Susan Wiggs - Starlight On Willow Lake

Adam waggled his gloved fingers in front of the camera. “Yo, Dad. You were the best. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Except for more time with you. Later, dude.”

Each one of them had known a different Trevor Bellamy. Mason could only wish the father he’d known was the one who had inspired Ivy’s tenderness and loyalty or Adam’s hero worship. Mason knew another side to their father, but he would never be the one to shatter his siblings’ memories.

Adam pushed through the warning gate and started down the mountain, the camera on his helmet rolling.

Ivy waited, then followed at a safe distance behind. Thanks to Adam, the cautious one of the three, each of them wore gear equipped with beacons and avalanche airbags, designed to detonate automatically in the event of a slide.

Their mother had been wearing one the day of the incident. Their father had not.

Adam skied with competence and control, navigating the steep slope with ease and carving a sinuous curve in the untouched powder. Ivy followed gracefully, turning his S-curves into a double-helix pattern.

The lightest of breezes stirred the icy air. Mason decided he had worked too hard to climb the damned mountain only to take the conservative route down. Always the most reckless of the three, he decided to take the slope the way his father probably had, with joyous abandon.

“Here goes,” he said to the clear, empty air, and he thumbed open the lid of the beer stein. The cold air must have weakened the pottery, because a shard broke loose, cutting through his glove and slicing into his thumb. Ouch. He ignored the cut and focused on the task at hand.

Did any essence of their father remain? Was Trevor Bellamy’s spirit somehow trapped within the humble-looking detritus, waiting to be set free on the mountaintop?

He had lived his life. Left a legacy of secrets behind. He’d paid the ultimate price for his freedom, leaving his burden on someone else’s shoulders—Mason’s.

“Godspeed, Dad,” he said. With his ski poles in one hand and the beer stein in the other, he raised his arm high and plunged down the steep slope, leaning into a controlled fall. Just for a moment, he heard his father’s voice: Lean into the fear, son. That’s where the power comes from. The words drifted to him from a long-ago time when everything had been simple, when his dad had simply been Dad, coaching him down the mountain, shouting with unabashed joy when Mason conquered a steep slope. That was probably why Mason favored adrenaline-fueled sports that involved teetering on the edge between terror and triumph.

The ashes created a cloud in his wake, rising on an updraft of wind and dispersing across the face of Trevor’s beloved, deadly mountain.

The things we love most can kill us. Mason might have heard the saying somewhere. Or he had just made it up.

The faster Mason went, the less he was bothered by something so inconvenient as a thought. That was the beauty of skiing in dangerous places. Filled with the thrill of the ride, he was only vaguely aware of Adam pointing the camera at him. He couldn’t resist showing off, making a trail in a fresh expanse of untouched powder, like a snake slithering down the mountain. Spotting a rugged granite cliff, its cornice perfectly formed for jumping, he raced toward it. Lean into the fear, son. He aimed his skis straight down the fall line and launched himself off the edge. For several seconds he was airborne, the wind flapping through his parka, turning him momentarily into a human kite. The steep pitch of the landing raced up to meet him with breathtaking speed. He wobbled on contact but didn’t wipe out, managing to come out of the landing with the mug still held aloft.

He gave a short laugh. How’s that, Dad? How’d I do? In one way or another, his whole life had been a performance for his father—in sports, in school, in business. He’d lost his audience, and it was liberating as hell. Which made him wonder why tears were fogging up his goggles. Then, as the slope flattened and his speed naturally slowed, he realized Ivy was waving her arms frantically.

Now what?

He raced toward them and saw that Adam had his mobile phone out.

“What’s up?” he asked. “Was my epic run not pretty enough? Or are you posting a Tweet about it already?”

Despite the chill air, Ivy’s face was pale. “It’s Mom.”

“On the phone? Tell her I said hi.”

“No, dipshit, something happened to Mom.”

2

For Mason, money was a tool, not a goal. And when he had to get from a remote mountain town to an international airport, he was glad he had plenty of it. Within a few hours of the aborted ash-sprinkling, the three of them were in the first-class lounge at Christchurch Airport, booked on a flight to New York. From there, they’d take a private plane up to Avalon, north toward Albany, along the Hudson. He’d instructed his assistant to find an amphibious plane so they could land on Willow Lake and tie up at the dock in front of their mother’s place.

The entire journey would take about twenty-four hours. Thanks to the time zone change, they would arrive the same day they left. The journey cost in the neighborhood of thirty grand, which he paid without batting an eye. It was only money. Mason had a knack for making money the way some guys made wooden birdhouses in their garages over the weekend.

Adam was on the phone with someone in Avalon. “We’re on our way,” he said. Then he checked the clock in the lounge. “We’ll get there when we get there. Yeah, okay, just sit tight.”

“Did you get more details out of them?” Mason asked.

“She fell down the stairs and broke her collarbone,” Adam said, and zipped the mobile phone into his pocket. “It’s a miracle she didn’t crack open her head or get crushed by her motorized chair.”

“I can’t believe she fell,” Ivy said, her voice trembling.

“And what the hell was she doing at the top of a flight of stairs?” Mason asked. “The entire downstairs of the house has been adapted for her.”

“If you bothered to go see her more than once in a blue moon, you’d know they finished installing the elevator,” Adam stated. He was in charge of her day-to-day care, living on the premises of the lakeside estate. Mason had taken the role of looking after provisions, finance and logistics for their mother, a role more suited to his comfort zone.

Mason batted aside his brother’s criticism. “Screw that. I don’t get how the hell she managed to fall down the stairs. She’s a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. She’s incapable of moving.”

“She can move her mouth and drive the chair with her breath,” Ivy pointed out. “She’s been working with her physical therapist on extending her arms at the elbow, so that can help with her mobility, too.”

“I don’t get why she was upstairs, either,” Mason said. His heart was pounding so hard that his chest hurt. He and his mother had their differences, but when it came down to moments like this, he felt nothing but love and sorrow. And now a surge of panic.

“You’re sure she’s all right?” Ivy asked, bringing a tray of cappuccinos and croissants to the seating area where they were waiting.

“Other than her usual state of rage and bitterness, yeah,” said Adam. “She’s okay.”

“Jesus.” Mason raked his splayed hand through his hair.

“No, the caregiver on duty was named José.” Adam consulted the email displayed on his phone.

“Fire the son of a bitch,” Mason ordered.

“I didn’t have to,” Adam said. “He quit. They all quit. None of her home health aides have lasted more than a few weeks.”

“He couldn’t have stopped it,” Ivy pointed out. “According to Mrs. Armentrout, Mom took the elevator upstairs without telling anyone.”