Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

But now here she was, rising from the floor where she had been sitting beside Aaron, smoothing down her skirt as Benson had smoothed his trousers, a small but telling gesture both of propriety and of nervousness. He both recognized her and didn’t recognize her because the photo in his mind had become faded and fragile, thin as rice paper.

They stood looking at each another, silently assessing the damage and wear time had assessed on human flesh and the human heart. Claire was older, yes, but also more beautiful, as if when he’d last seen her the Great Sculptor hadn’t quite finished his work.

“I’m sorry about Mom.” She spoke first, her voice subtly deeper and richer than he remembered it, but also stiff and awkward, as if she wasn’t sure who she was addressing.

“It’s for the best. She’s peaceful now, herself again.” His voice was just as stiff and awkward, and he realized with astonishment that it was quite possible, likely, even, that he had faded from her consciousness as surely and inevitably as she had from his own.

“My grandson,” Paull said, almost against his will, because it would be Aaron’s rejection he could not bear. His throat felt tight and parched.

She looked down at the boy with a jerky little motion of her head, as if her mind and her body were not quite in synch. “Aaron, please stand up.” Her voice changed, became clearer, declarative when she addressed her son.

The boy—Aaron—unfolded from his position on the floor, where he had been using an iPhone application and turned, stood facing Paull in ranked row with his mother.

“Aaron,” Claire said, “this is your grandfather. His name is Dennis.”

“Hello,” Aaron said.

The boy was taller than Paull had imagined, but then he had no expertise with seven-year-old boys, no frame of reference except his memories of Claire at that age. Much to Paull’s relief he didn’t look like his father, or rather Paull’s rancid memories of his father. Rather he looked like Paull himself, which made Paull’s heart stop momentarily; it was as if he were looking into the face of immortality, another him just starting out along life’s rough road.

“Hello, Aaron,” he said, his heart in his mouth, and then despite what he’d said to Benson, he added eagerly, almost avidly, “Mom may have told you that I’m ill, but I’m not.” He found that he could finally smile. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Dad,” Claire said, “is that true?”

But Paull remained mute, entranced by his grandson. It was difficult to know whether he even heard her.

She turned to Benson, her face flushed with anger and resentment. “Is this true, Mr. Benson? You said my father was terminal.”

“Yes, well, that was something of an untruth.”

“Something of an untruth?” Claire echoed. “Good God, man!”

She was leaning forward at such an angle that she was forced to take a step toward him, an aggressive step, it seemed to Paull, who had come out of his near-trance, a threatening step, as if it were a prelude to an assault. Benson faced her like the ex-military man he was, ramrod straight, but his eyes were filled with battlefield humiliation.

“You lied to me and my son, added to our anguish and . . . My mother just died, you unspeakable toad!”

Benson held his ground, but made no reply because there was nothing he could say, no excuse he could fabricate in the face of her wrath—and wrath was the right word, Paull thought, because there was something old-fashioned, unfashionably traditional about her anger, and this made him proud of her. And it was precisely in that moment when the faded and fragile image he had of her collided with the Technicolor force of her actual presence and became concrete, past and present dissolving into each other and, by some mysterious alchemical process, leading him home.

He turned to Benson now and said, “My family and I would like some time alone.”

Benson opened his mouth, possibly to reiterate that time was of the essence, but between the looks on both Paull and his daughter he ended up keeping his mouth shut.

After Benson departed, Paull was alone with the ghosts and demons that had bedeviled him even as he valiantly and vainly tried to push them far down into his subconscious.

“So,” Claire said, her voice once again thin and terribly strained, “you’re okay, you’re well.”

He nodded, suddenly unable to speak.

“But how is it that you’re here, what do these people want?”

“I don’t know yet.” Paull felt safe talking about Benson and Thomson.

“These are important men.”

“Well, they were,” he acknowledged. “Perhaps they still are, who knows. They kidnapped me, more or less, and once I was here told me that I could see you and Aaron if I listened to them.”

“I notice you didn’t listen to them.”

“I turned the tables on them, instead.”

“That’s so you, Dad.”

He cleared his throat, wished he had a glass of water to hide his question behind. “Are you . . .” He felt a fresh rush of terror, as if he was entering a haunted house, or the lair of a dangerous animal. “Are you married?”

“No, I’m not.” It was a simple, declarative statement, devoid of ruefulness or self-pity. “Lawrence never came back, he hasn’t seen Aaron. I wouldn’t want him to.”

“I see.” He had been right about that privileged bastard.

This flow of information was followed by a self-conscious silence during which Aaron looked from one to the other, his brow furrowed in a distinctly unchildlike manner, as if he were trying to parse the currents and undercurrents of emotions swirling around him.

“It must have been tough those last months with Mom,” Claire said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get to see her more often.”

“That’s all right, I—” He stopped in mid-sentence. It would be so easy to keep, and even embellish on, the fantasy she had of him spending time with Louise when he hadn’t. Guilt and remorse were powerful foundations on which to reunite, to ensure that she would love him again. Initially he’d had that impulse, the same selfish inclination that had kept him away from Louise. It was possible, he thought now, that Claire had succumbed to the same impulse. But he could not go through with it. This wasn’t a time for selfishness or for lies. It occurred to him that, difficult though it might be, he could manage to bear Claire’s and Aaron’s rejection far better than he could a lie that brought them together under a false flag.

“Honey, the truth is I did what you did. I spent far less time with your mother than I should have. The truth is . . .” He looked away for a moment, at Aaron, who was watching him with a child’s disconcertingly piercing gaze. And it was this gaze that gave him the courage to continue. He smiled in gratitude at Aaron before he got on with it. “The truth is I couldn’t bear to see her in that state. She didn’t know me, didn’t respond to the songs we loved together. She didn’t even know where she was. She was locked away in a place that had no key.”

There were tears glittering in Claire’s eyes. “I spent so much time hating you, shutting you out . . .” She paused long enough to catch her tears with a slender forefinger. “I put you in the same horrid room where Mom was. I couldn’t bear to see either of you, I didn’t want Aaron to see his grandmother like that, to remember her only as . . .” She took a hesitant step toward him. “Now she’s gone and I realize that nothing can bring her back, nothing can bring back the days before . . .” She couldn’t help but glance at her son. “But here you are, Dad.” And then, rather defiantly, “Aaron is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“I can see that so clearly, so very clearly,” Paull said, meaning every word.