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Matthew turns back to stare at the fire, fresh tears spilling from his eyes. ‘Dear God.’ He covers his face with his hands for a moment until he regains control. Then he removes them and turns to David. ‘If someone deliberately killed her, then I want to know who, and I want to know why.’ He looks back at David. ‘It wasn’t me, I swear.’ He is clearly tormented.
David observes Matthew shrewdly. He’s almost convinced the man is innocent. ‘Okay. But here’s my advice, anyway. Don’t say anything to anybody about this. Just – say nothing. It may not be a bad idea to stay up here in your room until the police get here. And when they do get here, if they caution you, and arrest you – and even if they don’t – say nothing. Get yourself a good attorney.’
Matthew has turned even paler. ‘What about you?’
‘I don’t think so. But I can recommend someone, if you like.’ David gets up to leave. He knows that with no phone service, there’s no one that Matthew can call, no one he can talk to. He’s isolated here. ‘Are you going to be okay?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m here if you need me,’ he says. He means it. ‘I’ll check in on you again in a bit.’
Matthew nods and turns back to the fire.
David lets himself out.
Matthew hears the door click closed and turns to look. He’s alone again.
He stands up suddenly and begins to pace. He’s overcome with grief for Dana, but he’s also frightened and agitated by what David Paley has said. Dana is dead! And the attorney thinks he did it. If he thinks so, the police will think so, too.
He suppresses a sob as he paces the room. He told the attorney that he and Dana hadn’t argued, and now he thinks he’s made a mistake. He and Dana had argued, tension about the impending wedding erupting out of nowhere. They’ve both been under a lot of stress.
Dana had brought up his mother again – complaining that his mother has never approved of her, never thought she was good enough. Dana got like that sometimes – more often, recently – emotionally overwrought, a little insecure. Looking at her, you would never be able to tell that sometimes she lacked confidence, but occasionally she revealed it to him. It didn’t bother him. He was used to people – friends and girlfriends – being intimidated by his wealthy, powerful family.
He’d denied it, of course. Said that she was being oversensitive, that of course his mother approved of her. But he was tired of having to say the same thing over and over. Especially because it wasn’t exactly true. His mother did think he could do better, and she’d had the audacity to tell him so, on more than one occasion. She’d tried to get him to wait, thinking he would tire of Dana, thinking that he was simply taken in by Dana’s beauty and that his feelings for her would change. He’d made it clear to his strong-willed, wealthy matriarch of a mother that he loved Dana and that he was going to marry her. But it was wearying to be constantly caught between the two women, unable to entirely please – or appease – either one of them. Last night, his exasperation had got the better of him.
He wonders suddenly if anyone heard them arguing.
Chapter Eleven
Saturday, 8:00 AM
THE GUESTS FILTER slowly from the dining room into the lobby, subdued, avoiding the staircase, some of them still holding coffee cups.
Henry is cursing his luck. If only the snow had not turned to driving ice in the night this would have been a rather fabulous winter wonderland. He could have gone cross-country skiing all day, worked off some of this godawful tension. Now he stands close to the front windows of the lobby and looks gloomily out at the ice – coating everything like glass – and feels cheated. This hotel isn’t exactly cheap and everything seems to be conspiring to make him have a miserable time. He makes the mistake of glancing at his wife, who is watching him.
He feels so restless. He leans forward and practically presses his nose against the cool glass of the window. He sees that a massive branch has broken off the enormous old tree on the front lawn and lies shattered in pieces, dark wood against sparkling white. He feels his wife come up behind him. Hears her say, ‘You aren’t thinking of going out in that.’
He hadn’t been, but now she’s decided it. ‘Yes.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she says, as if scolding one of the kids for some hare-brained idea.
He moves over to the coat stand near the door where most of them had left their coats the night before, their boots below them on the mat. He finds and pulls on his winter jacket, bends over and slips off his running shoes, and pulls on the winter boots that he arrived in.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ Ian says, but without the overlay of hysteria and the need for control Henry detects so frequently in his wife’s voice.
‘I won’t go far,’ he tells Ian, pulling on his hat. ‘I just want to get some fresh air.’
‘Make sure you stay away from any power lines,’ Ian advises him.
They’re all standing watching him, as if he’s some kind of canary, testing the conditions.
Henry turns around and opens the front door. He feels the cold air hit his face, and everyone’s eyes on his back. He steps out onto the porch and pulls the door closed behind him. It’s now that he notices the wind – how wild and loud it is. From inside the hotel it sounds like a constant, dull roar with the occasional shriek, something far away, but out here it’s alive, it’s a monster, and it’s much closer. He looks towards the forest at the edge of the lawn and sees how the wind is whipping the tops of the trees back and forth. And the noise – it’s like a keening. Worst of all is the creaking, sawing sound as the wind brings its force to bear on the ice-laden branches of the tree in front of him. He closes his eyes for a moment and listens; he imagines that this is what an old wooden sailing ship might have sounded like at sea, in a storm. Then he opens his eyes and lifts them up to the tree, wondering if any more branches are about to come down.
He’s been still now for some moments and he knows they’re all watching. He grabs the porch handrail and looks down. There’s a thick coating of ice on the wooden stairs and he steps carefully, holding on firmly to the rail. It’s very slippery, but he makes it to the bottom of the three steps without incident and stands there. He’s beginning to wonder what he’s doing out here. He starts walking – not walking, walking is impossible – but sliding his feet along the ice, trying to keep his centre of balance low. It’s like walking after Teddy on the ice rink at hockey when he was little, just after the rink was flooded, only the rink was flat, and this ice slopes all over the place.
Without warning, Henry’s feet go right out from under him in spectacular fashion and he lands heavily on his back, winded, not twenty feet from the front porch. He lies there trying to get his breath back, wheezing loudly, looking up at the clouds, feeling like a fool. He hears the front door open behind him. That will be his wife, telling him to come back in.
But before she can say anything there’s a frightful cracking sound overhead. He turns his head towards the tree. His heart jumps in his chest as he realizes what’s going to happen. He closes his eyes as part of a branch comes down and lands with a shudder no more than a few feet away. He slowly reopens his eyes.
That branch could have killed him.
Unable to get back up on his feet, Henry crawls and slides on all fours back to the front porch and then hauls himself to standing at the front steps using the handrail.
The front door is wide open, and everyone is looking at him, alarmed. They practically pull him back inside the hotel.
Once he’s regained his composure, his wife says, ‘If you want something to do, you can go and help Bradley try to clear the walk out to the icehouse.’ He looks back at her in annoyance and she adds, ‘He told me there aren’t any trees there. It should be relatively safe.’
