Simon Tanner was sitting at the kitchen counter, attacking a large portion of meatballs and roasted potatoes. He’d passed over the cucumbers and the rest of the other veggie dishes Faith had prepared for the smorgasbord. Like her father-in-law, the Aussie was obviously a meat and potatoes man. He’d come by to tell her that the new chef would be arriving in the morning, and she’d insisted he stay for some dinner. The 6:00 P.M. seating was in full swing, and she didn’t have much to do, except keep an eye on the pots.
“This reminds me of all the tucker I had here with John,” Simon said in a wistful tone. “I would never have figured him for a bolter.”
“And no one has heard a word from him or where he might be?” Faith asked.
Simon shook his head. He wasn’t bad-looking. Her initial Crocodile Dundee impression, cliché though it was, remained. Simon was tall and slim, his collar-length sandy hair streaked with gray. He sported cowboy boots, and Faith was sure the rest of the outback regalia, including the hat and vest, were in his closet. It was hard to tell how old he was. He’d spent a great deal of his life outdoors, Faith guessed. His tanned face showed it.
“Who knows? Maybe he went to some restaurant in New York City. That’s where he was from. Maybe he was tired of winter.”
This possibility hadn’t occurred to Faith. She’d call some of her chef friends in Manhattan and see if there was a new kid on the block. It nagged at her—the not knowing, just as not knowing always did.
And here was Simon. There was a lot she didn’t know about him.
“What brought you to this part of the world?” She placed a large piece of chocolate mousse cake in front of him. It wasn’t Scandinavian, but she’d included it, along with a few other non-Nordic offerings that she knew people would expect at a buffet. She’d told herself that it was fusion cuisine. If you could have Franco-American, you could certainly have Franco-Norwegian.
Simon was obviously a chocolate lover, and half the cake disappeared rapidly before he answered her question.
“I was one of those guys who followed the snow. My mum and dad died when I was a teenager. My sister was married with a bunch of kids. I was the last thing she needed, so I started working my way around the world from one mountain to the next. It was great while it lasted. No worries.” He took another bite of cake.
“But why Vermont? Why Pine Slopes?” It must seem pretty tame for someone who has skied the Alps and the Andes, she thought.
“One day, I looked around me and all my mates had moved on to other things. I was the old man in the crowd. It was time for me to move on, too. The only thing I know anything about is skiing and ski resorts. I picked up a few courses in management, so I’d look good on paper, then began sending ‘all about me’ letters around. Most places wanted me to head the ski school, or teach skiing. Been there, done that. Pine Slopes wanted a manager. End of story.”
Faith was sure there were lots of chapters that had been edited out, but she was equally sure Simon wasn’t going to reveal any more than he had.
“Thanks for dinner. It was brilliant. And thanks for working this week. Giving up your vacation time was a lot for us to ask, but I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t been here.” Simon reached across the counter for Faith’s hand. She wasn’t sure whether he was going to kiss it—she flashed back to John’s gesture—or shake it. Simon shook it.
“Time to get back to the salt mines, better known as the Sports Center. It’s almost time for the Hagar the Horrible weight-lifting competition.”
“You certainly don’t want to miss that,” Faith said, laughing.
“No—especially because I’m judging it.”
“Josh must be entered, then, since he isn’t judging,” Faith said.
Simon frowned. “Josh hasn’t been too keen on Nordic Night. He’s tending the bar and serving out snacks.”
Eduardo entered with one of the large chafing dishes, followed by two of the other waiters, who were carrying more empty ones.
“They are like animals out there!” Eduardo cried, then fell silent and put the dish on the counter. The other two did the same and stood waiting.
“Aren’t you boys supposed to be doing something?” Simon asked, zipping up his parka. “And mucho gracias, don’t be calling our guests, ‘animals.’ See you, Faith.”
He left before Faith could explain that she had told them she’d be doing all the replenishing. They had to save enough for the next seating. And animals—the insect variety, as in locusts—were exactly what people were like at an “all you can eat” affair.
“What can I do?” Eduardo asked, frown lines puckering his smooth brow.
“Nada until I refill these. Don’t worry. Simon didn’t know what my instructions were. He came by to tell me that the new chef will be here tomorrow morning.”
“But we want you to stay, Señora Confianza!” Juana said solemnly. Her words reflected the expressions on all the other faces in the kitchen.
“And I wish I could. I’ve loved working with all of you, but I have to go home, back to my job, at the end of the week. So I need to be with my family here.” As she spoke, Faith realized how much fun she had been having. She wouldn’t have minded if the new chef hadn’t shown up until Friday. Tom and the kids were one thing, but she wasn’t looking forward to quality time with the rest of the family, especially after the ugly scene a few hours ago. Tom had said he would call from the Sports Center to tell her what was going on, but so far, he hadn’t. She toyed with the idea of slipping down there, but she needed—and wanted—to stay right where she was, far from the scene of battle.
“I’ll be here to meet him with you and tell him how lucky he is to have such a well-trained crew.” Faith assumed this was the chef from Middlebury. She’d forgotten to ask Simon where he was coming from or what kind of cuisine he specialized in. The chef was a man, because Simon had said, “He’ll be here around ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
She glanced at the clock. The next seating could linger, but these folks would have to be moved along. She hated to do it, but there wasn’t any choice.
“You’ll have to start busing the empty places and stop offering coffee refills. Of course, if someone asks for more, that’s different. We won’t refill any of the main dishes completely. They should be on dessert by now, but there are always some endless pits that have to keep going back for more, so take these out.” She refilled the platters with a judicious amount.
“When you have time, you have to tell me what an ‘endless pit’ means,” Eduardo said. “I know endless, and a pit is what is in the middle of some kinds of fruit. I learned that from John. But an ‘endless pit’?” He shrugged expressively.
“I’ll explain later. There are two kinds of pits, and they mean very different things.”
“Like dice and dice,” a tall boy named Vincente piped up. “John taught us that, too.”
Faith began to wonder what else John had taught them.
Tom called at 8:30. Amy had crashed, and he was back at the condo.
“She was asleep as soon as she got her nightie on, so I skipped teeth tonight. She can brush them twice in the morning. Is this a bad time?”
“No, it’s fine. The second wave has arrived, and my new amigos are dealing with everything nicely. But Tom, they’ve found a chef. He starts tomorrow. This is my last night.”
“You sound disappointed.”
Faith hastened to cover herself. Tom had sounded disappointed, too.
“Not exactly. It’s just that I’ve been having fun with them, not to mention being a real restaurant chef—you know, sort of like that old TV show Queen for a Day. But I’m looking forward to hitting the slopes with all of you and being with everyone at the condo.”
“Liar.” Tom laughed. “You may want to hit the slopes, but the togetherness part is a fib, and I don’t blame you. I was glad to have Amy as an excuse to leave. There’s something rotten in the state of Fairchild. Even Dad is picking up on it.”
“Betsey?”
“To start. I know my big sister is bossy, but something else is going on. She insisted we all go on the sleigh ride she organized, even though it was cold, and the horse blanket was very horsey, and not too warm, unless you want to count the heat generated by the smell of manure. Fortunately, it wasn’t long.”
“What’s happened with Scott? Was he there?”
“My brother Robert, who, I’m beginning to think, is the sanest of us all—and certainly the most sensitive—apparently didn’t let his nephew out of his sight after Scott charged out the back door. Robert’s taken both boys to dinner and the movies in Stowe. More ‘woof-woof’ burgers, as Amy calls them, at Gracie’s, and then on to that funky theater.”
The small Stowe cinema had a tiny loge with comfy seating, where patrons could order a beer or wine and hearty movie snacks.
“Scott will have to come home at some point.”
“Not in this life, if he can help it. Apparently, Dennis and Betsey had words about the way she handled things this afternoon. Now Dennis has vanished.”
“Maybe he’s with Robert and the boys.”
“Possibly. I didn’t think of that, but it makes sense. Scott will slide into his room tonight, and then we’ll have the fun of watching him avoid his mother for the rest of the vacation.”
Faith giggled. “Guess he’ll be turning off his walkie-talkie.” She was at the point where she had to laugh or cry about the whole debacle, and it was infinitely better to laugh.
“He doesn’t need to; they’ve never worked well. Betsey is furious about that, too. Anyway, being with Mom and Dad seems to be what she wants. The three of them are in the Scrabble tournament. I’m not sure that’s a Nordic game, but it’s on the program. And speaking of Nordic, I wish you could have seen some of the getups people were wearing, in the fond belief that they were imitating real Vikings. One guy was decked out in some kind of caveman outfit made of fake fur, and he had an ice bucket decorated with cardboard horns on his head. If his arms and legs were anything to go by, he didn’t need the fake fur, by the way. Then we also had a six-foot-tall Brunhilde—quite a bit of confusion between Wagner and Grieg tonight—complete with an aluminum-foil breastplate.”
“Maybe I can duck down for a few minutes. What’s Ben up to?”
“He’s as happy as a Swede with a boatload of herring. I just made that up. Pretty cute, huh?”
“Very cute, but who’s keeping on eye on him? Craig and Glenda?”
“More like Craig. Glenda bowed out after the sleigh ride to shower and change. They’re signed up for the Land of the Midnight Sun tennis doubles tourney. Maybe she’s back down there by now.”
And maybe she’s not, Faith thought. She’d look in the pub after she finished talking to Tom.
“Craig entered this strongman thing and is in the finals. Ben wanted me to try, and now he knows what a hernia is. He and Craig were sledding when I left. Mom said she’d bring him up here before ten, or earlier if she gets eliminated.”
“Sounds like a rollicking time.”
“Uffda, as they say in Oslo. Wish you were here, honey. I haven’t seen much of you lately.”
“I know,” Faith said. Tom and she needed a vacation to recover from this vacation.
Tiny came running into the kitchen.
“A very big man has just taken all the meatballs! The people behind him in line are very angry. ¡Dios mio! What do I do?”
“Got to go, sweetheart. Meatball emergency.”
Faith had planned to freeze a large quantity of the leftover main courses, but she’d obviously underestimated these peoples’ appetites. She filled a chafing dish with the intended leftovers and sent Eduardo out with it, instructing Tiny to remove the one that was almost empty.
There were a great many things she had trouble imagining people doing in this world—some of which she could hardly bear to think about—but on a very basic level, taking more than one’s fair share ranked high.
By the time she remembered to check the Pine Needle Pub, there were only a few stragglers in the dining room, and even fewer at the tables in the pub. But each stool at the pub’s bar was filled—and Glenda and her ski instructor occupied two of them.
Before she could duck out, Glenda spotted her sister-in-law. Cool as one of the cucumbers Faith had sliced wafer-thin and mixed with her dill sauce, Glenda called out, “Faith, hello. Come meet Roy, my wonderful teacher.”
Glenda was wearing a tight silver Lycra top. The low light in the room seemed to make it shine more, not less. She’d obviously showered and washed her gleaming hair. She smelled like expensive perfume, nothing equine, and something else, something basic. They made an arresting couple. Roy was, if anything, more striking than Glenda. His hair was white blond, too, and his eyes were as clear and blue as the North Sea. And like the North Sea’s treasure, the oil that had made Norway so rich, Roy projected power—an ample store of health, athletic prowess, and sex. This was someone who should be on a Calvin Klein billboard in Times Square, not squiring snow bunnies around a small family-oriented ski resort in the wilds of Vermont. What was his story? Or, Faith corrected herself, saga.
“Faith, meet Roy Hansen. Roy, this is my sister-in-law Faith. She’s the one I’ve been telling you about who took the chef’s place. She knows how to cook.”
Glenda clearly thought Faith’s accomplishments fell somewhere below giving a good manicure and above changing spark plugs. Roy got up and extended his hand. He had perfect posture.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, and I have heard about what you have done for Pine Slopes. The smorgasbord you prepared tonight was wonderful. If I closed my eyes, it was like Christmas Eve at home.”
Faith shook his hand. It was warm and smooth. He wasn’t wearing any rings. As in the skoaling tradition of his countrymen, he was looking straight into her eyes. She reached up to pat a loose hair into place and realized she was still holding his hand. Dropping it, she said, “I’m pleased to meet you, too. I know Glenda has been very happy with her lessons. And thank you. I didn’t have much notice for tonight, so there’s a lot missing—herring, lingonberries, Jarlsberg cheese, reindeer steaks.”
She was babbling; saying dopey things, but he was having a dopey effect on her. I’m tired, thought Faith. Time to go home. But she stayed.
“Roy is from Norway,” Glenda said, happily stating the obvious.
“A friend of ours and her mother had a wonderful trip there several years ago, mostly on the west coast.” Pix Miller and her mother, Ursula, had gone to Norway to help an old friend of Ursula’s locate her missing granddaughter. The trip had been wonderful, if you consider finding a body in a fjord and getting locked in a sauna with the heat cranked up to a murderous level wonderful. But Pix kept talking about going back. The people were so nice and the scenery was gorgeous. And the food, especially breakfast! Faith decided not to go into all this with Roy.
“I am from the west coast myself. A place called ?
Alesund. You would like it very much. It is very beautiful, and many tourists come to us in the summer. Winters are not so nice.”
He spoke English with a faint British accent—Scandinavian children learned British English in school—and a slight lilt softened his vowels, making even this simple statement lyrical.
Glenda had had enough time away from center stage. “I’d love to go to Norway. Maybe next summer. If Craig can’t get away, I’ll go by myself. Roy says there are all these awesome places to hike to, and you stay in little cabins. All I’d need is a backpack.”
And a steamer trunk for your cosmetics, Faith added silently.
“I have to get back to the kitchen. It was a pleasure meeting you, Roy.”
“You, too, Faith.” Once more, he reached out his hand, and once more she took it.
“It wasn’t any fun down at the Sports Center,” Glenda said defiantly. “A smelly sleigh ride, then watching Craig lift weights. I told him I might end up here.”
Faith was positive that was a lie—what about the tennis match?—but she smiled at Glenda and said, “Maybe he’ll join you later.”
“Maybe he will,” Glenda said, pouting. “He hasn’t met Roy yet, and I’m sure the two will hit it off.”
Hit was the operative word here. Faith pulled her hand away from Roy’s and went back to help close the kitchen. It would be an early night for once.
After regrets had been expressed on both sides, she left, promising to have breakfast with the kitchen staff before the new chef arrived. Outside, it was another clear night, and warmer than usual. She walked quickly toward the condo, eager for some time alone with Tom. If Ben had come back, he’d be in bed, and the Parkers would still be occupied with their various activities. Betsey was a killer Scrabble player and had memorized all those lists of obscure two-and three-letter words you needed to know to score a gazillion points by laying down one tile. With luck, Faith could scoot up to their bedroom, join Tom, and firmly close the door.
There must have been another killer player. Betsey Fairchild Parker did not look as if she’d won anything. She was stomping up the stairs to the condo alone, obviously put out. Faith hung back. Luck was not with her, but she could improve the odds by waiting a little before she went in.
It was warm, but not that warm, so she opened their car door, sat in the driver’s seat, got out her keys, and turned on the heat. This is really childish, she told herself. But she didn’t move. Lights went on downstairs. Tom must have gone to bed, Faith realized. She’d wait until Betsey did, too. Faith hoped her sister-in-law was tired after expending so much emotional energy. It hadn’t been a good day for Bets. Losing the ring was terrible, but she’d get another one. Bigger, even. It was the scene with Scott—that was far, far worse. Had she lost her son, as well? Faith thought about suggesting to Marian that she talk to her daughter. Generally, Tom’s parents didn’t interfere in their children’s lives—as Faith’s hadn’t, either. Maybe it’s a generational thing, Faith mused. She couldn’t imagine keeping her mouth as tightly shut as the Fairchilds had during some of Craig’s misadventures. But she also couldn’t imagine opening it the way Betsey did each and every day. She’d clearly crossed the line from normally interested/involved parent to paranoid/obsessive—and Faith was the last person who could point this out, however tactfully. Marian was the embodiment of tact. She could do it. Faith looked at the kitchen window and saw that the lights were still on. What was Betsey doing? Drowning her sorrows in chai? Why didn’t the woman go up to bed, already!
A car came down the road from the woods. Faith sat up and looked in the rearview mirror. It was Gertrude Stafford’s hippie mobile. There was no mistaking that paint job, the Eugene McCarthy daisies, and the various “Make Love, Not War” genre bumper stickers. Ophelia was driving, and Gertrude herself was in the passenger seat.
Without thinking twice, Faith backed up and followed them down the mountain. It beat waiting for the lights to go out in the condo.
At the bottom, where the road to Pine Slopes connected with the main road, they turned right. Ophelia was a good driver, used turn signals, and obeyed the speed limit—or perhaps this was as fast as the aging van could go. It was easy to keep her quarry in sight. They passed through Richmond. Faith turned on the radio. Randy Newman was singing “Baltimore.” She was a long way from Baltimore—a great crab-cake town—and this thought produced another. The two ladies might be planning more than a night out. Something of a longer duration. The head housekeeper, Candy, had said that Gertrude left for many months at a time. This might be one of those times. Ophelia seizing the chance to run away? “Ain’t nowhere to run to…” Newman’s distinctive gravelly voice sang. But he was wrong in this case. The Canadian border was only a few hours north.
Ophelia had said she wasn’t a Stafford, but had Naomi had Joanie’s name changed to match hers once she married Freddy, or had Ophelia kept her father’s? Having the same surname would make it easier at the border—and they were sure to be stopped. Then again, Gertrude struck Faith as the kind of person who would know all sorts of ways of getting from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom straight into Canada without encountering the fuzz. From the glimpses she’d had of life chez Stafford, Faith was surprised Ophelia hadn’t split long ago. Once again, she felt angry that Naomi was either consciously or unconsciously ignoring the cries for help her daughter was broadcasting so loudly and clearly. Faith thought wearily of the chain of events that would follow if indeed the two were about to make their own buddy movie. She’d have to get Scott to find out whether Ophelia returned home tonight, and then tell the Staffords. Or should she call the Staffords now? She was loath to sound the alarm, in case this turned out to be just a pizza run to Mr. Mike’s in Burlington. The van turned onto the interstate, and Faith decided to follow them only long enough to confirm things one way or the other.
The car was warm, the song suited her mood, and she let her mind drift back over the day’s events. The big question was who had broken into the condo, and when. Ophelia’s night flight could be a reaction to the suspicion—loudly voiced, Faith guessed, by Freddy—that had fallen upon the girl. Scott had been so passionate in his defense of his friend. His was a passionate age.
Nothing made sense. If the computer hadn’t also been missing, Faith would have been tempted to believe that the ring had fallen down the garbage disposal. Things like that happened. They could pinpoint the time, since Candy definitely would have noticed a sparkler like that when she came in. And Pete before her. Then the kids said Dennis had been there. And what about the kids? Easy enough to have knocked it into the drain and then been afraid to fess up. It made the most sense, in fact. Then give the computer to Ophelia for cover. Andy and Scott were smart boys. Just ask their mother.
The van had its blinker on. They were getting off the interstate. Faith quickly changed lanes and followed suit, feeling greatly relieved. No Montreal or other Canadian port of call tonight. They were on the Williston Road, heading into Burlington. Maybe it was a pizza run. They passed the motel where Faith had seen Dennis’s car on Saturday. She noticed now that the motel had a coffee shop attached to it. Anxious to get out of walkie-talkie range, he might have pulled in for some apple pie and a cup of joe.
They were coming into Burlington. Williston Road turned into Main Street, and Faith sped up. There was more traffic, and she didn’t want to lose them. They were in the “Hill” section of town. Burlington, on the shores of Lake Champlain, had been an important port in the 1800s. In the latter part of the century, wealthy businessmen and industrialists had covered the Hill with grand Italianate, Queen Anne, and Colonial-style mansions. Now these were UVM fraternity and sorority houses, as well as campus buildings used by the university and by Champlain College. The van’s blinker went on again, and it appeared that one of these architectural grande dames was their destination. Faith pulled over to the side of the street and watched as the women came to a stop. A few seconds later, they got out of the van. Under the street lights, she could see that Ophelia was carrying a guitar case and Gertrude was taking a hit. She carefully stubbed the roach out in a snowbank and put it in her pocket. Ready to rock ’n’ roll.
A frat party? Wasn’t Gertrude a little old—and Ophelia a little young? Well, maybe not Ophelia. A townie as hot-looking as she was would be more than welcome. Every maternal alarm bell in Faith’s body went off at once. Naomi Stafford had to know that Ophelia was virtually living at Gertrude’s—Gertrude, that terrific role model. Again, Faith asked herself, Could Naomi be so dense—or uncaring?
There was a steady stream of people going into the large house. It was as imposing now as the man who built it must have been. Faith pictured him in his top hat and swallow-tailed coat, standing on the broad veranda in front of his symbol of success, the symbol of his power. Ego incarnate overlooking the wide waters of the lake. Tonight, Faith could see lights from the New York side shining far across the expanse. It would have been a black void in those earlier days, but a generation of like-minded entrepreneurs had taken care of that.
It was time to go back to Pine Slopes and bed. She now knew where Ophelia went some of the time, not, as Faith had supposed, to hang out with her Burlington friends, but to chauffer Gertrude to gigs. Faith wondered if the folkie had updated her Joni Mitchell/Joan Baez repertoire to techno or rap. A foursome passed on the sidewalk and turned to go into the house. Oldies. Not as old as Gertrude, but the men’s beards were flecked with white, as if it were snowing, and the skin on the women’s faces was poised between the tautness of youth and the soft lines of middle age. For the second time that night, Faith did not bother to pause between thought and action. She got out of the car and slipped in behind them. They were through the door. She had passed.
Passed into a time warp. Although, she reflected, what could possibly have changed in that college ritual known as “getting wasted”? The music was loud, the room was stifling, dancers who could find a spare inch of space in which to move were gyrating wildly, and major amounts of alcohol were being consumed. Another kind of Nordic Night.
There was no sign of Gertrude and Ophelia. It seemed an unlikely venue for a hootenanny. But Faith had seen them enter. Initially, curiosity had drawn her in, but the more she looked about, the more she wanted to make sure Ophelia was all right. Gertrude was not the chaperone Faith would have selected for the girl, or for anyone else. She wiggled her way out into the hall, dodged a few gropes—not even slightly flattering, as the gropers, feeling no pain, wouldn’t have known Faith from Grandma Moses—and went upstairs. A couple of the doors were locked, but one room wasn’t, and she backed out hastily after ascertaining that the individuals hunched over a desk, doing lines, were neither Gertrude nor, thank God, Ophelia. After walking in on a couple who had obviously been studying the Kama Sutra more religiously than their college texts, she decided to forgo the living quarters and head for the basement, retracing her steps until she found another set of stairs.
She heard her before she saw her. Gertrude’s voice wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, either. But she was pushing it for all it was worth, wailing out a Janis Joplin number, which was going over big. Whether this was because her audience was totally stoned or totally unacquainted with the real thing, Faith didn’t know.
The frat house had turned the space into a coffee-house. A few people were even drinking coffee—or something from mugs. The air was filled with smoke, the lights low, and Gertrude was perched on a high stool, a single blue spot above picking up the gold threads of her elaborately embroidered caftan. She cradled the mike, holding it close to her mouth—in a close approximation of what Faith had walked in on upstairs. Ophelia, carved in stone, sat at her idol’s feet, holding a bottle of Poland Spring water—not Southern Comfort—her hand on the cap, ready to offer succor at a moment’s notice. Two more bottles stood at the ready. Faith didn’t have to worry about being spotted. The girl was gazing at the singer with total devotion. It would have taken a major calamity to distract her, and even then Faith imagined the two figures, one singing, one listening, continuing on, oblivious to the flames, falling beams, or other disasters surrounding them. The guitar was off to one side. Faith had missed the opening number. “If I Had a Hammer”?
Gertrude finished the song, wailing, “Call on me, darlin’, just call on me.” Ophelia’s hand shot up, and without looking down, Gertrude drank, smacked her lips, and dropped the bottle back into the waiting receptacle.
The room had exploded with applause, whistles, and the occasional “We love you, Gert!” Apparently, the nickname was all right on campus.
“Thank you, thank you so much. You’re a lovely audience.” The huskiness in her voice was more pronounced tonight than it had been when Faith had had that brief interchange with her in the dining room at Le Sapin. Could be the cigarette smoke. Or the joint? Today’s marijuana was not your father’s reefer. Stronger several times over, usually laced with something else, and harsher. Maybe Gert grew her own.
Two skinny undergrads of indeterminate sex had provided backup. The only resemblance to the Holding Company was their hair—long and frizzy, the old “put my finger in a socket” look. One of those guys who were always around at things like this came up and fiddled with the mike, twirled some dials on the sound system, then crouched in readiness, a bookend to Ophelia. The girl seemed safe enough. The only liquid in any proximity was water—and she probably wouldn’t even drink that, saving it for the diva instead. Gertrude was the only person in the room—perhaps the only person in the world—who mattered to the girl.
Some more people drifted in; a few left.
“I knew her, you know,” Gertrude said softly into the mike, sharing a secret just with them, just with the people lucky enough to be in this room on this particular winter night. Cosmic. “Out in the Haight. Janis. A wild thing. Beautiful. None of the photographs ever captured her essence. Who she really was. We didn’t deserve her, and she left us. We killed her.”
This was not quite the story Faith had heard, but it played well with the audience. Gertrude appeared to be about to say something more, but then she closed her eyes—the better to commune?—and transformed herself into Donovan, rasping out “Mellow Yellow” to the appreciative group who joined in lustily every time the only two words they knew came up.
It was quite a performance, but Faith had seen enough.
Tom was a heavy sleeper, but a child’s cough or cry in the night—or, in this case, his wife’s step on the carpeted floor—wakened him immediately.
“Hey, you. Where have you been? A farewell party with your compadres?”
Faith walked closer to the bed.
“Phew. That must have been some wingding. You stink, my love.”
Hoping she wouldn’t rouse him, she’d planned to jump into the shower and get rid of the smell of cigarettes and beer that clung to her body.
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. What’s been going on here?”
“Not much. Mom and Dad brought Ben home, and he fell into bed almost as fast as Amy had, but I did get him to do his teeth.”
The Fairchilds were very big on teeth. It was the first thing Marian ever noted about anyone, Faith had observed. “She has good teeth,” or “He has a very white smile,” she’d say. Maybe they had been in the placebo group in the Gardol study when they were kids. Had happened to be sitting on the wrong side of the classroom that day.
“That’s a relief. What about Betsey—and Scott?”
“Betsey came slamming in, ripping because some teenager from North Carolina beat her in Scrabble. I went down when I heard the door, figured it was you. I thought maybe I could get her to calm down and talk a little, but no hope. She did agree to a cup of Sleepy-time tea, but the moment I raised my availability as a listener, she was off again. ‘Thank you, Tom. Thank you very much.’ You know how she says it. And ‘I have my own pastor, should I be in need of any advice, which I am not.’ So I poured myself a brandy and went to bed. I don’t know if Scott and Andy are home or not. I presume so, because I did hear Dennis come in, and he must have been with them.”
“You go back to sleep. I’m going to take a quick shower. Sleep in if you want. I’ll take the kids in the morning. I promised the crew I’d have breakfast with them. They’re making me something special, and then I’m going to brief the new chef.”
“I would have thought you’d seen enough of them tonight.” Tom sounded slightly annoyed.
“I wasn’t with them. I was…well, I’ll tell you tomorrow. Now I just need to get this smell out of my hair and get to bed.” Faith wanted her husband to be alert and understanding when she explained that she had spent a few hours tailing an aging hippie and her acolyte to Animal House.
She had turned on the taps and started to undress, when she was seized by a question that had to be answered immediately. She turned the water off and slipped out the door and down the stairs. The light over the sink kept her from knocking into the furniture. She slowly turned the knob to the kids’ room and pushed the door open. There was enough light to see four mounds. She stepped in and listened contentedly to the soft breathing coming from the bunk beds. She was about to leave, when she realized that there was no noise at all coming from one of the bottom bunks. She peeled a corner of the sheet from the lump on the pillow. The old rolled-up blanket trick. If he were sleeping next door, he wouldn’t have tried to make it look like he was here. He wasn’t with Ophelia the roadie. So where was Scott?
“Are you sure you want to go?” Faith asked her children. Wednesday had dawned cold and bleak. “You can come with me and hang out in the kitchen for a while, then go with Dad to the Sports Center. Or this morning might be a great time to take the Ben & Jerry’s tour.” She thought for sure this last suggestion would do the trick. It was a lousy ski day.
“Mom,” Ben explained patiently. “How am I ever going to learn to ride the rail all the way if I don’t stick with my lessons and practice?”
Faith now knew this was Ben’s description of going down the rail slide on his board in the Terrain Park, not hopping a freight car bound for Frisco.
“Yeah,” Amy piped up. “And how am I going to get good enough to ski with Ben if I don’t go?”
“You’re never—” Ben started, then catching his mother’s gaze of disapproval, did a 180 and finished, “going to get better if you don’t practice. You’re right, Amester. Besides, Mom”—somehow, he was managing to invest his prepubescent voice with David McCulloch–like measured tones—“a lot of kids won’t be there, so we’ll have like private lessons.”
“Don’t say like,” she said automatically, then resigned herself to bundling all of them up for the outdoors. It would have been nice to linger in the condo a bit longer, but she knew when she had been beaten.
This was the Fairchild side, as in the “Let’s bike to Alaska” dream Dick mentioned all too frequently.
She left Amy with her group inside the lodge and walked up to the main lift with Ben to meet his. The lift had just opened, so there weren’t many people in line. Faith watched idly as skiers reached for the chair and sat back. One, two, three—they moved slowly up the mountain. Four, five, six—they swayed slightly side to side, skis up like toothpicks. Then suddenly, the lift stopped.
The people waiting in line grew still, eyes on the lift. The slight morning breeze, which had made small eddies in the snowy surfaces of the slopes, died down. Then suddenly, everything in front of Faith was almost literally turned upside down as she watched in horror with everyone else. Swiftly, inexorably, the chairs on the motionless lift came sliding down the cable, crashing into one another and spilling their contents to the ground. One man jumped, his arms outstretched like some kind of rara avis. Screams filled the air and the people in line frantically pushed their way under the ropes, streaming down the slope toward the lodge as others were racing up. Ben grabbed her arm.
“What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
She pulled him close to her, wrapping him against her body as she turned him away from the ghastly sight.
“Something’s wrong with the lift. Help is coming, so don’t worry.” She struggled to keep her voice calm.
The first ski patrol snowmobiles, stationed close to the lift, came roaring by.
Faith stood, immobilized. It had been like any accident: slow-motion seconds that seemed to go on forever, then fast forward and chaos.
Some of the people on the ground were getting to their feet. The members of the ski patrol had one man on a stretcher and were moving a young girl, a boarder, onto another. For a moment, Faith thought it might be Ophelia, but when they took her helmet off, a mass of dark brown curls tumbled to her shoulders. She looked scared, but she was nodding.
Faith had to get Ben away.
“Let’s go back to the condo. The ski patrol is taking care of things. The lift stopped before the chairs were too high off the ground, and it looks like no one has been badly hurt, thank God.”
“But what happened, Mom? Why did all the chairs slide like that?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart, but we’ll find out.”
“This isn’t something that happens a lot, is it?” he asked anxiously. “I never heard of it happening.”
“No, the lifts are very, very safe. They’re inspected all the time. When we find out what happened, we’ll know more. But you shouldn’t worry about going on them.” Faith resolved to take Ben down to one of the other lifts at the resort as soon as they knew what was going on. This had been an accident. A freak accident.
Pete was walking away from the lift. He looked grim.
“Stay here a moment,” Faith told Ben, pointing to one of the ski racks outside the lodge.
She caught up to Pete. “What’s wrong with the lift?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the lift,” he said. “Someone wedged the bull wheel—that’s what keeps the lift running. Be all right for a while until you got to the wedge, then just like someone picking up the end of a curtain rod and letting all the rings slide off.”
“So it wasn’t an accident?”
“No, Mrs. Fairchild, it wasn’t an accident.”