Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“What?” says Jack. “Who?” He squats down beside his daughter. She won’t look at him. She’s upset. Deep down she must know what he is going to tell her.

“That’s how come I wrote the letter.”

“What letter?”

“The Human Sword. To save her.”

He shakes his head slightly. She’s in a world of her own, an innocent world. And he is about to shatter it. He doesn’t know how to say what he must tell her. “Madeleine”—he speaks as gently as possible—“something happened to Claire McCarroll.”

Madeleine nods and starts to cry. “I know. I’m sorry.”

Jack strokes her head and says, “It’s okay, sweetie.”

Madeleine says something but Jack can’t make it out. It’s garbled through her sobs. “Listen now,” he says, wishing Mimi were here. Madeleine cries with her forehead against her crinolined knees, shaking with grief.

“Madeleine,” he says.

“I’m — sorry — Daddy—” hiccupping.

Jack takes her face, shining with tears and mucus, between his hands. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, old buddy….” He holds her chin and reaches inside his suit jacket for his hanky. He wipes her face.

The pressure of Dad’s hand, the scouring of the hanky, is comforting. He holds it against her nose and she blows, feeling ragged with sorrow, but calmer now.

“Listen, now,” he says. “Claire died.”

Madeleine stops crying.

He waits. She looks up at him, lips parted. Big brown eyes taking it in. He would give anything not to have to tell her, so soon, that the world can be such a terrible place.

“Dad?” says Madeleine.

“Yeah old buddy?” He has his answer ready. He knows he can’t protect her from it, the whole country will know with tomorrow’s news. But he can at least choose the words with which to tell her. Claire was taken away by a sick man. She was killed .

She asks, “Want to go home now?”

He looks at her a moment to make sure, but she seems fine. Perhaps it helped, coming from her dad. He thinks better of telling her the rest of the story. There will be time for that tomorrow morning. Besides, Mimi will be on hand to comfort her. “Sure.” He rises, pocketing his handkerchief.

They head back across the county road into the PMQs again.

“I’m starving,” she says, taking his hand.

He pats her head. She’s a kid. They bounce back. Thank God.

Madeleine feels as though she has been away from home a long time when she follows her dad up the steps and through the front door. In the dining room, the table is set for Easter brunch. Bacon and eggs, pancakes and maple syrup, and blood pudding for Dad. She has never been so happy to be home. “Something sure smells good!” she says.

But Maman and Mike are still quiet, and Madeleine remembers, of course, someone has died, I have to be quiet. But she is hungry nonetheless, and happy: no one knows about Mr. March. She takes her place at the table, feeling as clean and fresh as the linen tablecloth.

The others join her but, moments after Maman has served Mike, he says, “May I please be excused?” Her parents exchange a sympathetic look and her father nods. Mike gets up from the table, kisses his mother. “Merci maman, j’ai pas faim.”

He goes upstairs and Madeleine says, “Can I have his bacon?”

Maman looks as though she’s about to reprimand her, but Dad says, “Sure, sweetie, eat up.” And he piles it onto her plate.

At six o’clock this morning, Rick was out running with Rex before it was light. He would be home by eight, in time to hunt for eggs with the kids. Time to shower, then over to Marsha’s house for Easter brunch. He left the PMQs and turned south down the Huron County road, Rex loping at his side.

It was a good time to run. The world soaked from three days of rain, the unvarnished sun coming up and the countryside steaming like a wool blanket. He got to the big willow tree and continued straight through the intersection, pale mud spritzing from his heels, flecking his bare calves, cresting Rex’s belly fur with clay.

Rick wasn’t looking for her, he was just out for a run.

When he got to the quarry the sun was on it like a veil, gauzy except near the centre, where light floated crisp on the last delicate breath of ice, blacker and brighter than the surrounding water, which was already taking on the haze of early summer, the first insects skating on its surface. Still too cold for leeches. Perfect.

He lifted off his singlet, pulled off his denim cut-offs and runners and dived.

A shock of pure life — he hooted and pelted toward the centre; Rex had run the perimeter and found a manageable spot on the far side to zigzag down. He splashed in and swam, they would meet in the middle. Rick reached the edge of the fragile crust. He knew he shouldn’t stay in too long. He breaststroked into it, an ice breaker, his chin the prow; the ice parted like a curtain, shimmered in his wake like a robe.

Rex panted and swam in a circle, biting at the surface, bearding his chops with light. Rick turned onto his back, squinted up at the sun, spread his limbs and made an angel in the crinkling water. Then he arched backwards, diving so as not to destroy his silhouette, and surfaced several feet away. Rex’s head turned like a periscope, scanning the surface for him. He saw Rick and surged toward him, whimpering, as Rick began his powerful crawl toward the bank.

His arms were numbing, his hands like bricks, shoulders heavy hinges by the time he grabbed hold of a hunk of stone and hauled himself out. Rex dripped at his side, his mass reduced by his drenched fur coat fringed already with ice. Rick stood, his flesh burning with cold, and saw at the centre of the quarry his angel drifting and distending, one wing higher than the other now. As though it were waving.

He jammed his feet back into his sneakers, hauled on his shorts, grabbed his shirt and they trotted up the jagged face of the quarry. His lungs wide open like a grassy prairie, every pore on his scalp singing, Rick started to jog, turning tight circles like a boxer. Rex leapt, nipping his forearms, growling, boxing back.

Rick turned and ran into a lumpy field of collapsed grass and new milkpods, heading for the woods. He would travel through the trees, across the fallow field beyond, and skirt the newly planted cornfield that bordered Rock Bass, where he would pick up the road back to the PMQs.

He ran, shaking out his tingling hands, lifting his face, craving the speed of twigs strafing his bare legs, the bob and weave of branches coming at his face, dodging stones and deadfalls.

He was not quite out of the woods when he saw his dog stop up ahead, a little ways into the meadow, and begin sniffing busily around a pile of vegetation. Under a big elm tree. Ricky’s pace slackened. He was about twenty-five feet away when he saw her hand, the light blue of her dress through the mound of rushes and dry wild-flowers. He went closer, drawing shallow breaths through his mouth, almost panting, he knew she was dead. But there was no question of the pull, like a force of nature, the necessity of making sure. Part of him was already running away across the marshy field, but that part was too insubstantial to make it very far. He came closer. She was dead. There was something covering her face. Cloth. He heard a faint sobbing — the sound of his own breathing as he bent, lifted the fabric, then let it drop again.

Rex began to bark.

Mimi lifts the ham out of the oven and places it sizzling on a trivet. Tilting her mixing bowl, she stands at the counter in front of the window and stirs biscuit batter. She sees a police car pull into the Froelichs’ driveway. They have driven Ricky home. It’s about time. A boy of his age shouldn’t have to dwell on tragedy. It was Steve Ridelle who called this morning to tell them that Ricky Froelich had found her. Mimi went down the street to be with Sharon, but Sharon insisted on accompanying her husband to Exeter to see their daughter. The police are not going to lay charges against Blair; he broke someone’s nose last night when they told him they were calling off the search.