I want you to be safe and to come back down from there in one piece. Who’ll be Sutton Junior’s godmother, if you’re not around?’
‘Suze. You’re not?’
Suzy winked. ‘Not quite yet. But I’m planning on it.’
‘Well. That’s great. And I’ll be fine. I’m only the expedition doctor, remember, dosing the d and v, not one of the summit glory boys.’
‘Okay, just so long as you remember that. C’mon, I’ll see you off.’
They weaved their way in and out of the crowd. Suzy stopped short and peeled away towards the bar. ‘Hey, almost forgot.’
She leaned over behind the counter, exposing the tops of her tanned thighs. Jeff caught her and ran his hands over her hips until Suzy straightened up with what she had been searching for grasped in one hand. ‘Later,’ she admonished him. And she held out her bridal bouquet and stuffed it firmly into Finch’s arms.
‘Not me,’ Finch protested. ‘Find someone more deserving. Someone eager for a husband.’
‘There is no one else, kid. You are the last remaining authentic unmarried woman. Pretty soon they’re going to slap a heritage order on you.’
‘You just want me to join the club. You want me to get married because you’ve gone and done it.’
Suzy smiled, a lovely hazy smile of pure happiness and contentment. ‘Sure I do.’
‘Forget it, pal.’
They eased their way through the crowd to the door. The party was hotting up, in the way that weddings could do.
‘Finch has got to fly home up to Vancouver tonight,’ Suzy explained to the last group.
‘Weather’s turned pretty nasty,’ one of Jim Sutton’s cronies observed.
‘Finch has seen worse,’ Suzy said proudly.
Finch put her arm around her. ‘Go on, go back to your guests. I’ll call you. Have a great honeymoon.’
The newlyweds were going to the Caribbean. Suzy liked beaches.
They kissed each other.
‘Remember what I said. About coming back.’
‘I will,’ Finch promised. ‘Be happy, Mrs Sutton.’
‘I will,’ she echoed. ‘Thanks for being here, Finch. And for everything else, all the times we’ve had. I love you, you know? Plus you were a ripper bridesmaid.’
‘I wouldn’t have missed it. I love you too.’
She blew a last kiss from the doorway. As soon as she stepped outside, the cold and wind hit Finch like an axe blow. She ducked her head and teetered on high heels to the parking lot where she had left the rental car. The moment she was inside it, with the radio tuned in to some rock station and the heater beginning to do its work, Finch pushed her head hard back against the seat rest and let out a yodel of relief.
One more wedding.
She put her foot down and hightailed it for the airport until a twitch from the rear wheels gave warning of how icy the road was. She slowed at once and watched for the glow of tail lamps ahead of her.
At the airport she nosed the car into one of the Alamo slots and dropped the keys and the paperwork into the box at the closed booth at the end of the lot. The wind had strengthened and there were airborne needles of ice in it. Her thin coat over the pale-blue suit was no protection and there was a long hike to the doors of the departure hall. She dropped her bag and crouched to rummage inside it. From the bottom she pulled out her Gore-tex ski parka and pulled it on with a grunt of relief. She’d brought it with her on her three-day trip to Oregon thinking there might be a chance of some hiking, if not cross-country skiing. As it turned out there had been no time at all, but at least the faithful Patagonia was good for something now. Insulated from her hood to the middle of her thighs, Finch put her head back and marched through the wind. She carried her bag hitched over one shoulder and from the other fist trailed Suzy’s wedding bouquet. She had almost left it in the car, but had decided that she could hardly abandon her best friend’s flowers to wither on the passenger seat of a rented Nova.
Inside the sliding doors the warmth was a blessing but the concourse was packed. One glance at the departures board told her the worst and the clerk at the Air Canada desk confirmed it.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am, the airport’s closed. No flights until the weather eases. Tomorrow morning, I’d say.’
Sam McGrath was out running. It was more than a habit, this daily pushing himself through the barriers of disinclination and fatigue to achieve a rhythm and finally the synchrony of muscle and breath and mind that made it all worthwhile. It was a mainstay of his existence. Sometimes, in the blacker moments, he feared it was the only one.
He was skirting the shores of a little lake, and there was ice crusting the dead reeds along the margins and skinning the deeper water. The track wound between trees and bushes with their spring buds blackened by the return of winter; the dirt underfoot was greasy with earlier sleet but Sam knew the route so well that his pace never slackened. He was warm, now, and going at full stretch, his steady breathing making clouds in the bitter air and his footfalls pounding a drumbeat in his head.
He liked this solitude. Mostly his daily running was hemmed in by the city and there were always people within sight.
His father used to bring him fishing for brook trout down here, Sam remembered. Once they had camped somewhere back up in the trees in the old green tent and had fried their catch over a smoky fire. He would have been about ten years old. It must have been some holiday weekend when Michael hadn’t swung it to go climbing.
Memories shivered and stirred in his head.
He was eight years old and standing with his father at the foot of a cliff. The face stretched up so high over Sam’s head that it blotted out the sun. He reached up his hands, palms flat and raised, and rested them against the sandstone. Mike had ceremoniously dusted them with chalk. Particles of grit scraped minutely against his skin. Slowly, tasting nausea in the back of his throat, he lifted his eyes and searched for holds. Then he bent one knee and pressed the tip and side of his sneaker into a crack.
Up.
His fingers bent and hooked. The crevices were too tiny, but still he forced himself to entrust his weight to them. Sweat burst through the skim of chalk dust.
Up.
The grass, sweet and sappy, was a long way beneath him. The rock was close to his face and the air behind and below hummed and expanded, and played tricks with gravity. One minute he was a feather, hardly anchored to the boulder, the next a sack of soaking clothes, too heavy to hold up.
Up one more foothold.
He couldn’t look up or down.
‘Sammy, you’re fine. I’m here to catch you.’
He couldn’t work out if his father’s hands were huge, a great cradle waiting for him, or a tiny cup that he would smash under his weight. He hung on for a moment longer, desperation knocking inside
