South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [142]
Time had flown by since then. The summer and fall had disappeared in a haze of work, but the winter was theirs.
Paul trained his gaze on the bobbers again. Madeline squatted down and warmed her hands around the lantern.
“Randi’s coming Up for a parole review, eh?”
Madeline nodded, but she didn’t want to think about it. The trial had happened in June and Randi’d gotten a year in the county jail. Maybe she’d only serve part of that before they let her come home.
“She’ll want Grey back when she gets out.”
Madeline squinted off across the lake. The wind made snow dervishes rise in swirls Up off the ice. “I know.”
“She’s better with him lately.”
“Yeah. Better.” Randi wrote Greyson letters, made him things in the craft shop. She was allowed to go out in the yard with him—she was Using a walker now—to play games and visit in an open room, and she was more herself again, tickling and hugging him to make him giggle, calling him her little man.
“Maybe she’ll let him stay with Us some. Or even, I don’t know, a lot. I mean, if that’s what you want.”
“You know it is. But it might not be what he wants. I mean, it probably isn’t. And that’s—” Madeline couldn’t bring herself to say, That’s okay. She loved Greyson. And he loved them, but when Randi was back, he would want to go home. It was inevitable, it was probably—maybe—even right, but the thought broke her heart.
“It’ll work out,” he said. Madeline wished she could share his certainty. The fishing lines fluttered in the breeze, the bobbers bobbed. She hunkered down, stared across the horizon. Felt the vast cold world spread out all around her and was reassured by the impersonality of it. This land—wild and serene, huge, ruthless and gentle by turns, was always Unconcerned with her, small Madeline who was a tiny dot on its landscape for a moment in time. It reminded her over and over that there was only now. The future would come, Unfolding itself as it did.
“It will,” he said, giving her a funny little smile. “Things do. Not the way you expect, but still all right.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Paul studied her a moment and then shuffled through his layers of clothes for a pocket, fished around for something, and came Up with a folded piece of paper. He handed it to her. She Unfolded it and frowned, not remembering at first, and then remembering and being baffled. It was a letter. Dear Paul, it said. We miss you. That’s all I’m writing to say. We’re okay, but—
“Where’d you get this?”
“Greyson sent it to me. Last year before I came back.”
“How did he get it?”
Paul shrugged. “Don’t know. But things do work out.”
Madeline decided it would be silly to be embarrassed by this revealing letter now. After all, things had worked out. And Greyson—what nerve. She smiled to herself. She read the letter, studied the little drawings. They were pretty good, she could see from this remove of a little more than a year. They had charm. They gave her an idea for the book she was going to illustrate. It was a self-published thing a woman in town had done, nothing big, but she liked the story and it would pay a little.
An hour passed. Her feet began to get very cold. She wondered when they would eat the sack lunch they’d packed.
“Hey,” Paul hissed. “Look.”
The bobber quivered, then dipped down into the water. Paul grabbed the pole from where he propped it in the snow, fed out a little line. The bobber rose and dipped again, faster and deeper. Madeline stared at it, transfixed. The possibility that they might catch their dinner galvanized her. She glanced Up at Paul and saw a look of concentrated glee on his face. She watched in anticipation for what would happen next.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
McAllaster is a fictional town, but it’s like the one I live in—a small village in an isolated spot along Lake Superior—so I’d first like to thank Grand Marais, just for being itself. Also my thanks to the Gitche Gumee, the Big Water that makes life so special here.
Midway through writing this book, I started doing interviews