Cloud Nine - Luanne Rice

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she knew – ferociously hopeful – and had often been accused by the very party on the other end of being annoyingly cheerful. She couldn’t stop herself. She knew about statistics, five-year survival rates, worst-case scenarios. Here she was, saying she was cured, when she didn’t even know if there was any such thing.

      ‘Good,’ he said. A long silence passed, and then he cleared his throat. ‘That’s good,’ he said.

      ‘Is your grandfather there?’ she asked.

      ‘He’s out in the barn. I just came in to get some lunch.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Just thought I’d call to say happy birthday.’

      ‘I’m glad you did, Mike. I miss you.’

      ‘Huh.’

      ‘A lot. I wish you were here. I wish you’d decide to …’

      ‘When’re you coming to Maine? I mean, Grandpa was wondering. He told me to ask. And to say happy birthday. I almost forgot.’

      ‘Was it his idea for you to call?’ Sarah asked suspiciously, feeling upset. She had been thinking it was Mike’s idea.

      ‘No. It was mine.’

      ‘Hmm,’ she said, smiling.

      ‘So, when’re you going to come?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said. The idea of going to the island filled her with more anxiety than she knew was good for her. Her doctor had told her to avoid stress, that a centered spirit was her best defense. Just thinking about seeing Mike in the barn with her bitter old father, knowing that Mike had put himself under his tutelage, sent Sarah’s spirit careening.

      ‘Thanksgiving would be good,’ Mike said.

      ‘We’ll see.’

      ‘Are you too sick to come?’

      ‘No. I’m fine. I told you, I –’

      ‘Then why not?’

      ‘I said I’ll see, Mike.’

      An uneasy silence developed between them. Sarah’s mind raced with questions, accusations, declarations of love. How could her son have left her to go there? From the day of her mother’s death, Sarah couldn’t wait to leave the island. She had let her father down, and even in his bitter silence he refused to let her forget. But Mike had gone to live with him while searching for connections to Zeke Loring, the father who had died before he was even born.

      ‘Excuse me,’ called the girl who had been lying on the bed. ‘I think I do want to buy some things. Can we call my mother to get her Amex number? I know she’ll say yes.’

      ‘Oh. Someone’s there,’ Mike said abruptly, hearing the background voices. ‘I guess I’d better go. Grandpa’s waiting for lunch.’

      ‘Honey, I’m glad you called. You can’t imagine how happy you made me,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s ten times better than any present I’ve ever gotten, even my favorite dollhouse when I was four, and I’m not kidding you, I loved that dollhouse, I played with it constantly, just ask my father …’

      ‘Bye, Mom,’ Mike said.

      ‘Bye, honey,’ Sarah said.

      When she turned back to the girls, she was smiling. Her face was calm, her mouth steady. She nodded yes, the girl could call her mother. Handing her the telephone, she told her to dial direct, not bother charging the call. She was going through the motions of selling a quilt, cultivating the business of the girls at Marcellus College, the students who were her bread and butter.

      But her heart was far away with her son, Mike Talbot, her seventeen-year-old dropout, the person Sarah loved more than her own life, the boy who was single-handedly planning to carry on the family traditions of quilt making and farm saving under the wing of her father, the wrathful George Talbot, of Elk Island, Maine.

      It was at moments such as this that Sarah, writing a sales ticket for a three-hundred-dollar quilt, wished that she had just let the old farm die.

      In the air with the mapmaker for the second day, Will criss-crossed Algonquin County eleven times. They plotted the Setauket River, the Robertson wilderness, Lake Cromwell, Eagle Peak, and the foothills of the Arrowhead Mountains. Will flew him over small towns and Wilsonia, the county seat. They counted windmills and silos, surveyed the patchwork of farms, fields dotted orange with pumpkins. He had climbed to six thousand feet, but on their way back to the airport, he flew one low circle over Fort Cromwell.

      It looked like a toy town, like the miniature buildings that had come with Fred’s model railroad. Will almost never thought of Fred’s train, but with the mapmaker paying such close attention to track beds and crossing signals, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Fred’s set-up had looked just like Fort Cromwell: pristine town green, red-brick buildings, railroad tracks winding through the low hills. Will had been stationed in Newport then, and navy housing didn’t leave much room for toys. Fred’s railroad was super deluxe, from F.A.O. Schwarz in New York, the kind of railroad Will had wanted when he was a boy. It had taken up the entire dining alcove.

      Alice had been a sport. Her mother had given them a nice cherry table, and he remembered how they had just pushed it off to one side. Susan’s playhouse and Fred’s railroad had been the main deals back then, and that was just fine. With Will out at sea so much, he didn’t suppose Alice had much use for a fine dining table anyway.

      But she used that table now. Will saw Julian’s estate nestled in the trees on the top of Windemere Hill. Stone mansion, clay tennis court, circular drive, security gates worthy of a movie star or a corporate mogul. That’s where they live, Will thought. While the mapmaker updated his notes, Will banked left. His port wing pointed straight down at the stone house, like a finger of God. Blessing his daughter, Will thought, but also cursing Julian. For being in the right place at the right time, for stealing Will’s family when they were all weakened – broken really – after losing Fred.

      Catching sight of his daughter parking her bike against the fieldstone garage was too much for him. Feeling like he’d swallowed a fishhook, he gunned the engine and wheeled through the sky. The mapmaker gave him a terrified look.

      ‘Sorry,’ Will said.

      ‘Is the plane okay?’

      Tine, sir. Just a little turbulence.’

      ‘Ah,’ the mapmaker said, a deep line across his brow.

      Flying home, Will wondered why his heart was pumping so hard. He could feel it pounding in his chest, as if he had just swum a hundred yards in a Force 10 sea. That had been his first job in the navy: rescue swimmer aboard the L. P. James. He could slice through twenty-foot waves, weighed down with a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man, and barely notice his breathing change.

      Maybe it’s all this freshwater, he thought, surveying the lakes, the river. Made him feel nervous, like something was missing. No ocean, no coastline in sight. Just like Sarah Talbot had said yesterday: It’s not the Atlantic.

      Then something strange happened. Thinking of Sarah Talbot, the whole thing went away. The speeding heart, the saltwater anxiety. Memories of life as a rescue swimmer, all the good and terrible reasons for leaving the ocean he loved so much. Will started to breathe easier. He pictured Sarah, kind and wise as a beautiful owl with her wide-open eyes and feathery hair, her way of staring at the sky with unblinking gratitude, and Will Burke felt calm. Like he could breathe again without cracking his chest wide open.

      Secret rode her bike through town. The air was freezing cold and her fingers felt stiff in her new blue gloves. Sticking out her tongue, she caught the first snowflakes of the year. Her nose and cheeks stung. Halloween had barely passed, and clear ice had already started to form on the lake. Nowhere on earth was colder than Fort Cromwell. Newport had been tropical by comparison.

      All

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