A Chill Rain in January Read online

  A Chill Rain in January

  L.R. WRIGHT

  FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Chapter 1

  ZOE’S WORLD was a dangerous place.

  It made her very angry, sometimes, to think about how dangerous a place it was.

  Sometimes she got so mad she didn’t care what happened, and then she did things she wasn’t ever supposed to do.

  But she wasn’t mad now, she was humming to herself, warm in her bed, snuggled into the mattress with the covers pulled up high upon her shoulders: she liked to feel like a tank when she was in bed.

  She lay on her side, facing the window. The blind was pulled down, so the world couldn’t peer in at her while she slept.

  Zoe lay in her bed waiting to decide to go to sleep, lay on her side, knees up, hands tucked into her chest right where she’d have breasts someday. She tried to imagine it, how it would feel to have her hands right there in the same place, but between two big breasts. “Yuck,” she said to herself. But maybe she wouldn’t have big ones.

  Her new radio sat on the bookcase. It was a birthday present from her parents. Now she could listen to “The Green Hornet” and “Mr. Keen” and “The Shadow” and “Inner Sanctum” even though they came on past her bedtime.

  From Benjamin she’d gotten a book, and that irritated her because Benjamin knew that Zoe didn’t like to read. It was like having somebody talk right into her ear or stare into her head. As soon as she opened a book she could hear the breathing of the person who wrote it.

  Zoe moved her hands down there between her thighs where it was nice and warm. She let her eyes close and there was a little gentle dropping down feeling in the middle of her, and her mind started to fly away, her mind flew away to make a dream for her. Any minute now it would rush back and fill up her closed eyes with a dream. She waited, listening to her lungs breathe, waited for a dream.

  Away, far away, she heard tiny sounds; dream music coming, maybe; and there was a shift in the thickness of the air; a brushing against her cheek, a pressure there, light, then heavier…she tried to open her eyes in the dream and couldn’t and then they were open but she couldn’t see anything. She moved her head and it felt sluggish and black where she was…

  …like when she’d fallen into Cultus Lake and there wasn’t any bottom: she’d thrashed around and fought the water until it tossed her back into the air and she yelled “Help!” feeling really stupid, but nobody paid any attention and the water sucked her down again. She beat against it with fists and feet but it moved out of reach and then back again and finally it tossed her away again and she yelled “Help!” again, and a man grabbed her under the arms and lifted her onto the jetty that stuck out into the lake. She scrambled to her feet and ran down the jetty and across the sand to where Benjamin and her parents were sitting under a tree with the picnic. She told them what had happened but she saw in their faces that they didn’t believe her…

  Now she moved around restlessly in the blackness of her dream—except for her head, she couldn’t move her head. Her breaths sounded different, faster; and something in her chest hurt and was making her not get enough air. She opened her mouth to get more but her mouth felt squashed—something was leaning against it so she couldn’t open it properly. She tried to touch her face with her hands but she only could get the pillow in her fingers.

  Her heart was beating so fast it seemed to be moving around in her chest. She heard herself making noises and tried to make them louder so somebody would hear her. She lashed out with all of her body and felt her fists hit something soft that went flying and suddenly the thing leaning on her face was gone.

  Zoe shoved herself onto her hands and knees and gulped and gasped until there was enough air in her lungs. Her pillow lay on the floor beside the bed. Could the pillow have done that to her, nearly smothered her to death? She looked over her shoulder at the door to the hall. It was closed. But it seemed to Zoe that the door was shuddering a little bit. As if somebody had opened it and gone through into the hall and closed it again.

  Maybe somebody was after her.

  She sat in bed with the covers pulled up over her shoulders. Her heart was still beating really really fast but not as fast as before, so she knew it would be all right. Her chest didn’t hurt anymore.

  She sat staring at the door for a long time. She wondered who could have tried to do that to her. Most likely it was Benjamin, she thought. But maybe it was her mother. Or even her father. It could have been anybody, she thought, getting very very mad about it.

  She’d have to figure out a way to lock her door. So as to keep herself safe.

  Chapter 2

  WINTER isn’t really winter, on the Sunshine Coast.

  It is not unusual to have no snow at all, and some years there is hardly any frost.

  There is a lot of rain, though; and there are days of fog, too, thick and cool and wet, when the clouds descend and spread across the earth, touching the earth’s face with cool, wet fingers. Karl Alberg is not greatly affected by weather, but he does notice the fog when it drifts and swirls in front of his white Oldsmobile. He doesn’t like it much. He slows down, grits his teeth, and waits for it to disperse. There are days when it doesn’t disperse. Then he finds himself breathing more shallowly when he’s outdoors, as though afraid he will breathe in the fog and discover too late that it has substance, like cotton wool. But usually the fog does lift, around noon; it lifts, and soars up, and vanishes, in a bright brilliant sparkle of sun.

  More often than fog, there is rain. Sometimes it falls steadily, heavily. Sometimes there is an apparently perpetual drizzle. In Vancouver, an hour and a half away by road and ferry, it is difficult to find a color other than gray, when the winter rain is falling. But on the Sunshine Coast, things are different.

  In the woods behind Cassandra Mitchell’s house there are cedar and pine trees, gray-green, sleek with raindrops. Ferns continue to grow there throughout the winter, and the salal rustles. In her backyard the branches of the holly trees are heavy with dusters of red berries, and a winter jasmine blooms yellow. Cassandra Mitchell sees the golden manes of the willow trees, and watches for the sweep of sap that reddens the pliant skeletons of blueberry bushes. She likes the gray of sea and sky; on
the stillest of days there is a tremor of silver upon the sea. And the skies are constantly changing, moving, sweeping away gray to offer a clean smooth patch of cream, like a canvas stretched and ready; pools of adolescent blue, light and clear and shallow; pale shades of violet; bruisy ocher.

  Ramona Orlitzki doesn’t mind the fog, or the rain, either, but she often has trouble keeping herself warm, in wintertime. In her little house she used to sit in front of a heater, knitting vigorously, admiring the big waves thrown toward her garden by the sea. Now keeping her warm is somebody else’s responsibility, and she can’t see the ocean anymore from where she lives.

  Zoe Strachan is wary of fog, and avoids it.

  She tolerates the rain.

  She doesn’t notice holly, or willow trees, or jasmine. She sometimes sits on the rocky beach behind her house and listens to the sea, and watches it.

  Zoe Strachan sees that in winter the light is different, the air is less dense.

  She understands that it is winter’s task each year to nurture death, and establish tranquillity.

  Chapter 3

  ONE MORNING in late January, a gloomy, drizzly day, lightless and sullen, Zoe Strachan opened her door and stared into the face of her brother.

  “Good God,” she said, appalled.

  He laughed, but she could see that he was nervous.

  When her doorbell rang, she had as usual thought first about her car: was it parked in the driveway or hidden away in the garage? When it was in the garage she often didn’t bother answering the door. But today she’d left it out.

  It would be a salesman, she had thought, going reluctantly to the door. Probably real estate. Those people were always trying to get her to sell off part of her property.

  Or else some child peddling raffle tickets or dried-out cookies or grizzled chocolate bars. “I don’t gamble,” she always said to them, or, “I don’t eat sweets,” or, if it was some adult person collecting for a charity, Zoe would say very firmly, “I don’t give any of my money away to anyone.”

  But it was her brother standing there.

  “I haven’t heard from you in years,” said Zoe.

  “I know.” Benjamin was tall and gaunt and somewhat stooped, and his hair was almost completely gray, even though he was only fifty-two, four years older than she.

  “Where’s your wife?” she said, looking behind him.

  “Well, she died, I’m afraid.” He wore a dark-blue suit that didn’t look quite right on him.

  “Died? When? Of what?”

  “Cancer. Five years ago.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Zoe, formally.

  “Yes,” said Benjamin vaguely, looking past her into the house. “I miss her.”

  She ushered him in and closed the door. They stood in the small foyer for a moment and Zoe studied her brother critically. “What are you doing here? And please don’t tell me you’re after money again.”

  Benjamin appeared to wince. “Zoe,” he began.

  She shook her head, amazed. ‘The answer is no, of course.”

  He sighed. “At least give me lunch, or something, before you send me on my way.” As he stepped through the doorway and past her, she thought she smelled alcohol.

  Zoe led the way into the living room. “It’s too early for lunch. I’ll make some coffee.” She told him to sit down, and went into the kitchen.

  While the coffee brewed she rested her hands on the countertop and drummed her fingers, first the right hand, then the left, until she had done each hand five times.

  He’d had plenty of money of his own, once. She didn’t have the faintest idea what he’d done with it. There wasn’t a frugal bone in his body, she thought, watching the water drip through the coffee into the carafe.

  “Can I have an ashtray?” he said, coming into the kitchen.

  “I don’t smoke, Benjamin.” Zoe put a mug and cream and sugar on a tray. “I don’t have any ashtrays.”

  He reached around her and got a dessert bowl from the cupboard. She watched with distaste as he flicked ashes into it, and onto the sleeve of his suit jacket, as well.

  As he brushed at his sleeve she realized what was wrong with the suit. It was several sizes too large for him. She looked at him keenly, saw his pallor, and wondered if his wife could have passed her cancer on to him before she died.

  “How about a little brandy,” said Benjamin, “to go with the coffee.”

  “No.” Zoe poured coffee into the mug and carried the tray into the living room. “You’ve got about fifteen minutes,” she said, handing him the coffee, “until you have to leave to catch the next ferry.”

  Benjamin sat in the black leather chair that was Zoe’s favorite. “You’re looking very well, Zoe,” he said.

  “Drink your coffee.”

  “Every time I see you it surprises me, how well you look.”

  He put the mug on a side table and leaned forward, arms resting on his thighs, letting his hands dangle. He had always had very unattractive hands, thought Zoe with repugnance. They had had an odd smell to them, too, when he was a boy. Sweat, probably. He had sweated a lot, when he was a boy.

  “I take care of myself,” she said. “That’s why I look well.”

  “Yes. That’s right. I know.”

  “Drink your coffee,” Zoe said again.

  Benjamin gazed around the living room. “It’s a funny kind of place you live in.”

  Zoe watched him, smiling a little, but wary. He’d always been secretive. So was she, of course. But Benjamin was also unpredictable, because he had absolutely no self-discipline.

  “You like it here, don’t you? In this funny little house, huddled against the rocks in this funny little town.”

  “If I didn’t like it, Benjamin,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here.”

  “It must be nice to know exactly what you want,” said Benjamin.

  His face, she noticed, was barren. She had been expecting grievousness, or guile, but there was nothing there at all. She began to relax. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to battle with him. Perhaps one more resolute “no” would do it.

  “And to be able to afford to get it,” he went on. “That must be nice. And of course to keep it. That’s nicer still.”

  “It is, yes,” said Zoe. She began thinking about what she might like to have for lunch.

  Benjamin sat back and picked up his coffee mug. He folded one leg over the other. “It’s very serious business that’s brought me here, Zoe,” he said.

  She waited.

  “Aren’t you even curious?” said Benjamin, and he sighed and shook his head when she didn’t respond. “I forget, you know, how eccentric you are.”

  She turned her head slightly, so that she was facing him dead on, and looked straight into his eyes. He faltered, then.

  “I’m afraid you have to leave now, Benjamin.”

  He looked at her again, so bleak and defiant that she felt a trickle of apprehension.

  “Right now,” she said. “Or you won’t catch the next ferry.”

  Benjamin looked out the big window at the stone-floored patio. “Oh my dear,” he said dully. “I can’t catch the next ferry. We have far too much to talk about.”

  “We have nothing to talk about,” said Zoe.

  Suddenly she thought of her father. This happened sometimes: a strange, ephemeral compassion for one of her parents flickered through her brain, alien and superfluous.

  “‘Shoes and ships and sealing wax…’,” Benjamin intoned. He put his head back and closed his eyes. “Death,” he said. “And diaries. That’s what we’ve got to talk about.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “And yes, Zoe, you’re right. Money, of course.”

  Chapter 4

  ZOE knew very early in her life that she was different. This confused her only briefly. Then, all sorts of things became clear.

  She also learned early that she had to tread carefully so as not to appear to be different, if she wanted to live her life with a minimum fuss.

  She t
hought it unlikely that she could be the only person in the entire world who was different; but she was the only person she knew who was.

  Eventually Zoe created an outside person; otherwise she would have been in trouble all the time.

  She made up rules for this person, and then she felt a lot safer. When she got into trouble, she knew it was because she’d broken one of the rules.

  Before the creation of her outside person, it seemed to Zoe that she couldn’t say or do very much at all without getting somebody annoyed. Or worse.

  It made her tired and worried, in the early part of her life, to realize that everybody else lived in a different way than she did. She decided she had to understand this difference somehow.

  She learned to do it by writing things down.

  The first time was for school. In grade three, her class was told to write about what they’d done during their holidays. Zoe put it off and put it off, not wanting to do it, not even knowing how to do it. But every day her teacher hadn’t forgotten about it. Every day she asked Zoe for her holiday story. Finally in exasperation Zoe asked her mother to help her.

  They sat down together after dinner. Zoe had some paper and a pencil. Her mother said, “Tell me something you did in your holidays that you really enjoyed a lot.”

  Zoe thought about that. She’d enjoyed sneaking into the basement of the Nelsons’ house, next door, and poking around in an old trunk she’d found there. After a minute she shrugged her shoulders.

  “What about when we went on the train to Banff?” said her mother.

  “I liked it in the pool,” said Zoe, remembering. “Because the water was hot but the air was cool.”

  “You could write about that, then.”

  “That isn’t much to say,” said Zoe doubtfully.

  “I don’t think Miss Warren wants you to say a whole lot. Maybe enough to fill up a page. You could write about the train ride and then about the hot springs.”

  “What would I say about the train ride?”

  “What do you remember about it?”