Where the Ice Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  “I’ll be working over at JP’s.”

  Marcia turned to the young men. “I’ll teach you the basics here, and then we’ll ski the trail around the upper Bowl to the chalet.”

  Zoe waved goodbye and backed out. The road that led down to the little town square was thoroughly clogged with traffic and pedestrians. She turned uphill, crawling along with the traffic, sparing glances out across the snowy ski runs demarcated by long copses of dark-green conifers. Skiers in neon floated up the lift lines, and snowboarders carved their way down the slopes. In the short tunnel that ran under the midway lift platform, all sound was cut off as abruptly as the sunlight. As she exited on the other side, three snowboarders shot over her van in quick succession. Idiots.

  In the shade of the south shoulder, she began the winding descent, passing outcrops of boulders and a frozen creek, its miniature waterfalls gleaming icy blue amid the crevasses. The drop-off into the Bowl seemed steeper on this side, more dangerous. She gripped the wheel tighter. Out of nowhere, snow scrolled across the windshield. The wind wailed, dusk crept over the mountain. She blinked. There was no snow. No dusk. Only a light breeze like before. Out her windows was the same sunny afternoon across the Bowl, with brightly clad skiers chasing their flickering shadows down the hill.

  Steering around another bend, she was enveloped by lethargy. She’d slept so well for a change. Why was she having trouble staying awake? Slowing down, she cranked the van around a sharper curve, hugging the steep hillside as a station wagon crept up the other way. More hard snow scoured the windshield. It must be blowing off the trees. But then it was gone, and there was no sense of its having been there at all. There were no melting droplets on the windshield. She yawned and rubbed her eyes, then fumbled in her pocket for some red licorice to chew, to fight the drowsiness.

  Red licorice?

  A horn sounded behind her. She slammed on the brakes and the van skidded to a stop, its hood just a blink from the ridge that marked the lip of the Bowl. She could have slid right down the hillside into the trees below. What on earth was wrong with her?

  So tired. That hot chocolate …

  Wait, what hot chocolate? She slapped herself sharply on the cheek. Then she backed into her own lane again and pulled into the next driveway to let the vehicle behind her pass. It pulled up beside her instead, and the woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window. Zoe rolled down hers, too.

  “Are you all right? That was a close shave.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what happened. I just slid toward the edge.”

  “I hope you don’t have far to go.”

  “Just a few more driveways down.”

  “Do you want to follow us? We’ll take it slow for you.”

  “Oh no, I’ll be fine now.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Zoe nodded.

  The good Samaritans went on their way, and Zoe put the van back into gear and cautiously edged out into the driving lane.

  Red licorice.

  Joanne in Lands had kept red licorice for Eric. Had he driven this way, half-asleep, while the snow was swirling over the mountain? If his car had slid off the road, it might be buried down amongst the trees. He could’ve climbed up to the road and trudged downhill, not realizing the relentless gale was stripping his body’s heat with every step. Had the power line to the resort gone down by then? In the darkness, he could easily have missed the house and sought refuge in the shed, the first shelter he came to.

  If Eric’s influence was interfering with her driving now, she had to figure this out. She couldn’t risk driving off the road when she had any of the kids with her. She pulled into JP’s driveway and dug into her purse for the contact information the reverend had given her. She keyed in the number and, after introducing herself, said, “Please, Bethanne, can you help me?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The afternoon passed peaceably in leisurely three-way Scrabble games while old movies played on TV. Loreena won handily, as to be expected for a lifelong player against two novices, and claimed the best single-malt in the cabinet as her prize. Lacey checked on Dee’s beef stew in the slow cooker, then took the drink to the living room. Dusk drew down beyond the cathedral windows, green spruces and white drifts both fading to wintry blues. They lit up the Christmas trees and the outside wreaths and ate the stew in the living room along with Lacey’s baking powder biscuits, the only thing she could reliably bake on her own. The biscuits came out smelling divinely buttery and festive with the Craisins she’d added at the last minute.

  The games, the wine, finally having an investigative direction for Eric Anders’s death: all combined to unwind Lacey’s semi-permanent shoulder knots. Her neck muscles seemed too loose, her head unsteady. How long was it since she’d stepped down from caretaking duty? Back on the Force, she could leave the work in the hands of others at shift’s end, but ever since Dee had been seriously injured in that hit and run last June, Lacey’d had only random hours of respite from caregiving. Still, when Loreena asked Lacey what she wanted most for Christmas, she didn’t say a vacation. Dee felt guilty enough about needing her help. But if Lacey could have any Christmas wish, it would be a few days entirely to herself in the next few weeks. Something to keep her in the game. She would have her life back properly in a few months, when Dee was stronger and Loreena was, well, gone. Meanwhile, there was tonight, and the two people she most cared about were warm, safe, and happy.

  Once they’d eaten, Loreena said she was worn out, so Lacey helped her upstairs and waited until she was settled in bed. She gave the older woman a cautious hug. “I’m so glad you’re here, missus. I’ve missed you.”

  Loreena’s thin arms felt surprisingly strong around her. “I’ve missed you, too, Lacey. I know you were busy out there in B.C., but when you stopped calling and writing, I was worried.” She hauled her crochet project out of its bag and twisted the blue yarn around her finger. “Light up that Christmas tree for me, would you?” she said, indicating an ornament on the bedside table.

  Lacey turned it upside down to switch it on. Tiny gleams of coloured light danced from the branches, glowing from blue to green to gold to red and back to blue. “Where did this come from?”

  “Early Christmas gift from Sandy. She decided I need a tree here for when I don’t feel up to going downstairs.”

  “She thinks of everything.”

  “Yes.” Loreena hooked her yarn and pulled it through in a steady rhythm, hardly glancing at her fingers. “She was a great nurse for all those seniors, a good support for me during my first chemo, and now she’s a good friend, too. Not as close as you are with Dee, but good.”

  “I’m glad you had her, since Dee and I couldn’t come to Ontario to help out. Can I get you anything else before I go down?”

  Loreena patted the bed. “Put out the overhead light and sit here with me for a bit. We’ve hardly had a chance to visit, just the two of us.”

  Lacey scooched onto the mattress, careful not to jostle her. “Yes, it’s been a long time.”

  “Since before you got married.” The faded blue eyes watched her. “You haven’t told me why you left B.C. Was it the strain of two Mounties in the same house?”

  “I guess you could say so.” Job strain was Lacey’s standard excuse, usually delivered in a tone that discouraged further questions. Dee’s mom wasn’t a casual questioner, though. There’d been many conversations during university, when Lacey visited her little house in Waterloo — chats that had started with an innocuous question and ended with Lacey revealing her knottiest problems. But that was then. Her problems had been basic growing pains: which classes to take next semester, whether to keep lifeguarding in the summer or try a different job. They’d never discussed relationships. And anyway, how could she reveal the darker sides of her marriage or her job to a dying woman? “How about you? You’ve taken up crocheting since our last visit.”

  “Knitting, too. These are texture blankets.” Loreena spread out her work, running one ve
ined hand over an irregular blue patch with nubby bumps. “They’re for dementia patients at the ward where I used to lead art activities. The residents find tactile stimulation soothing. We’ll add charms, rings, and ribbons they can tie and untie.”

  “You don’t do art activities anymore?”

  Loreena wound up her finger with yarn and hooked a few more stitches. “My hands aren’t steady enough any longer. Not for the detailed work I used to do.”

  “I’m sorry. You made amazing pictures. Crystal-clear reality in paint.”

  “I miss making new art, but there’s still work to be done with the old stuff. Framing some for sale, gifting others to people who’ll appreciate them. Gosh, if I didn’t forget my new colouring book. The drawings are too simple for you and Dee, but maybe you know some kids who like dragons? It’s on that long dresser, in the brown envelope.”

  Lacey found the colouring books. The dragons crept and stomped and coiled across the pages. “Tom’s boys would love these. Are they all yours?”

  “Yes, that’s my third, and my favourite so far. The others had line drawings of my paintings for people to fill in however they wanted. A gallery in Waterloo sells them in its gift shop, and sometimes a friend takes a table at a craft fair.”

  “Will you do another?” Too late Lacey realized the unspoken implication. If you live long enough.

  Loreena flipped the half blanket around and started working back the other way. “I might sketch some holiday decorations, and Dee can put out a book next fall for a stocking stuffer. How are you doing, really? Your life has changed a lot since this time last year.”

  “Yeah, it has.” Lacey tucked her feet under her, flipping through the pages of the book. In one picture, a young girl in knight’s armour was confronting a dragon tangled up in its own tail. “What’s this one about?”

  “Illustration for a children’s story. She’s a dragon-fighting princess. See the crown on her helmet?”

  “You’ve shown her fighting spirit in just three lines of her face. How do you manage it?”

  Loreena shrugged. “It’s what I do. If I were capturing your face now, I’d try to reflect your avoidance. That’s the second time. Tell me about last Christmas. You were working for the RCMP in Langley. Did you and Dan have a Christmas tree?”

  The little tree ornament picked that moment to bathe the wall in red. Red for danger. Red for fear. Had Lacey already been afraid of Dan by Christmas? She hadn’t ever identified that feeling, not that she remembered. His attack after Valentine’s Day had seemed to come out of nowhere. But had it, really? Mid-January: her arm throbbed where he’d yanked it after the snowmobile trip, and she’d talked herself into accepting his excuse/apology. His surliness, though — that started in early December with news of her pending promotion. They hadn’t put up any decorations, had no celebrations except their respective shift parties. Had they even bought each other presents? Why did she have no memories of that time? The little tree spread an icy-blue glow from its branches. She shivered.

  “Christmas season we mostly worked, freeing up the officers with kids so they could go to school concerts and church things. You know, all the stuff families do in December. When we weren’t working, we just tried to unwind and stay out of each other’s way. The season is hell on all first responders.” The glow on the wall cycled back to red again. Her stomach tightened. She put her hand up and rubbed her throat, trying to loosen a knot.

  “What’s wrong with your neck?”

  Lacey froze. The room spun. She put her hand over her lips, suddenly terrified she’d vomit all over Loreena’s texture blanket. Scrambling off the bed, she ran to the bathroom across the hall. Dropping before the toilet, she gagged so hard her ribs seemed to twist.

  All that came up was a belch.

  She slumped, resting her head on her arm, her face over the bowl in case the next heave brought up her supper, her wine, and her internal organs. The chill of the porcelain seeped under her skin. Surely her ribs hadn’t re-cracked along last summer’s fractures? She heaved again, holding her ribcage together with her other hand. Again, nothing rose but sour fumes. At least she was able to breathe. And shake. Her skin felt clammy all over. Did she have food poisoning? Norovirus from something she’d touched at the mall?

  “Lacey?” The word came softly. A hand touched her shoulder.

  When she was sure she wouldn’t actually puke, Lacey huddled on the bed again, the nubby part of the crocheted blanket pressing against one cheek and Loreena dabbing a damp washcloth on her forehead.

  “God, I hope I haven’t given you my germs. If I ruin your last Christmas, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You can’t ruin anything for me, or for Dee. So put that right out of your mind.” Loreena turned the washcloth and wiped it over Lacey’s neck. “You don’t have a fever. How’s your stomach? Should I ask Dee to bring you a cup of my anti-nausea tea?”

  “No.” Lacey unwound from the half blanket and tilted upright. “Don’t bother her. I don’t know what came over me there.”

  Loreena rescued the crochet project and draped Lacey’s shoulders with the afghan from the foot of the bed. Then she crawled in among her pillows. “I asked you why you were grabbing your neck, Lacey. Your eyes bulged like you were being strangled.”

  Every muscle in Lacey’s body seized up. She crashed onto the mattress, shattering like crystal dropped by some immense, invisible power. Loreena’s hand held hers, a constant amid the chaos. She clung to it, sobbing as memory burst through her skin. Pain. Humiliation. Fear. Choking. Sensations, sounds, stabbing at her. Thoughts slicing like shards of ice. Eventually she lay shuddering and spent, sucking in great gobbets of air. Her face stung where tears seared it. Her throat burned where hands had grabbed it. Not her hands, and not on this night. It was another memory she’d overwritten, stuffed away, hidden from herself like that fear of the river she’d run smack into last summer. Only, unlike the river, this one had been frozen all year, and now that ice had smashed, revealing the horror within.

  “Dan,” she whispered. “I was trying to remember whether I was already afraid of him by last Christmas.”

  Bit by bit, the shaming tale crept from her lips: how Dan had raged because his wife outranked him, how he escalated from sulking and criticizing to grabbing her arms hard enough to bruise. Then he started accusing her of an affair, which, not long after Valentine’s Day, led to his attacking her in their own kitchen. Even as she’d leaped out of reach, she’d known a domestic violence report would be fatal to both their careers. She’d used every iota of cop control to stabilize the situation and get him to leave the house. He’d moved into a motel. But then came that incident on the river bank two weeks later, and she still wasn’t sure if he’d overreacted in the moment or had deliberately tried to push her into the swollen Fraser River to drown.

  “I gave up my career and moved away right after that, leaving him with the house. He’s supposed to be selling it and splitting any gains with me.” Lacey shuddered. “I’ve never admitted to a soul how terrified I was — I am — that he’d really kill me if I stayed where he could find me. I didn’t tell anyone out there that I was in Alberta. Not while I was living with Tom and his wife, not for months after I moved in with Dee.”

  Loreena patted her tear-tracked cheek with the cool washcloth. “And last Christmas?”

  The ice shard rose in Lacey’s throat again. This time she recognized it for what it was: fear, and shame, and the flesh memory of Dan’s hands at her neck. She swallowed, breathed deep, and sat up. No way would she take that memory lying down a third time. Pulling the afghan tighter, she squeezed Loreena’s hand and let it go.

  “At my shift party, everyone was congratulating me on my promotion, buying me drinks. I had a few too many and Dan drove us home. I was pretty much out of it between the booze and the heavy work week leading up to it, and didn’t grasp what he wanted until he had half my clothes off on the living room floor.” She’d never talked about sex with Loreena befor
e. She had to force the words past the shame. “I told him to quit and go to bed. He didn’t. He kept at me and at me until finally I gave in.” She watched the lights on the wall shift from yellow to green. “Every woman’s done that, right? Just let them have sex so they’ll go to sleep and leave you alone?”

  Loreena handed over the washcloth without comment. Lacey refolded it and pressed it over her singed eyelids.

  “I let him do whatever and just tried to keep from puking up all the booze in my stomach. I remember concentrating on the ceiling light over his shoulder. The neighbour had one of those whirling-light decorations — it reflected onto our ceiling. Hypnotic. Somewhere in there Dan realized I wasn’t paying attention, or maybe I did pass out for a minute.…” Her breath soured with the memory; she willed the tainted air out of her. She draped the washcloth around her neck, temporarily soothing long-faded bruises that throbbed now with fresh life.

  “He was yelling at me, and he had his hands on my shoulders, kind of pushing me into the floor. He grabbed my neck with one hand and I couldn’t breathe. I grabbed it and he let go, but then he put his arm across my throat and held me there while he … while he … penetrated me. I fought but I wasn’t strong enough and he just kept grinding …” Her throat burned the remaining words before they arrived. She hid her eyes, breathing to keep from screaming. Don’t fall over again. You’re not a victim. You’re a witness. She rocked, and Loreena’s hands on hers rocked with her.

  “You’re with me, Lacey. You’re safe.”

  Sit up straight, open your eyes, and finish your testimony.

  She straightened, lowering her hands from her face. “I couldn’t push him off me. If he hadn’t shot his load and walked away, I might be dead now.”

  The last words fell into the room as the fibre-optic tree bathed the wall in ice blue. She stared at the tracery of shadows as the world shifted around her, as the tree cycled to green, then amber. Amber for caution. How could she not have seen that attack for what it was: a brutal domination? She’d thought they were partners, their marriage a more equal one than those of the male RCMP officers with meek stay-at-home wives feeding their babies and washing their uniforms. Had Dan ever wanted the same marriage she did? Not when his way of dealing with his jealousy over her promotion was to subjugate her at home by any means necessary. Even …