Snowfall at Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  She was used to the bodyguards by now. In a very short time, she’d become accustomed to the safety precautions. It all felt very surreal. Did she want this to be her normal life, to be crushed by scrutiny, to walk among armed strangers who were utterly focused on her safety?

  “Off we go, then,” Tariq muttered.

  “Off to see the wizard,” she said.

  The double doors of the lead justice’s office opened, and she and Tariq went inside. There was a heartbeat of panic—not because of The Incident but because of something much deeper-reaching than that. Willem De Groot, Esquire, sat at a carved Gothic desk in front of an array of stained-glass windows. Illuminated from behind by jewel-toned light, he looked imposing, otherworldly and intimidating. The wizard.

  Actually, he looked like Sophie’s father. Yet unlike Sophie’s father, the redoubtable Ragnar Lindstrom, a partner in a Seattle firm, Judge De Groot displayed an array of family photos in his office. There were shots of him with children and grandchildren of all ages, incongruous amid the ponderous legal tomes. Yet at the moment, he was all business. He wanted to see her strive and achieve. He wanted greatness for her.

  His version of greatness.

  She and Tariq stood together across from him. De Groot’s assistants were stationed discreetly to one side, silently pressing the keys of their mobile devices.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “And for the honor of this offer.”

  “It’s an offer we didn’t make lightly,” Willem De Groot said. “A seat on the Permanent Court of Arbitration is not a reward for your actions. It’s an acknowledgment of your potential as a jurist.” He steepled his fingers. “This vacancy comes at an opportune time. I’m pleased to be able to offer you the position.”

  Sophie nodded, even as she felt a chill of skepticism in her bones. This promotion was the ultimate prize. As a jurist of the PCA, she would be on track to one day become a justice of the World Court. That marked the pinnacle of any career in international law, the Olympic gold medal of achievements. She would earn not just the accolades but maybe even a place in history. Her influence would come to bear on great matters of the day.

  There was a ring of triumph in her ears. She had reached the apex of her career, and it was higher than she’d ever dreamed. From this seat, she could change the world. She could help whole populations of people. Her policies and decisions would become a part of history.

  Sophie could feel Tariq beside her, practically growing taller out of sheer pride. This was not just her achievement, and they both knew that. With her elevation to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, her staff and associates would all advance, like train cars hooked to the same engine. This appointment would change not only her life and her career, but also the careers of everyone she worked with. De Groot was speaking to Tariq now, explaining his role as deputy.

  Her spirit flared up like a fire splashed with accelerant. Yet, just as quickly, the feeling was doused by the cold damper of memory. She had been taken hostage. She’d seen people murdered, inches from her. She’d held a bleeding child in her arms. She’d caused people to plunge to their death.

  That was her reality. She’d worked long and hard with the treatment team whose mission had been to heal her spirit, even though she swore her spirit didn’t need healing. Still, the counselors persisted. They worked every day to show her that although she could never escape or outrun what had happened to her, she could live her life with purpose and deliberation, not in spite of what had happened but, perhaps, because of it.

  “Thank you,” she said to De Groot. “I’m honored.” She took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, made steady eye contact with the chief jurist. “But I can’t.”

  The words dropped like cold stones into the office, echoing off the neo-Gothic walls. I can’t.

  Those two words had been banished by Sophie’s father from her vocabulary, long ago. She’d been raised to embrace the concept of “I can.”

  I can bring down a corrupt dictator. (But only if I move an ocean away from my children and work eighteen-hour days.)

  I can escape when captured by terrorists. (But only if I force myself to do something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.)

  I can be the youngest jurist ever appointed to the PCA. (But only if I turn myself into a robot, starting now.)

  That was what her parents failed to see, that for every “I can” statement proclaiming her invincibility, there was a huge and terrible hidden sacrifice.

  Sophie felt utterly calm and focused. “I’ve given this a lot of thought,” she said, then reiterated her statement. “I won’t be accepting the post.” She heard Tariq pull in a breath and didn’t let herself look at him, knowing he’d be staring at her, aghast, as though she had sprouted antlers.

  The old Sophie would have leaped at this chance, the brass ring of judgeships. Now the new Sophie, the one who had been melted down and remade during the hostage ordeal, knew that the prestige and excitement of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was no longer her calling.

  In the aftermath of the intensive treatment and counseling she had received, she felt like a different person. Perhaps the goal of all the interventions she had undergone was to bring her back to her normal, ordinary life. If so, Sophie’s treatment had failed. Instead, The Incident and fallout had proved to her that a life lived without family was meaningless.

  Judge De Groot was old and unflappable. Unlike Tariq, he was matter-of-fact when Sophie explained about her family. “If you walk away from this opportunity, it won’t be here when you come back. I cannot hold it open for you.”

  “I understand that, Your Honor,” Sophie said.

  “Your children are your children. They will always be there. This appointment will not. I am certain your family would support a decision to stay and work on behalf of world justice.”

  Would they? she wondered. Had she ever given them a choice? “I’m sure that’s true, but I’m moving back to the United States,” she said. There. Spoken aloud, it was simple and direct. She had to go back to her children.

  She allowed herself a quick glance at Tariq, who looked as though his head was about to explode. She didn’t let herself veer from a decision made in those moments when the van had hit the water. If she survived this, she would go home to her children. It had been a powerful, clear moment. Her psychiatric intervention team had encouraged her to focus on the present moment, a strategy encouraged to prevent post-trauma symptoms. “Their job was to get me ready to come back to work. But the plan backfired.”

  Then she faced the man who had been her mentor for the past year. “What happened at the Peace Palace changed my focus,” she explained. “I thought I knew what I should be doing with my life, but that night forced me to examine my priorities.” Her gaze wandered to De Groot’s display of photos. “I’m ashamed to say it took a brush with death to show me the things that matter most. And with all due respect, it’s not this mission, not in my case, anyway. It’s not prestige. It’s not even saving people from the cruelties of the world. That’s a job, and in my job, I am replaceable. In my life, my family, I’m not. I have a family I don’t see nearly enough of. I have a lot to answer for. I need to do that, starting now.”

  The recriminations, when they came, were from Tariq. “You’re mad,” he accused as she bustled around her apartment, filling up pieces of luggage and moving boxes. “You’ve gone utterly bonkers. I’m begging you, Sophie. Don’t throw this away.”

  “I’m not. I’m giving it to you. They’ll offer you the position and you’ll be brilliant.”

  “This is your prize for the taking,” he insisted. “Your children have grown beyond needing a mum at home all day.” He waved a hand, dismissing her retort before she made it. “I’m only stating the obvious, Petal. Max is half grown, and Daisy has a baby of her own to raise.”

  “They need me more than ever,” she insisted. “The fact that they’re older only means I have even less time. And then there’s Charlie. A baby, T
ariq. I can’t imagine what I was thinking, not being there for Daisy and Charlie.”

  “You were there for the birth, and Daisy will be fine. I’m certain she’s her mother’s daughter. You were a young mum yourself. You coped beautifully.”

  Sophie had done nothing of the sort, although she was the only one who seemed to know that. She’d lived her life on the surface, going through the motions of a successful education and career. There was a whole rich world of possibilities beneath that surface, something she hadn’t realized until she’d nearly lost it all.

  She taped a label on a plastic shipping box. Her personal possessions took up remarkably little space. The apartment had come furnished, so all she really had was her wardrobe, a few books, framed pictures of her kids. Looking around, she suddenly felt less sure of herself. This was a different sort of fear from being taken hostage. What if she failed? What if it was too late?

  She took the portrait down from a shelf and studied their faces. “When Greg and I divorced, I begged them to live here with me,” she said. “I wish we could have made that work.”

  “They scarcely gave it a chance,” Tariq reminded her.

  She remembered the two miserable weeks, her kids in a high-rise looking out over the Dutch flatlands, where the rain never quite stopped altogether. The sun hadn’t come out, not once. “I saw no reason to prolong the inevitable,” she said. “Nor did I want to sacrifice even more of their happiness so I could have this career. They wanted to go with their father. It was really a no-brainer. On the one hand there was me, rushing off to court in a foreign country. And then there was Greg, who decided to go all Andy-of-Mayberry—”

  “Andy of who?”

  “One of America’s biggest TV icons. He’s a single dad, actually, on an old classic show. He lives in a small American town and takes his kid fishing and has this idyllic, picture-perfect life in a town where autumn leaves always seem to be falling and it never, ever rains. No wonder Max and Daisy wanted to stay with their dad.” She carefully and methodically folded a sweater, lining up the seams of the sleeves just so.

  “What about what you wanted?” Tariq challenged her.

  “Right after the divorce, I was so confused I didn’t even know what I wanted. You remember what a mess I was. The divorce made me question everything about myself, especially my parenting. I didn’t exactly have the world’s best role models, you’ll recall. I finally have a clear idea of what I want, and that’s what this is about. I’m giving myself a second chance to do better.” She folded three more sweaters. Where she was going, she would need them.

  “But why there? Why that town in the wilderness?”

  “My kids are there. I also need to deal with the fact that my ex is living happily ever after with a woman who is my polar opposite.”

  He gave a fatalistic shrug. “It happens.”

  “You’re a big help.”

  “You don’t want my help. You want to go prostrate yourself on an altar of shame and flagellate yourself until you’re bloody. And, by the way, I know a few blokes who would pay to see such a thing.”

  “Don’t be obnoxious.” She finished filling a section of her garment bag. “You’re going to get your dream job because I’m leaving,” she told him.

  “I’d rather have you,” he said simply, opening his arms.

  “You’re not obnoxious,” she said as he closed her into a hug. “You’re the best. You’re the one person I’m going to miss, desperately.”

  “I know.”

  She pressed her cheek to the soft Scottish cashmere of his sweater. “I’m scared,” she whispered, thinking about what awaited her in Avalon—the failed marriage to Greg and her inadequate mothering.

  “I don’t blame you, Petal.” He stroked her hair in a soothing gesture. “I’d be scared of a small town in America, too. I keep thinking about plaid hunting jackets and open-bed lorries on gigantic tires.”

  She pulled back, gently slapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, come on. It’s not that bad.”

  But it might be, she conceded. She was no expert, having always lived in big, bustling cities—Seattle, Boston, Tokyo, New York, The Hague. She had no idea how she would manage in a town like Avalon. But she had to get back to her family. She felt a keen sense of mission about it, the way she used to feel about an important case. She needed to reclaim the things she had lost to her career. She needed to find a new direction for her life.

  “I haven’t said anything to them yet. Just that I’m fine and I’ll be coming home. They don’t know I’m staying.”

  “You are mad. Certifiable.” Tariq started to pitch in, folding trousers and stacking them precisely in the oversize Louis Vuitton bag.

  “If I tell them I’m moving to Avalon, they’ll think something’s wrong.”

  “Something is wrong. You’ve lost your mind.”

  “No, listen, I do have a plan. Some friends of mine from New York—the Wilsons—have a lake house they only use in the summer. They’ve offered it to me for the entire winter. So I have a place to live.”

  “In Mayberry.”

  “Avalon, but that’s the idea.”

  “And do…what, exactly? You need to reconnect with your kids. I get that. Is that a full-time occupation?”

  She zipped her jewelry into a side pocket of her case. The small pouch of tasteful baubles made her remember the conversation with Brooks Fordham that night about her refusal to own anything produced by exploitation of labor. “I don’t know,” she said to Tariq. “I’ve never done it before.”

  “And why would you even want this?” he asked her without a hint of irony.

  “Because I’ve never had it,” she replied. “Because being part of a community has never happened to me and I think it’s about time. Because underneath this legal robot you see, I have a heart.”

  She and Tariq went to the tiny nook of the main room, which served as her study. This, too, was devoid of personal items except her laptop and a corkboard to which she’d pinned a few items. “My rogues’ gallery,” she told Tariq. “And it’s all yours now.”

  The faces of the warlords had been her motivation for the past two years. The plan was to prosecute each one in turn at the International Criminal Court. The people on her corkboard represented the very worst of humankind—men who practiced child conscription, sexual torture, slavery. She took down each picture in turn, making a small ceremony of handing them to Tariq.

  “That’s it, then,” she said, slipping the laptop into its case. “You’re going to do great things.”

  “And you’re walking away from doing great things.”

  She shook her head. “I walked away from my marriage and family. I can’t ever go back to the marriage, but my family still needs me.” She thought they did, anyway. She hoped. They had certainly taught themselves to get along without her. Maybe the truth was that she needed them.

  “I’ve never seen you run away from anything,” Tariq said. “This isn’t like you.”

  “Oh, it’s exactly like me. When it comes to my professional life, to cases involving genocidal murderers, you’re absolutely right. I’ve been like a dog with a bone since I was in high school. But in my personal life, I’ve done exactly the opposite. Here’s the thing. You can’t run from yourself. It only took twenty years and a few hours with a team of terrorists for me to figure that out.”

  She took a deep breath, looked around the apartment with her things packed in boxes. The place was as impersonal and anonymous as a hotel room.

  She was off, then, to make things right with her family. It was insane, going to a place where the Bellamy family had been entrenched for generations, where her ex-husband was living happily ever after with his new wife. Yet this was the place her children lived, and she intended to be their full-time mother. She hoped with all her heart that it wasn’t too late.

  Part Five

  February

  A cheer for the snow—the drifting snow;

  Smoother and purer than Beauty’s brow;
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  The creature of thought scarce likes to tread

  On the delicate carpet so richly spread.

  —Eliza Cook, English poet

  Morning Muffins from the Sky River Bakery

  1 1/2 cups flour

  3/4 cup ground flax seed

  3/4 cup oat bran

  1 1/2 cups brown sugar

  2 teaspoons baking soda

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

  3/4 cup milk

  2 eggs, beaten

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1/2 cup vegetable oil

  2 cups peeled and shredded carrots

  2 apples, peeled and shredded

  1/2 cup raisins or currants

  1 cup chopped walnuts

  Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix flour, flax seed, bran, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, combine the milk, eggs, vanilla and oil. Add to the dry ingredients. Fold in the carrots, apples, raisins and nuts. Fill prepared muffin cups two-thirds full with batter.

  Bake for fifteen to twenty minutes.

  Eight

  Sophie woke up hugging a warm teddy bear in a strange bed. Hovering in the zone between full alert and dreams, she lay very still, waiting for the customary nightmares to fade. She’d learned that they would, eventually. But she wondered if she would ever stop seeing the faces of the dead or feeling the desperation and panic that had seized her in the moments before the accident.

  Yet this morning, the memories seemed curiously distant. Simply lying adrift felt so good that she held still, hugged the teddy bear closer and kept her eyes shut, prolonging a completely unjustified sensation of well-being.

  When it came to jet lag, she was a champ at dealing with it. Besides, with her frequent trips back to the States, she had enough miles for an upgrade every time. She’d schooled herself to sleep with the self-discipline of a yoga master. But it was never a restful sleep. Therefore, feeling warm, comfortable and rested was simply wrong.