worse than a bloodied nose. Besides, being unconscious is my preferred way of enduring an attack.” He paused in the colonnaded hallway and touched her arm. “I wish you’d been spared as I was.”

  Three weeks had passed since the incident. That was how the events on the night of Epiphany had come to be known—the incident. Or, The Incident. The Epiphany Incident, referred to in somber tones by foreign correspondents. The London Times had called it the Twelfth Night Massacre. But there was no term that could encompass the terror and powerlessness of that night until it became a code word—The Incident.

  She had walked away from death that night, soaked to the skin but feeling nothing. Hypothermia created such symptoms, the doctors later told her. The body went numb to protect itself from damage. So, in a way, had her mind. Her memory of the ordeal was fragmented. Sometimes, in her nightmares, she relived the ordeal in terrifying bursts. There was the weightlessness of her free fall as the van hurtled through the night. The impact when it hit the water thundered up through the vehicle, jarring her teeth so that she bit her tongue, snapping her head back. The air was filled with screams and howls that sounded almost animallike. Water flooded the van from front to back, and she felt herself swept backward; her captors hadn’t bothered to fasten her seat belt.

  The investigative team speculated that she’d exited via a broken window, as evidenced by the pattern of scratches on her arms and legs. She’d survived thanks to a combination of luck and skill at swimming. She had a vague recollection of swimming—icy water, aiming at a dull flicker of light shimmering on the surface above her, battling her way free of the vortex created by the sinking van. Oil-tainted seawater rushed into her nose and mouth, causing her to choke while she clung to an iron loop set into the cut-stone side of the canal.

  Another gap of memory. Somehow, she hoisted herself out amid wailing sirens and the pulsating roar of a helicopter’s rotor blades beating the air and churning up the water. Emergency vehicles swarmed the bridge, but no one seemed to notice her. It was as though she were invisible. Maybe she was. She remembered thinking maybe this was death, and no one could see her as she wandered among squad cars and emergency vehicles. One great mercy of working for such a powerful organization was the strict control of information. Only a few people knew Sophie had been taken; fewer still were aware of her mode of escape. And no one knew she had caused the van to go off the bridge. No one, except the terrorists who had been pulled alive from the Voorhaven. And they weren’t talking.

  To avoid retaliation, her name was kept out of accounts released to the public.

  “I was spared,” she told Tariq, her tone edged by an unreasoning anger. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Sorry,” Tariq said. “Honestly, Petal, I want to know you’re all right.”

  Sophie’s decisive action in the van had effectively ended The Incident. Three of her captors had drowned. Three others, like Sophie, had survived—just barely—and were recovering under heavy guard in the hospital.

  People looked at her and marveled that she’d escaped “unscathed.” She bore no outward sign of her ordeal.

  She’d suffered only minor scratches, contusions and a touch of hypothermia. The treatment team at Bronovo Hospital had warned her that she was at risk for posttraumatic stress disorder, though tests revealed that her psyche appeared to have survived, as well. Certainly she didn’t consider herself a casualty of the event. Casualties were André, her driver. And the security agents who had been murdered. And, it had to be said, the men in the van. Fatou had lost the baby and now faced a third surgery, and Brooks Fordham was still recovering from a coma. Sophie had walked away, dripping wet, a survivor. And, she was soon to discover, a stranger to
herself. She was willing to let everyone believe nothing about her had changed. She certainly was not comfortable allowing people to look into her heart and mind. Still, it left her feeling adrift. Misunderstood.

  Immediately following the incident, she had called her children in St. Croix and her parents in Seattle, on the off chance that the news would somehow creep into the American or Canadian media. No danger of that, as it turned out. She’d told her family simply that there had been a “security situation” at the Peace Palace but she was fine and in no danger. The incident was no big secret, but she didn’t want to worry her family. She hadn’t cried on the phone. She’d felt displaced from herself, as though she were watching her own actions.

  As she told the two psychiatrists who had treated her, “If I let this be a big deal, it won’t leave room for the things that are important.” Through hours and hours of intensive therapy, she had come to realize exactly what those things were.

  She had not spoken of what had happened during the ordeal, not even to the medical and psychological team that had cared for her during the aftermath. Dr. Maarten had tried to persuade her that exploring every moment in exhaustive detail was the key to defeating the demons.

  “You don’t understand,” she had told him. “There are no demons. They went away the moment I survived.”

  “Are you sure?” He clearly thought she was either lying or fooling herself.

  “Of course I’m sure. I’ve studied every item on your post-trauma assessment lists. I’m not suffering from any such symptoms, and I don’t plan to in the future.”

  Now she glanced over at Tariq. He knew as well as she did what was going to happen here today. They had offered her an appointment most jurists only dreamed about and today she was expected to give her answer.