The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (4 page)

“Why him?”

She chewed her lip. “Because he had no mother and father and he had to move away from his home. He was different and they all laughed at him. But he was a hero. He changed everyone at the school. He saved the bus driver. They all started to like him.”

Jeb’s stomach contracted. “Yeah,” he said, gently. “Cap’s a hero. He was all alone against the whole bunch and he never gave in.”

Quinn’s eyes shone suddenly with emotion, and Jeb noticed a slight quiver in her lip.

“Hey.” He started to walk. She fell in step. “I didn’t mean to upset you. About the book or anything.”

She shook her head of dark curls. “It’s nothing.”

“You heading home for lunch?”

“I stay too far up the valley to go home for lunch.”

“Really? Like way up toward the Wolf River?”

“No, on Green Lake.”

His heart kicked. The Salonens’ old place.

“Your parents must like it out there on the lakefront,” he said. “It’s pretty. I knew some people who lived there once.”

“My parents are dead.”

The flat, emotionless delivery hit him like a plank. He stalled.

“I’m staying with my aunt,” she said. “Just for a while.”

“And then?”

She gave a shrug and crossed a patch of emerald-green grass outside the small log-style convenience store. Three stairs led up to a narrow porch that ran the length of the building. A basket of purple and white flowers hung from the eaves, and a husky cross stretched out in a puddle of autumn sun outside the door.

She clumped up the wooden stairs in her little Blundstones. The husky raised its head, fixing them with one milky-blue eye, one brown, before dropping his head back to the deck with a soft doggie sigh. It struck Jeb hard and sudden. These small things—the color of grass, the sigh of a dog in sunlight, flowers—so many things a man could miss and forget the pleasure of in prison. At one point he’d believed that he would never again experience something as simple and true as a dog’s contented sigh.

Quinn pushed through the door of the small store. A bell chimed over her head. Jeb followed. The dude behind the counter barely glanced in their direction. He was busy texting on his phone. Jeb noticed a closed-circuit security camera. Instinctively he turned his face away.

While he picked up a copy of the
Snowy Creek Leader
, Quinn found the candy she was looking for, including a stick of black licorice. She set her stash up on the counter, where the dude rang it in and bagged it. While Quinn was fiddling in her pocket for money, Jeb placed cash on the counter. The dude met his eyes, held a fraction, but no more than that. No flicker of recognition—why would there be? This kid would have been maybe ten years old when Merilee and Amy were taken. If he was even in town.

“Thanks, mate,” the guy said, offering Jeb change. Australian accent. He was likely in the resort for a season or two. No fear of recognition at all. Jeb had to remind himself he was not here to hide. He was here to rattle cages, play with people’s heads.

Quinn stared up at Jeb, surprise in her face.

“Hey,” he said with a shrug as he tucked his paper under his arm. “I had some spare change.”

She held his gaze, debating whether to accept this gift from a stranger. Then she smiled, a little shyly, and grabbed the bag of candy off the counter. “Thank you.”

Jeb pushed open the door, letting her out.

She skipped down the stairs, seemingly over her indecision about him. Perhaps it was a rebelliousness he knew all too well, to befriend a stranger with long hair, a leather jacket, a tattoo. Perhaps it was just a need for affection, friendship, in the face of her loss and displacement.

She started back toward the school, biting into her stick of licorice.

Jeb hesitated. He should back off now. There was still time. But after all these years, to finally see his own child, to hear her voice—it was a drug more potent than he could imagine, a thirst more voracious than he could quench. She glanced over her shoulder and threw him another shy smile. His heart nearly cracked. He started after her.

Just to the field, he told himself. Just to make sure those girls had gone. Just until he’d seen her go safely back into that squat school building.

Just one mor
e . . .
like his father with his drin
k . . .

“I bet your aunt and uncle are pleased to have you staying with them,” he said. “Even if it’s just for a while.”

“My aunt isn’t married.” She took another bite of licorice. “She was going to get married but her boyfriend dumped her after I came to live with them.”

His heart tumbled over itself.
Rachel’s single?
“What was her boyfriend’s name?”

She darted a look at him, suspicion flickering briefly through her dark-blue eyes. Yet something compelled her to speak. A quiet connection had been forged. Them against the world. “Trey. He doesn’t like me. He left because of me.”

Pow.
Emotions punched through him. Trey Somerland. Trey in the witness box. Trey kissing Rachel by the gravel pit bonfire. Trey touching Rache
l . . .
his hand up her sweater.

Rachel and Trey, the reason for his anger that night. The reason it all started to go to hell.

His voice came out thick. “That’s not why he left your aunt, surely.”

She gave a dismissive shrug, biting more of her licorice as she started down the shadowed path into the woods.

“So you and your aunt live alone, then, on Green Lake?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyone else staying on the property? I
n . . .
a boathouse maybe?”

“Nah. Just an old dog that used to belong to my grandfather before he died.”

Seppo Salonen was dead? Emotion washed through Jeb. That must be why Rachel was in his house on the lake. Alone with Quinn. His blood raced, giving him a headiness he couldn’t—didn’t want to—articulate. Suddenly he wanted the impossible.

He wanted Rachel.

Fuck, he wanted it all now, his desires coalescing into an iron ball of need, muddying the purity of his focus. He wanted to win it all back.

They’d reached the end of the wooded path and come out onto the field. She stopped, looked up. “Thank you,” she said, openly, having made some decision in her mind about him. “For the candy an
d . . .
stuff.”

“Our secret, ’kay?”

She studied him for a fraction, then nodded before turning and skipping across the grass toward the school. He watched her go on her skinny legs, hair shining in the sun.

“Anytime,” he whispered to himself. “Anytime, Quinn.”

He heard the school buzzer and he stood there in shadow, newspaper under his arm. His world utterly changed. This was what he’d come for.

Yet caution whispered in the rustle of the breeze through the dry pines. One wrong step, one spark, and it could all go up in a blaze. He could lose it all, forever.

He must not return to this school.

He must not interact with her again until it was over.

But as Jeb traversed the bottom edge of the field, making for his bike, he caught sight of the clutch of blondes coming out from behind the trunk of the large oak. Stubbing out a cigarette with bent heads and a whispered exchange, they began to cross over the field as a tight group, making a beeline for Quinn.

Quinn saw them coming and moved faster. She was smaller. Younger.

Jeb froze, watching as the group crested the grassy rise and crossed onto school property. The clutch of girls closed in, gathering tightly around Quinn, forcing her to stop.

Shock rippled through Jeb as one of the girls grabbed the bag of candy from Quinn’s fist. Another snatched away the licorice stick, waving it in front of Quinn’s face, laughing as Quinn lunged to claim it back.

One of the girls stuck out her boot and tripped Quinn. She sprawled down hard on the gravel, her book flying, pages blowing in the wind.

Rage flared, sharp and instant. Almost blinding, an electrical charge kicking down familiar neural channels, overriding the logic center of his brain. Jeb moved like lightning over the ball fields. Neck muscles wire tight. Vision narrowing. Up the rise. Onto school property.

One of the girls pointed and jeered at Quinn as she struggled onto her knees. Whatever the girl said froze his daughter. She held dead still for a heartbeat, as if trying to digest the words while staring at the blonde.

“No!” Quinn screamed at the bullies. “
It’s not true!
”

The girls laughed. Jeb recognized the switch in his child the moment before she balled her fists. Quinn lurched to her feet, lowered her head, and barreled straight into the blonde’s stomach, smacking the kid so hard she lifted off the ground and reeled backward, coming down hard into the dirt, hair flying.

Quinn spun round like a little wildcat, ready for a charge at the others, but they turned and fled toward the school, screaming for a teacher. Quinn turned the full brunt of her rage back onto the fallen girl, raising her leg to kick her in the stomach. Jeb reached them just in time. He grabbed Quinn by her shoulders, jerking her back off her feet. The blonde, bleeding from her nose, scrabbled onto her hands and knees and crawled over the gravel before managing to stagger up into a wild run for the school building.

Jeb set Quinn on her feet, spun her round to face him. He crouched down to her level, gripping her skinny shoulders tight. She was shaking in his hands. Her complexion was sheet white, tears tracking stains down her cheeks. But her eyes crackled with ferocity and she gritted her jaw.

“Quinn—” he said quickly, quietly, watching over her shoulders as two female teachers burst out of the school doors and started running toward them. She seemed unfocused.

Jeb shook her. “Quinn, look at me, listen to me.”

Her pupils contracted slightly. She was breathing hard.

“I understand, I really do, that need to hit back sometimes. But whatever they said to you, whatever names they called you, violence is
not
the answer. Never. You have to trust me on this. I’ve been there. I know. No matter what they say, violence does not work. It comes back to bite you.”

Slowly her eyes refocused fully and she met his gaze. Tears pooled afresh. He ached to snatch her away right there—leave. Just him and her. Protect he
r . . .
but Jeb hadn’t even been able to protect himself, shouldn’t even be associating himself with her. Fuck it to hell, he’d broken his first goal. He’d interacted with his child. And on school property.

“Hey! You!” one of the teachers yelled. They were getting near, rushing over the gravel pathway, skirts and hair blowing in the wind.

“Go,” he said urgently to her. “Just remember, be smart. Be better than them. Get them another way. Like Cap in that Korman book. And Quinn, just know this”—he couldn’t help it, didn’t even register before the words were out already—“I’ll always have your back. Got that? Always.”

And with that he left her standing there. He moved fast, down the hill, past the bench where he’d sat earlier, slipping into the grove of trees. He stopped in the shadows, where he belonged, and glanced back.

The teachers had reached Quinn. One dropped to a crouch in front of her, talking to her. The other came to stand at edge of the knoll and stared in his direction, shading her eyes as her gaze searched the shadows.

He stood stock-still. But inside his gut he was shaking.

For the first time in his life he’d goddamn touched his own daughter, his own flesh and blood. He’d held her slight but strong little trembling shoulders in his own powerful hands, seen the flutter of her heart in the pulse of her neck. Heard the sound of her voice. Seen her smile.

Witnessed her grit and determination.

A raw, overriding need filled his chest so tightly and fully it hurt—a need to take charge, to claim her. Protect her. His child had no one else right now. No one who could so fully understand her.

The teacher put her arm around Quinn, escorting her back to the school, bent over, talking.

How this was going to unfold now terrified him. In his move to keep his child safe, to protect her, to stop her from harming others in self-defense, he’d just drawn her into a dangerous orbit, and that teacher on the edge of the knoll was just going to be the beginning of his troubles.

CHAPTER 4

“Our rose among the thorns,” Levi Banrock says as he curls his arm around my waist, edging me closer to his tall and athletic frame. I smile for the camera, and the big photographer from the
Sun
fires off several shots. I’m positioned between Levi on my right and the mayor and local First Nations chief on my left.

“If you could all gather in just a bit tighter,” the photographer says. “I’d like to include the mural of Rachel behind you.” He’s referring to a giant stylized painting of me on the paneling between the soaring windows of Thunderbird Lodge. Through the windows is a breathtaking view of the ski runs that sweep all the way down to the village nestled in the valley far below.

In the painting I’m wearing a racing suit and helmet, and I’m blasting through the giant slalom course that won me gold at the Torino Olympics. Before I crashed in my next event. Before the end of it all.

I was lucky to survive, wheeled home in a chair after several surgeries in Europe, bravely trying to smile with the gold medal from my first event draped around my neck as a cadre of photographers waited to greet me at Vancouver International. Their nineteen-year-old fallen hero. It took two years to learn to walk again. This is my legacy in this town, the gold medal and the dashed hopes. I crashed because of Jeb. Shortly before my second event, a reporter had asked about his sentence and the role I’d played in sending him to prison. My pain at Jeb’s betrayal, my own guilt, had surged afresh, cutting deep. I lost focus in the starting gate.

I startle back to the present and blink as the flash goes off. I’m jumpy—I heard on the news three days ago that Jeb is now free. I’ve been on tenterhooks since. All I want is to get this ribbon cutting over with. I want to be with Quinn. I know he doesn’t know about her, but deep down I’ve got a bad feeling I can’t seem to shake. I’m here for work, though. I’m trying to juggle it all—being a single mother, saving the newspaper from tanking, digging myself out of the financial hole that the taxes on my property have put me in.

It’s my fame as a local celebrity athlete, plus my position as publisher of the
Snowy Creek Leader
, that has garnered me this invitation to the ribbon cutting and maiden voyage of the sparkling new Summit-to-Summit Gondola that reaches across the chasm between Bear Mountain and Mount Barren on the other side. Among the dignitaries present are the local member of parliament and the minister for tourism. My own staff photographer, Hallie Sherman, is busy shooting groups posing in front of a red ribbon strung across the glass doors that lead to the gondola terminal. On either side of the ribbon stands a Snowy Creek PD officer dressed in formal gear complete with wide-brimmed Stetsons, jodhpurs, high brown leather boots with spurs, and sidearms in holsters on Sam Browne belts. Their dress is a nod to the Canadian Mounties. Another way Snowy Creek works to attract tourism.

Jonah, one of my staff reporters, is chatting with a woman with a tumble of honey-blonde curls. As she turns her head, a sinister chill of foreboding spears through me. It’s the resident psychic, Piper Smith, and I wonder why she’s been invited.

Piper first arrived in Snowy Creek five years ago to film a docudrama on the “Missing Girls” for CBC’s
True Crime
show. She returned to Snowy Creek later, to marry Merilee’s much-older half brother, whom she met while filming. I’ve always felt uncomfortable around her. Perhaps it’s the way she seemed to see right inside me when she tried to question me about Jeb all those years ago. The opening shot of the docudrama flashes into my mind—a reenactment of Amy walking barefoot and beaten down the railway tracks as snowflakes start to fall. Her hair is matted with blood, her face ghost-white, her eyes haunted black holes. Her clothes are ripped and covered with mud. I think of Jeb out of prison now, what he did to her. A shiver chases over my arms. I rub them as I watch Piper.

“He won’t come back here,” a voice says near my ear.

I jump. “Jesus, Levi, you startled me.”

He’s also staring at Piper. “I can’t help thinking of that opening scene whenever I see her.”

I swallow. “I know.” I hesitate. “What makes you so certain he won’t come back?”

He moistens his lips, still fixated on Piper in the crowd. “He’d be a fool; he’d have to have a death wish. What could he possibly want here?”

“But you’re thinking it, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying this.”

Levi turns, holds my gaze for several beats. I don’t like the edginess in his eyes. He, Trey, and I, along with three other classmates, all testified against Jeb. Together, we formed the core testimony that helped put him away.

“What if he wants revenge?” I say.

“He wouldn’t dare risk it. If Jeb Cullen sets one foot back in this community, he’ll be drawn and quartered, and he has to know it.”

I suck in a chestful of air and nod.

“Hey, it’ll be fine,” Levi says brightly as he takes my arm. His trademark smile lights his green eyes. “Come, it’s time for the speeches, and then we can get this circus wrapped up.” Yet he pauses. “Just know that we’re all here for you, Rach. You can call any one of us. Anytime.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. On one hand you say he won’t come back, but on the other you think he’ll come after me?”

“It’s not going to happen.” He hooks his arm around my shoulders, giving me a reassuring squeeze as he guides me toward the podium. I watch as Levi and his twin brother, Rand, climb up onto the small makeshift stage and position themselves next to their father at the podium. Hal “the Rock” Banrock takes the mike and thanks everyone for coming. He launches into a speech about the Herculean challenges that faced the Summit-to-Summit construction team and how the result will now draw tourists from around the globe, both summer and winter, boosting both the local and provincial economies. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass behind the Rock, the flags of many nations flap in a mounting high-alpine wind.

He better hurry with his speeches or this wind will grow too fierce for a gondola crossing. I check my watch. I’m beyond edgy now, thoughts of Jeb consuming me with an unspecified anxiety. Levi has just made it worse.

I glance at the flags again, trying to distract myself, and my gaze is pulled upward to the forbidding granite formation that is Crystal Peak. White geologic streaks cut across Crystal’s somber face and sparkle in the sun. In this slant of light, the cables and metal ladders of the
via ferrata
are clearly visible. I think of my grandfather, Jaako, a Finnish immigrant and old-school mountaineer who told me tales of how
via ferrata
were built in the Dolomite region of Italy to aid the movement of troops through the Alps during the First World War. It was his idea to have a
via ferrata
system on Crystal. Rock jumped on it.

When Jaako first arrived in this valley, he teamed up with the Rock, a strapping mountaineer himself fresh out of Australia. Together they began to carve the first ski runs into the flanks of Bear Mountain. Each day they hiked up, and using bare hands, ax, and chainsaw, they forged a winter playground out of wilderness.

The Rock went on to monetize their efforts, securing government tenure for the land and founding Bear Mountain Ski Enterprises along with the Snowy Creek Real Estate Development Corp., which now specializes in resort real estate around the world. If one had to name a king of Snowy Creek, without a doubt it would be Rock Banrock. He’s outlived three wives and most of his peers, and his offspring now populate, and pretty much run, this town.

My granddad, on the other hand, launched the
Snowy Creek Leader
. Where Rock made a financial killing, Jaako eked by monetarily, concerned more with esoteric pursuits—philosophy, literature, ecology. The truth. Jaako passed the newspaper down to my father, Seppo. And at age twenty-seven it became mine. And by God I’ve been learning the ropes fast. The company was about to tank after my dad’s lengthy battle with cancer. But Hal Banrock stepped in, buying up a 49 percent share of the business. Now it’s my job to find a way to keep the paper afloat in the digital era that is killing print. Along with Quinn’s arrival, this past year has been a trial by fire. I have a sinking feeling today that it isn’t over, by far.

Levi takes the mike from his father and my attention is drawn back to the Banrock brothers. Levi and Rand are almost carbon copies of each other, younger echoes of the Rock himself. Like their father, they stand around six two. Both have startling green eyes and thick shocks of sandy-brown hair. Levi is manager of mountain operations. Married with a toddler. Rand was recently appointed CEO of the Snowy Creek Real Estate Development Corp. He’s single, a daredevil, bit of a playboy. I suspect Rand would prefer Levi’s job, but that’s how their father dealt the cards.

I check my watch again. One forty-five p.m. Claustrophobia tightens around my throat.

Speeches given, the ribbon is cut. Applause ensues, and the kids from the local choir burst out in song. My phone vibrates in my pocket. I check the number—it’s the office. I let the call go to voice mail. They can manage without me for a few hours. A music duo with dreadlocks and guitars takes over from the choir and begins to belt out a local brand of mountain funk folk. Servers weave through the crowd with refreshment trays. Cameras click and flashes pop again. I’m in the first group to pass through the doors to board the gondola.

A cameraman follows.

The cabin fills to capacity, mostly journalists for this first car. There is room for twelve on bench seats around the windows, six standing. Levi elects to stand. The door closes and a bell clangs. The giant bullwheel cranks around and the cabin starts to move.

I feel a soft dip in my stomach as we launch out of the terminal and swing over the cliff into air. Immediately we’re slammed by a gust of wind. Glances are exchanged.

“How much wind can it take?” says one of the CBC people.

“It’s the most wind tolerant of our lifts,” Levi says with an easy smile. “This gondola is designed to operate in gusts up to eighty kilometers per hour. But if the wind speed does hit max, there’s an automatic shutoff, which can be overridden if need be.”

Silence descends on the occupants as the sheer scope of the surrounding terrain takes hold of us. Suspended only by cable and towers, we move with a quiet electronic hum. In the center of the car is a glass bottom through which we can see the distant tips of towering Douglas fir, pine, the ski runs. Deer. As we cross the plunging chasm of the Khyber Creek drainage, the churning green-white waters of Bridal Falls come into view. From up here the water looks like lace spilling over shining black granite. My chest tightens as I recall the summer that Jeb and I hiked up to those falls. We found the ice cave hidden behind the water and crawled in.

“It really does give one a different perspective,” the reporter from the
Sun
says in a hushed tone.

Levi nods. “These views alone will draw visitors. In summer the gondola will form a bridge to a hiking loop. In winter skiers will be able to access new downhill terrain on Mount Barren.” He points as a red gondola cabin slowly approaches along the cables from the other side.

“Twenty cabins in total, one departing every sixty seconds. Total ride time between the Bear and Barren terminals is about fifteen minutes. The distance traveled across the chasm is 4.4 kilometers, or 2.73 miles.”

“Strung between the shoulders of giants,” says a woman from the radio station as she stares at the endless peaks in the distance.

The empty cabin passes us as we near a massive steel tower.

Thousands of feet below in the valley are the colorful roofs of the village. Khyber Creek is a mercurial ribbon as it snakes down to our town. From the village, a dirt road switchbacks up the flanks of Mount Barren. Higher up Barren’s slopes, yellow machines hulk like mechanical dinosaurs, motionless in the forest. Levi points them out.

“We’ve been cutting new trail systems into the south flanks of Barren, but we had to suspend all operations due to the extreme fire hazard and drought. A small spark from one of the machines could be disastrous. We hope to get back on track as soon as the weather switches.”

A bear and her two cubs lumber slowly below, heading down the drainage toward the populated valley. The drought has left a low berry crop in the high alpine, and this will mean greater potential for human-bear conflicts in town this fall as the bruins become desperate to reach hibernation weight. I make a mental note to ensure this is on the
Leader
story list for next week, along with reminders of the extreme, simmering fire hazard.

“That ski run down there”—Levi points—“is Rachel’s Gold.” He casts a glance in my direction and grins. “Named after our own hometown celebrity, Rachel Salonen, here, after she brought home the gold for Canada.”

Everyone turns to look at me. I feel hot. I smile and nod. My phone vibrates in my pocket again, and an inexplicable charge crackles through me.

“Do you think the drought will mean a late opening for the mountain, then?” one of the CBC reporters asks.

“We’re confident the weather will turn within the next week and that when the precipitation comes, it’ll be in the form of snow at higher elevations,” says Levi. “The longer-range forecast is also calling for a big series of storm fronts.” He gives the trademark Banrock smile.

“What about lightning?” one reporter asks, looking up at the top of another giant tower as we hum quietly past.

“We have conductors, but in the event of a storm cell moving in, we would manually shut down.”

A helicopter thuds down valley. Eyes watch and Levi preempts the next question. “There’s no worry about aircraft hitting the cables, either. We’re equipped with a state-of-the-art obstacle collision avoidance system which uses radar to alert any aircraft in the area to the presence of the gondolas. Strobe lights and loud noises over all radio frequencies will also alert pilots who come too close.”

“And what happens if there
is
a shutdown, a catastrophic failure, people trapped in the cars?”