Crow Lake

Crow Lake Read Free Page B

Book: Crow Lake Read Free
Author: Mary Lawson
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Sagas
Ads: Link
the two men—the policeman had stayed by his car—and said hi. And then I saw Matt’s face change. He’d been looking at Reverend Mitchell, and suddenly he didn’t look polite and curious any more. He looked afraid.
    He said, “What?”
    Dr. Christopherson said, “Kate, I wonder if you could go and see to Bo? Could you just … um … ?”
    I went out to the kitchen. Bo wasn’t doing anything wrong but I picked her up and carried her outside. She was getting big but I could still just carry her. I took her back down to the beach. The mosquitoes were starting to come out but I stayed there anyway, even when Bo began to rage at me, because I was afraid of the expression on Matt’s face and I didn’t want to know what had caused it.
    After a long time, half an hour at least, Matt and Luke came down to the beach. I didn’t look at them. Luke picked Bo up and carried her down to the water’s edge and began to walk along the shore with her. Matt sat down beside me, and when Luke and Bo were a long way down the curve of the shore he told me that our parents had been killed when their car was hit by a fully loaded logging truck whose brakes failed as it was coming down Honister Hill.
    I remember being terrified that he would cry. His voice was shaking, and he was struggling very hard with himself, and I remember being rigid with fear, not daring to look at him, scarcely daring to breathe. As if that would be the worst thing; much worse than this incomprehensible thing he was telling me. As if for Matt to cry was the one unthinkable thing.

chapter
TWO
    Memories. I’m not in favour of them, by and large. Not that there aren’t some good ones, but on the whole I’d like to put them in an airtight cupboard and close the door. And in fact, until a couple of months ago I’d managed to do that quite successfully for some years. I had a life to live, after all. I had my work, and I had Daniel, and between them they took up a lot of time and energy. It’s true that things hadn’t been going too well in either department for a while, but I didn’t think to connect that with “the past.” I did genuinely feel, up until a couple of months ago, that I’d put all that behind me. I felt that I was doing fine.
    And then, back in February, I found a letter from Matt waiting for me when I got home from work one Friday evening. I saw the writing and instantly I saw Matt—you know how handwriting conjures up the person. And also instantly I got the same old ache, centred more or less midchest, a heavy, dull pain, like mourning. In all those years it hadn’t lessened a bit.
    I opened the envelope as I climbed the stairs, clutching my bag full of lab reports under my arm. It turned out not to be a proper letter after all. It was a card from Simon, Matt’s son, inviting me to his eighteenth birthday party at the end of April. Attached to it was a scribbled note from Matt saying, “You have to come, Kate!! No excuses!!!” A total of five exclamation marks. And then a tactful P.S.: “Bring someone if you want to.”
    Behind the note was a photograph. It was of Simon, but at first I thought it was Matt. Matt at eighteen. They’re absurdly alike. And naturally that triggered a whole raft of memories of that disastrous year and its slow-moving chain of events. And that in turn took me back to the tale of Great-Grandmother Morrison and her book rest. Poor old Great-Grandmother. The photograph of her hangs in my bedroom now. I took it with me when I left home. No one seemed to miss it.
    I put my bag down on the table in my living-cum-dining room and sat down to read the invitation again. I would go, of course. Simon is a very nice boy, and I am his aunt, after all. Luke and Bo would be there—it would be a family reunion and I am in favour of family reunions. Of course I would go. There was a conference in Montreal that weekend which I had already arranged to attend, but I wasn’t giving a paper so I could cancel that. And I had no

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