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  “Nathan!”

  It was Annabelle’s son and his girlfriend Lili. She emerged from the vehicle.

  Too calm to be injured, thought Annabelle.

  She tried to control herself as she hugged Lili. She reminded herself that it wasn’t the first time Nathan had skidded off the road into a ditch. He was a daring driver – excellent – but wild. He always emerged unscathed.

  When Nathan tried to get out of the truck, which was nose deep in the muddy ditch, a shot of pain stabbed through him from his ankle, cut through his body, and came out from his eyes. He threw up, and fell forward, unconscious, leaning on the horn. The airbags had not deployed because Nathan had disabled them. He’d done it because Lili was so tiny they could have killed her.

  The blaring horn awakened all of Annabelle’s maternal instincts. She slid down into the ditch and wrenched the car door open. Lili was right beside her, and both began to drag Nathan out of the cab.

  Ian hopped down beside them.

  “Are you sure you should be doing that? Moving him?”

  Annabelle looked around wildly.

  “What choice do we have? It will take them forever to come from Winterside.”

  Nathan was the volunteer paramedic at The Shores and had a van rigged up to act as an ambulance. They called it Florence.

  “Leave him in there, then.” said Lili. “I’m going to go get Flo.”

  “Take my car. The keys are in it.” Everyone left their keys in their cars in The Shores. Except Jamieson.

  Annabelle stood in the muck seeping over the top of her short boots, cradling Nathan’s head, unaware of the vomit that was smeared all over her.

  Jamie and Ian dragged Fitz off the road.

  “Wait here with him,” Ian said to the boy. “I’ll go get my truck.” Ian was glad, not for the first time, that he’d replaced his hybrid Insight with a truck. The previous vehicle had been an environmental statement, but at The Shores a truck was more practical.

  When Ian returned, Annabelle was still holding on to Nathan, stroking his head, thinking about the other son she’d lost and how she couldn’t bear to lose this one. And at this time of year. Fitz was still groaning by the side of the road, alternating snippets of the drunken songs he’d been singing while panic erupted around him.

  “Bastard.” It slipped out before Ian could check himself.

  “What’s a bastard?” Jamie asked, hearing the word again. His father had used it about him and now Ian was calling his father one. The word had been bothering him all evening. His smooth young forehead crumpled in concern.

  Annabelle quickly shook her head, signaling Ian not to get into it. Ian went ahead anyway.

  “A blessing. Some of my best friends are bastards.”

  Jamie’s expression cleared.

  “So it’s good?”

  “Well, it can be.”

  “Are you a bastard?”

  “I’ve been called that, but no, I’m not.”

  Jamie turned to Annabelle.

  “Are you a bastard?”

  “No, dear, I’m not.”

  “But I am?”

  “No,” she said. “Who called you that?”

  “My father.”

  “Why?”

  Ian wondered, too.

  Why?

  Lili arrived in Flo, and they got Nathan into the back, strapped into one of the two cots. He was still unconscious.

  “I’m going, too,” said Annabelle.

  “No,” said Lili firmly.

  “Why not? I’m his mother.”

  “I can’t drive you. In this weather. I’ll risk my life for Nathan, but not yours as well.”

  “Then let me drive.”

  “No,” Lili insisted. “I know this vehicle. Nathan has taught me all about it. I just can’t take the two of you.”

  Lili was not usually stubborn. She was generally a very accommodating person. Ben, thought Annabelle, as soon as Ben got back, she’d have him take her to town.

  She looked up at the sky, worried. If and when Ben got back. He’d left in the tiny Matrix, no four-wheel drive, no snow tires. And the snow was no longer a dusting. It was thick, heavy, and worsening.

  Would Lili even make it across the causeway?

  The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the snow. It didn’t matter. The view through them was a wall of white. Lili was depending on the odometer to tell her where they were, by distance. Near the causeway now. The causeway – a thin kilometre of land that joined The Shores, uncertainly, to Red Island.

  A storm surge had scoured across it a few years back, and ripped it apart at its most fragile spot. It had been shored up, tons of rock brought in, but a subsequent storm surge had shifted the massive rocks that had seemed so solidly planted.

  This fall, the province had put sandbags all along the ocean side, in fear of another storm surge during record rainfalls. Not likely to be very effective. Still, the sandbags would be something soft to bump into if she went off the road. She tried to banish that thought.

  Lili’s hands were gripped so tightly on the steering wheel that they were turning white. She worked on bringing back the calm that was her usual state. It was hard to feel calm with Nathan in the back. Conscious or unconscious?

  Nathan was having a dream. Two dreams, really. In one, he was tearing down a gully through the snow, after little Jamie. But he got there too late. In the other, it was her he was following. Her? Rose? And then there were Oliver and Jamie, both in the woods in the snow.

  And then the snow took over his brain, a cloud of snow blanketing his thoughts and dreams.

  Nothingness.

  I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.

  Jamie had slipped away, leaving his father with Ian and Annabelle. He was fearful of what might have happened to his hero Nathan. Nathan – unconscious in a ditch, Jamie’s father to blame, lying drunk on the road.

  Jamie ran all the way up Shipwreck Hill and down the other side. He turned into the driveway, but he didn’t go into the house. He just kept going. He wandered, desperately, on the snowmobile trails through the woods. Soon he was on no trail at all, but battling his way through, the spruce scratching at him. He didn’t care. He didn’t know where he was going.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do when he got there.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ian pulled out of the driveway at Wild Rose Cottage. He didn’t wait to see Fitz into the house. He couldn’t bear to look at him – stumbling along in the snow, still singing those disgusting songs. There was puke in the cab of the truck. Vomit, the smell overtaking the brand-new scent.

  As he drove back home, there was a streak of lightning, so unexpected he almost swerved off the road. He braked slowly, stopped, and looked at the sky in wonder. He listened carefully and heard the low, muffled rumble of thunder.

  He smiled. Thundersnow.

  He’d heard about it, but he’d never experienced it. It delighted his scientific mind. Then he frowned. It was rare, thundersnow, and when it occurred, it usually meant a big storm. He thought about Lili and Nathan. They should be over the causeway by now, that is, if – Ian tried not to think about it. When he got home, where Annabelle had stoked the woodstove and made fresh coffee, he had to suppress his excitement about the thundersnow experience. On a normal day Annabelle wouldn’t care much about his weather discovery, but tonight everything about the weather would concern her. She would pepper him with questions about what it meant. He didn’t want to tell her what it meant.

  A severe storm, a blizzard, up to three inches of snow every hour, that’s what it meant. Annabelle didn’t need to hear that. He breathed in the smell of the coffee. It almost wiped out the smell of sick in his nostrils.

  He searched his mind for something to talk about, to keep Annabelle’s mind off Lili and Nathan and the ha
zardous journey they were on as the wind picked up and the snow drove sideways into the window, blurring the outdoors. Still, the village lights could be seen. Light. Hope in the darkness, Annabelle thought, and broached the subject that had brought her to Ian’s in the first place.

  “You know Germaine has gone to Halifax.”

  “Yup. Heart surgery.”

  “Well someone needs to read the Christmas verses. Hy asked me to find someone.”

  “Uh huh.” Ian was only half listening. He was thinking about the thundersnow, wondering, if he went out again, would he hear it? See the lightning? Now that was rare, really rare.

  “You must do it. There’s no one else.”

  All thoughts of thundersnow swept from his mind.

  “Me? I can’t do it.”

  “Almost anyone could do it better than Germaine Joudry.”

  Germaine couldn’t speak English very well, and certainly couldn’t read it. In spite of this impediment, he’d been reading the biblical passage at the Christmas show for twenty years. The ladies liked it because they thought he had a “biblical voice” – baritone-deep and judgmental.

  “But it’s the principle of the thing. I’m not a believer.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Ian…”

  “What about Ben?”

  “I love him dearly, but he can’t read two words in a row without stumbling.”

  Ben, she thought, still not back.

  “Abel?”

  “Do you think he’d show up?”

  Ian went through the list of potential males, even including Jared MacPherson, to which Annabelle sputtered. The suggestion helped pull her out of her anxiety over Nathan and Ben.

  “Any of the ladies?”

  “Too shy, most of them.”

  “Not Hy.”

  “But she’s got enough on her plate already. Besides, she wouldn’t have asked me to find someone if she was prepared to do it.”

  “Maybe she was being modest.”

  “Hy? Modest?”

  There was a silence, a silence long enough to bring Annabelle back to her fears. She had a sunny personality, but her eyes were clouded, and her fears for her son showed through. She couldn’t lose Nathan. She’d already lost one son.

  The worst thing that can happen to a mother had happened to Annabelle – she and Ben had lost their first child. A beautiful bouncing baby boy – ten pounds, five ounces at birth. So what could possibly have happened? Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. One moment, alive and chortling, then falling asleep with Annabelle’s good milk trickling out of one corner of his always-smiling mouth, and then gone. Gone.

  Ian knew the story even though he hadn’t lived in the village at the time. It’s why he finally agreed to read from the Bible at the Christmas show. To brighten her up. It did, for a moment.

  “But don’t tell anyone,” he added.

  “Well, Hy – ”

  “Especially not Hy.”

  Annabelle didn’t get it, but she agreed to it. How was she going to keep it from Hy? Hy would be badgering her to know if she could think of someone, if she’d found someone.

  The Christmas Pageant was the last thing on Hy’s mind at the moment. She’d gone up to see that everything was okay at Wild Rose Cottage, to try to convince Rose and Jamie to come to her house “for the duration” was how she put it. Fitz was nowhere around. Rose was glad of it. He’d gone out and hadn’t returned. She hadn’t seen Jamie in a while either.

  Rose wasn’t concerned about Jamie. She had no idea he’d gone out. He always told her when he did. She assumed he was knocking around the house somewhere. She could lose track of him for hours in this big place.

  Rose refused to go with Hy, but invited her to stay instead, as the snow thickened outside. Hy worried about getting her truck up and down the hill, but she had snow tires and four-wheel drive. It should be okay. The two were sitting around the wood range, sipping tea, when a biting pain sliced through Rose. She jumped up and doubled over.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Rose was in too much pain to answer, but Hy could tell it was serious. She got on her cell phone and rang Nathan, but his cell phone was vibrating in his pocket in the back of his ambulance and he was oblivious to it. So was Lili, streaking through the snow, trying to remember everything Nathan had told her about driving in bad weather. Thank God she’d finally convinced him to put snow tires on the vehicle – just last week he’d given in and done it. Even so, the van had only a tentative connection to the road. That’s what it felt like to her. Just as she drove onto the causeway, she shut her eyes and began humming “om.” It was not as foolish as it might seem, closing her eyes. She couldn’t see anything anyway. She might as well have the spirits guide her. It was not a technique Nathan would have supported, but there was nothing he could say about it now.

  Rose bent over suddenly, grimacing in pain.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Contraction.”

  Contraction? “You’re pregnant?” So there was a baby.

  “Not going to be anymore.” Rose sat down, slowly, the pain easing.

  “How far along are you?”

  “About four months. Maybe more, maybe less.”

  “So, if this is it, there’s no hope?”

  “No hope,” said Rose. “Just as well.”

  Lili negotiated the causeway, and all the curving roads on the way to Winterside through sheer love of Nathan. She almost went off the road twice, but managed to correct the vehicle the way he had taught her.

  Lili pulled the van in front of Emergency and jumped out. A nurse and a doctor came flying. Dr. Diamante and Ed weren’t even on emergency room duty, they were on a smoke break outside, but there was something about Lili, something that galvanized them into action.

  The doctor immediately took Nathan’s pulse, put a stethoscope to his chest, and opened his eyelids, one after another.

  “Hay-zoos,” he said. “Get him in – quick!”

  Lili paled further, if that was possible.

  Ben almost went off the road when he saw his son’s truck in the ditch. He pulled to a stop in front of Joudrys’. Estelle waved him in from the window. She’d been staring out when the accident happened, and had maintained her post ever since, content to steep herself in others’ misery, full of guilt at not being with Germaine in Halifax where he was having the long-awaited heart surgery. But Estelle had never left The Shores, not for any reason, and now she was afraid to. Sixty years, all of them here. Never a trip to Charlottetown or Winterside to shop, see the eye doctor or dentist. Her teeth were bad, but her health was good.

  Ben burst through the front door, never used in The Shores, but it was the closest. His snow-wet, clay-red boots stomped all over Estelle’s treasured hooked rug, the last one her mother had made, sewing the border on her deathbed. Estelle pursed her lips, looking at the imprint of his boots. Not easily cleaned. Then he made it worse. Noticing the mud, he scuffed at it to remove it, only grinding it deeper in. She’d have to wait until it dried. She’d have to look at that mark all that time. Even if she got it out, she’d never see the rug again, only the stain.

  Ben grabbed her and shook her, forgetting himself in his panic. He’d lost one son. He couldn’t bear to lose another.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I’ve done plenty of them.” Gus looked around – at the smoking wood range, the windows that let in the draft, the quilt hanging over the door and billowing out as the wind hit it. And at the tent.

  “But not here,” she said. “I won’t be doing it here.”

  Rose was crouched down on the floor, bending over from the pain of another contraction. Hy looked at her watch. Only one minute apart.

  She grabbed Gus by the arm.

  “Gus, you’ve got to. It was all I could do to drive down and bring you here. It’s like someone poured
grease on the roads. There’s no traction.”

  “Just contraction,” Rose huffed through another one.

  “Well, all right then.” Gus rolled up her sleeves, gave her hands and arms a good wash, and said. “Better get up on the table. If I crouch down, I’ll never get up. Happened the other day. Went down on my knees to wax the floor, and it was an hour before I could pull myself up again, with Abel the Lord knows where.”

  She turned her attention to Rose again.

  “Has your water broke?”

  “N-nooooo…” the word rose with the contraction.

  “No water.” Gus looked over at Hy. Hy shrugged.

  “No good.” Gus shook her head and bent to her task.

  Annabelle flung herself at Ben when he came through Ian’s door.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Estelle.”

  “Of course, the truck. How awful for you.”

  “And Lili’s driving? You let her go?”

  ‘No. She wouldn’t take me. We have to follow.”

  Ben shook his head slowly, sadly. “No, Annabelle. The Matrix won’t do it. I barely made it here.”

  “The snow tires are in the shed. If you’d only – ” She stopped. It was no time for recriminations. Ben had been busy this fall. There hadn’t been time.

  “I won’t have the whole family out on the road tonight.” It was unusual for Ben to take such a firm stand against Annabelle or anyone. “We’ll just have to hope Lili and Nathan make it to Winterside. When did they leave?”

  It seemed like hours to Annabelle, but it had been only forty-five minutes. Enough time to get there in normal weather, but tonight –

  Ben put an arm around her. Chilled by fear, she was still wearing her coat. He coaxed her out of the house, Ian following, not knowing what to say or do.

  At the last, Annabelle turned to him.

  “Our secret,” she said.

  Ian nodded and smiled.

  “What secret?” Ben looked at them, puzzled, on the way out.

  “You’ll see,” said Annabelle.

  It had been a long time since Gus had attended a birth. She’d never been a midwife, but she’d helped lots of times, so often that the time melted away, and she knew exactly what she was doing.