on the radio, stretched in his seat and headed through the storm for the airport with unconsidered heavy metal crashing in his ears.
*
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the American ticket desk clerk told him. ‘The weather’s closed right in. Maybe in an hour, if it eases.’
‘I’ll wait,’ Sam said, as if he had a choice. From the newsstand he bought a copy of Forbes and from the coffee shop a latte that might take away the taste of his father’s brew. Under the stalled departures board he found a seat and wedged himself between a boy with a snowboard and a woman holding a baby on her lap. He sipped his coffee and watched the refugees from the weather as they pushed in past the barrier of the glass doors. The concourse was filling up, a steady wash of people jostled in front of him and the boy with the snowboard sullenly left it jutting in their path.
Sam had been sitting with the empty styrofoam cup in his hands for perhaps fifteen minutes when he saw her.
The doors parted yet again and a flurry of windborne ice crystals spun across a triangle of the murky concourse floor. A woman blew in in their wake but she wasn’t hunched over to defend herself from the weather like every one of the other arrivals. Her head was back and she was wide-eyed with exhilaration. And she appeared to be wearing nothing but a pair of slender high-heeled shoes and a faded ski parka. Her legs were very long and splashed with muddy sleet.
As well as a small overnight bag, she was negligently carrying a bridal bouquet.
Sam swore, fluently, under his breath. Some fuckwit had already married her.
He followed her with his eyes to the Air Canada desk. She went through the same exchange as he had done, then turned away. Sam was almost on his feet, on his way to intercept her, when he remembered that he didn’t know her. Not yet. Instead, he watched as she bought a cup of coffee and drank it standing, her attention on the departures board. The bouquet lay at her feet, with her bag. There was no bridegroom in sight, no smirking triumphalist ready to propel her away to a honeymoon hotel. She was apparently all alone.
He stood up and placed his coat on his seat, making it the only unoccupied one in sight. He walked between the clumps of travellers until he reached her side. ‘Would you like to sit down?’
Her gaze travelled over his face, level, considering, touched with amusement. ‘There are three pregnant women and several geriatrics standing around here. Why me?’
Jesus, he thought. She’s really something. ‘Good question.’
‘Thanks for the offer, anyway.’ She was smiling. She wasn’t beautiful, her eyes were too wide-set and her jaw too prominent for that. She was better than beautiful; she was intriguing.
‘Where are you heading?’
‘Home to Vancouver. And you?’
‘Uh, yup. Me too.’ Seattle, BC, what did it matter? Tomorrow’s work waiting, Frannie – Sam folded them up and put them all on hold. It was a very long time since he had felt himself do anything so perfectly unconsidered.
‘You live in Vancouver?’
‘Uh, not exactly. Visiting, you know. Looks like we might have a long wait. Maybe until tomorrow.’
‘I’m not giving up hope. I need to get away tonight,’ she said, checking her watch. ‘And I have to make some calls. Nice talking to you.’ She was dismissing him.
‘Sam McGrath.’
Although she hadn’t invited the introduction she nodded politely enough. ‘Finch Buchanan.’
He bent down and picked up the flowers, putting them into her hands. They were some kind of creamy white scented ones, spiked with glossy evergreen. Conventional, in a way that didn’t quite go with her. And her fingers were ringless.
‘Congratulations, by the way. Mrs Buchanan, is it?’
She laughed now, a great uninhibited snort of merriment that showed her teeth and her tongue. Jesus, he thought again.
‘Actually, it was. But I only married him for his money. I shot him on the drive from the reception.’
‘Wise move.’
‘Thank you.’
‘So now you’ll be looking for a replacement?’
One try too many, he realised, as soon as he said it. Finch gave a delicate shrug. The parka crinkled around her and she pulled impatiently at the velcro fastenings to undo it. She wasn’t, unfortunately, naked beneath it. She was wearing a little buttoned-up blue skirt suit that made her look disappointingly like Ally McBeal. She rolled up the parka and stuffed it into her bag.
‘See you.’ She smiled and strolled away towards the bank of payphones at the end of the hall.
As soon as she was busy with her call, Sam went straight to the Air Canada desk and transferred his ticket. After Finch finished her animated conversation she found a place to sit a long way off next to a group of Mexican nuns, took a book out of her bag and immersed herself in it.
Slowly, the snowstorm moved away south-westwards. The Vancouver flight was nearly three hours late departing, but on the other hand it was one of the few that left at all that night. It was full. Sam saw her as soon as he boarded, in a window seat halfway down the main cabin. He strode up the aisle to the as yet miraculously unoccupied seat beside her.
‘What do you know?’ He smiled and settled himself in place. She had the book open on her lap.
‘I know something about the laws of probability,’ she answered coolly and returned to her reading. Sam saw a guy who looked like John Belushi making his way towards them, already frowning. He leaned down and scooped Finch’s flowers from where she had wedged them under the seat in front, and held them on the armrest between them. And he squirmed closer so their heads were almost touching.
‘Is this …?’ Belushi began tetchily.
Sam passed over his boarding card. ‘I’m really sorry. It’s your seat, I know. But look, it’s our wedding night. D’you mind changing so I can sit beside my wife? She’s a nervous flier.’
‘Well, okay,’ the man grunted and pushed onwards.
She didn’t laugh now. She didn’t look alarmed or disconcerted or angry – just severe. She took back the flowers and pushed them under the seat again, kicking them out of the way with the toe of her pretty shoe. ‘What is all this about?’
‘You think I’m a flake, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not. I just wanted to sit here.’
‘Then sit,’ she said crisply. He did as he was told, through the last-minute de-icing and the taxi and the take-off, and the pilot’s announcement that in the wake of the storm severe turbulence was anticipated and they should keep their seat belts fastened. As the plane climbed through the cloud layers it pitched and shuddered, and the engines whined and changed key. Finch suddenly let her book drop and pushed her head back against the seat rest. Sam saw the pallor of her throat.
‘As a matter
