The Darkening Archipelago by Stephen Legault Read Free Book Online

another again. Or so Nancy believed.
    So when she had arrived in Vancouver for the awards, she had called Cole. They had met for dinner at the Raincity Grill on Denman Street near her hotel.
    â€œHow was your visit to your mother’s place?” she had asked as they sampled albacore tuna and honey mussels before their main course.
    Cole sat across from her. He still looked like a hoodlum, his dark hair falling in ragged curls over his forehead. That night he had worn a dark patterned shirt that had been pressed for the occasion, and a glint in his eyes that she hadn’t seen since their days together in Ottawa. It wasn’t exactly light, that glimmer — there was something mischievous, or perhaps sinister, in that flash.
    Other things seemed different, changed. His face was leaner, and the dark scars that still crossed his cheek and eyebrow made him look dangerous. They would fade with time, she thought, but now, only five months after those jagged imprints had been made, they told a dark story. And Nancy wondered, looking at him across from her, if the darkness that seemed to have flourished would ever recede. Was it just the Mike Barnes affair, or was it something else?
    â€œIt was fine,” he said, sampling the beef tataki. “This is good. I wish there was more than just one spoonful.” He drank from his bottle of Heineken.
    â€œThat’s all I get? It was fine ?”
    â€œWhat’s there to tell? The old ranch is just as it’s always been. Nothing to report.”
    â€œDid you see Walter?”
    â€œYup, he was there for most of Sarah’s and my stay. We rode together a few times, which was great. I’ll tell you, keeping up with my older brother, be it in the saddle or on foot, is a heck of an incentive to get back in shape.”
    â€œYou look good, Cole.”
    â€œYou do too.”
    She thought she did. She’d been running and going to the gym, and she’d had her hair done that afternoon at a place on Robson Street in preparation for the awards ceremony the next night.
    â€œYou know, I really don’t know anything about your family,”
    she said, sipping her red wine. He topped up her glass from the bottle of Ravenswood Zinfandel on the table.
    â€œNot much to tell, really.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “My mom is pushing seventy now, but is still hale and hardy. Walter is forty going on twenty-five. Still working for the Parks Service in Waterton Lakes. Puts the cows out each spring, rounds them up every fall. Keeps the ranch a working proposition, though it’s really just to maintain our grazing lease. We don’t make any money on the operation. Hardly ever did. Even when Dad was running it.…” His voice trailed off, and he filled the space with a long pull from his bottle of beer.
    Nancy sat and watched him. A beautiful young woman with blonde hair and emerald eyes took away the plate of appetizer spoons. Nancy looked up at the server and then back at Cole. “You were saying?”
    Cole had been looking at the woman, too. He pursed his lips. “Only that the ranch is still a working outfit, but only for show.”
    â€œYou were saying that your father could never make a go of it.”
    â€œI don’t really want to talk about my father,” said Cole, looking sideways and shifting in his seat.
    â€œYou are an enigma to me, Cole Blackwater.”
    â€œYeah, well, to me too,” he said, returning her gaze.
    The blonde served their dinners. Cole ate grilled venison tenderloin with a black trumpet mushroom and lentil ragout, with turnips and brandy jus. He had had to ask the waitress what a ragout was, and then what a jus was, but it was mostly to flirt, Nancy figured. She watched him wash his food down with another bottle of Heineken.
    Nancy dined on wild coho salmon with yam purée, sherry-glazed radish, and daikon. She enjoyed her Zin. They ate in silence, in part to savour the