Sharla’s purple dress lay on the floor, where she’d dropped it when we first got into the hot tub. The sparkly necklace spread over it like fireworks.
Midnight must be close, I thought. Please let midnight come soon, so I can go to bed.
We had finished the egg rolls and more wings. The caramel apple pie oozed half-eaten on the edge of the tub.
Jade broke a fingernail getting a Diet Coke open. Tsk, went Sharla, sucking her teeth. She brought out her nail polish case. After she fixed Jade’s nail, she painted all our nails and glued a little fake diamond on each tip. My hands looked like they belonged to somebody else. To Sharla, actually.
Jade and Sharla kept talking and talking while I stayed quiet.
If a person thinks she knows something, should she tell? And tell who, anyway—Sharla? Ron?
I could tell Grady, maybe, but he looks down on gossip. I could just keep quiet. I thought, too, about Sharla’s three babies that didn’t happen.
By then Jade and Sharla were deep into the high school teacher issue. Whether she really had a thing going on with some boy. Whether or not she would be fired, although they seemed to agree she should be.
Sharla was betting the teacher would be canned for sure. Jade said the story might just be wishful thinking by the students. Sharla snorted at that.
“I’ve seen her giving Ron the eye,” Sharla said. “She should have her teaching licence taken away.”
They got into a bit of a fight, in a mild way.
While they argued, I got out and found a diaper for Daisy. I sat on the edge of the tub to cool down a bit and let Daisy stay dry. I sang along to the music playing on the radio. Quietly,quietly, me and Daisy alone together. The others didn’t notice. I sipped my drink. Grady’s drink.
“What do you think, Dixie?” Sharla said. She wanted someone on her side.
“About what?”
Sharla ground her teeth. “About the teacher!”
Daisy had drifted into sleep on my shoulder.
“I guess—I don’t know. Does she love the guy?”
“I don’t think that’s the point,” Sharla said sharply.
I stared at her. She was so pretty on the outside and so prickly on the inside.
“I think I am a bit drunk,” I said. “Isn’t love always the point?”
Jade shook her head. “Not to me, not if the boy was my son. If it’s true, then it’s abuse—”
But that wasn’t what I meant. I talked faster.
“I mean, if she really loves the guy, she won’t want to wreck his life. So she wouldn’t sleep with him, because that would wreck his life.”
They stared at me.
“If she doesn’t love him, she might have slept with him. Abused him. Or just—told him she’s in love with him, or something. Whatever really happened.”
Hard to talk about a teacher I’d never seen. I kept imagining her: really beautiful, with long dark hair. And lonely.
“I remember high school,” I said. “It’s like a very small town. Hardly any possible men. You know, the drama teacher is gay, the principal is old... So the one good man seems like everything. Maybe he has a mean girlfriend. Or maybe he’s just really decent, really kind, and she—maybe she does love him.”
My strategy was not working. I had almost talked myself onto Jade’s side.
“You can get carried away by that secret, the secret of loving somebody,” I said. “She might feel like wrecking her own life, losing her kids—I mean, the school kids. The job.”
Sharla stared at me, as if a fish had started to talk.
“I mean, what she feels isn’t necessarily real love.” I knew I wasn’t making any sense.
Jade looked at her hands under the water. The fake diamonds on her nails glittered.
“Anyway, we don’t know what happened,” I said. “So we can’t judge her.”
I sounded like Grady.
I bent down and slid Daisy, fast asleep, into her car seat.
Then my arms felt so light.
“It’s got to be midnight by now,” I said. “Shouldn’t we bang the pots and pans or sing?”
Sharla stood up in the water.
“It’s so hot in here,” she said. “I’m boiling. I need some air!”
She jumped out and pulled open the patio door.
Beyond the misted glass, the night outside had changed. It had warmed up, and the wind was gone. Clean snow lay over the back yard like a blank sheet of paper.
Jade got out, too. She went to the door. Steam rose in clouds off her long back and legs. “Oh, this is good,” she said. “I needed this!”
She took a deep breath and then ran out onto the deck and down the stairs. She jumped full-length into the snow, face down.
Sharla gave a short scream, as if Jade was in danger.
Running into the snow looked like a really good idea to me.
I went past Sharla and out, walking barefoot through the snow. I’d been hot and sleepy for so long, I felt great. I slid down the deck steps and fell backwards into a patch of untouched snow.
The snow was so, so, so cold! It felt like burning on my skin. I flapped my arms and legs to make an angel.
Sharla was laughing her head off. The night was quiet. Her laughter crackled in the air. She said, “Oh, I can’t, I can’t!” But she did. She ran out into the snow. She had nothing on, she must have frozen instantly.
I stood up to check my snow angel. Not bad. My feet were numb. Jade flapped her legs and arms, too, and Sharla managed to flap once before she had to jump up and run back. I almost beat her back, to slide into the hot water again.
Jade came more slowly. Her skin was beet red in the blue light from the tub.
We thawed.
“Okay,” Sharla said. “I’m putting coffee on. If those guys don’t come back in fifteen minutes, I’m going to bed.”
She hauled herself out one last time and went to the kitchen.
Jade said, “I didn’t tell my husband who the guy is. The one I’m in love with.”
I nodded.
“I had that much sense,” she added.
I laughed.
After a minute, she said, “You were right to say what you did. I don’t want to wreck Ron’s life. Or mine.”
She looked so sad I could hardly bear it.
“I think about leaving Grady all the time,” I told her. “I have a list of what to pack.”
She put her hand on my arm.
“I might be wrong,” I said. “Maybe yours is real.”
Jade shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. Things aren’t real until you... get together, until you are both... until you’ve talked to each other.”
Sharla came back with a stack of pink towels.
“I guess the whole story is wishful thinking,” Jade said.
Chapter Ten
Grady woke me up when he climbed into bed beside me.
“You smell good,” he said.
“Hot tub and caramel apple pie,” I said. “Now I know what hand cream to get.”
“Look, I have a sensitive nose. I’ll find you some caramel apple hand cream. Nice angels out there in the back yard. Must have been pretty cold, making them. Where’s the baby?”
“Oops, I left her on the roof of the car...” That was our joke. “She’s on the floor beside me. We made a bed for her with some rolled blankets. Hey, I gave her a bottle of formula. She did spit out the first few gulps. But then she got used to it.”
“Well, about time,” he said.
“Yeah. I’ll nurse her again in the morning after this buzz has worn off. Good to have the option of a bottle though. You were right.”
He sighed and curved his legs behind mine. We lay still for a while.
“What was that last thing?” I asked him.
“The accident? A truck spun out and clipped an SUV. Both totalled.”
“I was worried that it was the buffalo. That caused the accident, I mean.”
“Nope. Those buffalo are off int
o the hills by now. They go where they want, ignore everything else. That rancher lost one before, a couple of years ago. Never saw it again.”
“Was the accident bad?” I was afraid to ask. Finding people badly injured, or a dead person, was hard on him.
“Nobody died,” he said. “Just hurt feelings and glass all over the place.”
We were quiet for a minute.
“You were out for a long time, though.”
“We just drove around all night. Ron didn’t want to come home.”
I tried to imagine what they would talk about, driving around.
“I always want to come home,” Grady said. He slid his arm under my head. “He’s having a hard time here, with Tim in Vegas and Marie on sick leave with her broken leg. He says Marie’s a great Mountie, that’s one good thing. But he seems pretty depressed.”
I waited. He didn’t continue. I thought he might have fallen asleep.
Grady’s pretty depressed himself. I know that. And when things are bad, he finds talking hard. Sometimes days and days go by before he tells me about things. Before we’re in the same bed at the same time. And both awake—that hardly ever happens any more.
I go a bit crazy when we don’t talk.
“I think about leaving you all the time,” I said, softly in case he was sleeping. “I have a plan. What to take, where to pack things in the suitcases.”
“Don’t think about that,” Grady said in the darkness. “Don’t leave.”
We lay quiet.
“I think about quitting my job all the time,” he said, after a few minutes. “But I can’t quit, there’s the baby.”
“Why don’t you ever call her by her name?”
He didn’t answer.
Because he hates her name. I knew that for sure now. I kicked myself. I shouldn’t have asked him then, when he was talking about quitting. He should quit. Get out of this crazy police life before it grinds him too far down.
“Maybe I’m still getting used to her,” he said. “Anyway. Fuck it. Go back to sleep, Princess Buttercup. And Daisy. My flowers.”
Chapter Eleven
In the morning, we drove away.
Daisy was safe in her car seat after nursing again. The formula hadn’t killed her.
Ron came out on the front deck to wave. Sharla was still sleeping off last night’s shooters.
Grady waved back. He rolled the window up quick once we got going.
“Nice visit,” Grady said.
“Nobody died,” I said. He laughed.
It was still pretty cold. Snow had stopped falling. The sun shone high and white. Today was a new year.
“I know where I belong, and nothing’s gonna happen,” Grady sang.
He has the best voice. I love when he sings. It means he is okay. We are okay.
“She’s so high, high above me, she’s so lovely.”
Daisy watched his face in the rear-view mirror, bright eyes brimming with sadness or laughter. She was too young for us to know which it was.
The wind had cleared the road. It had blown away the hoof prints of the buffalo and the snow stained with blood from last night’s fight. Where the accident had been, I saw broken glass heaped beside the ditch.
Loose snow blew in long strands across the road. They made a new white road following the line of the wind.
I love that sideways road that the wind takes. It ignores everything except what it really wants. It shows where we ought to be going, which is not very often where we are going.
The wind’s road is where I want us to go.
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Good Reads Series
If you enjoyed this Good Reads book, you can find more at your local library or bookstore.
The Stalker by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
In From the Cold by Deborah Ellis
Home Invasion by Joy Fielding
The Day the Rebels Came to Town by Robert Hough
Picture This by Anthony Hyde
Missing by Frances Itani
Shipwreck by Maureen Jennings
The Picture of Nobody by Rabindranath Maharaj
The Hangman by Louise Penny
Easy Money by Gail Vaz-Oxlade
For more information on Good Reads, visit www.GoodReadsBooks.com
The Day the Rebels Came to Town
By Robert Hough
The year is 1920, and all of Mexico is at war with itself. Gangs of rebels roam the country, stealing money, food, and horses. Carlos is 28 years old. He works in his father’s café. One day, a gang rides into Carlos’s village. When the gang leaves, they kidnap Carlos.
Weeks later, the rebels and Carlos ride into the town of Rosita. Suddenly, Carlos is forced to make a life or death decision. He does so, though in a way that surprises everyone.
Is Carlos a brave man or a coward? It is a question that takes him a lifetime to answer.
Missing
By Frances Itani
Missing is based on a true story.
Luc Caron lives in northern France during World War I. One day, he sees three airplanes fighting in the sky. Luc watches in horror as a plane flips over and the pilot falls to his death. Luc is the only witness.
The Greenwoods own an apple farm in Canada. Their son, a pilot, has been missing for 11 years. In 1928, they receive a package from England. The package contains a letter and three objects found at the site of a plane crash.
How is the mystery of the missing pilot solved, bringing peace to Luc and to the pilot’s parents?
Home Invasion
By Joy Fielding
Kathy Brown suddenly wakes up. Was that a noise in the house, or part of her dream?
In her dream, Kathy was about to kiss Michael, her high school boyfriend. Her husband, Jack, lies beside her, snoring. Michael is exciting. Jack is boring.
When Kathy hears the noise again, she gets up. Then she hears whispers. Then she feels a gun at her head. Two men are in the house. Kathy and her husband face a living nightmare. Kathy must also face her real feelings about her husband.
The outcome surprises everyone, most of all Kathy herself.
About the Author
Marina Endicott is the bestselling author of Good to a Fault. This book was a finalist for the Giller Prize and a Globe and Mail Best Book. Her latest book, The Little Shadows, follows a singing sister act touring the prairies in 1912.
Marina worked as an actor and director before she began to write fiction. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta. Marina lives in Edmonton with her husband (a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer), two children, and one small dog.
Also by Marina Endicott:
Open Arms
Good to a Fault
The Little Shadows
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New Year's Eve Page 4