The Snow Falcon by Stuart Harrison Read Free Book Online

Sometimes when she was taken with an urge to evaluate her life, she made lists on a sheet of paper: everything positive down one side, the negative down the other. It was supposed to be a technique for figuring things out logically. The idea was that if the negative side was disproportionately long, then you had a problem, but at least you could see it there in black and white, which provided a focus. She didn’t know what conclusion a person was supposed to reach if the result was the other way around, but she imagined it probably never happened that way. People whose lives were so good didn’t feel the need to analyze why.
    Her own columns always came out evenly balanced. There was nothing startlingly bad about her life, nothing that gave her a compelling urge to change, but still she felt an undercurrent of discontent.
    On this day she pulled up outside her office with its sign painted on the window that read LITTLE RIVER BEND REALTY and switched off the engine. She paused for a moment to look along Main Street. Most things she needed could be bought in town; there was a drug-
     
    a
     
    store, some clothes stores, a grocery store, a hardware store. Everything was covered so long as having a wide choice wasn’t a priority. If a person wanted to go out at night, there was the Valley Hotel, which was about the only place that served a decent meal, or there was a bar called Clancys that served food, but mostly just stuff that could be heated in a microwave.
    Richard Wells from the bank came by and saw her sitting in her car. He paused, then came and tapped on her window. “Everything okay there, Susan?”
    She came to, aware that she’d been daydreaming, and wound down the window. “Fine, Richard. I was miles away, I guess.”
    He smiled. He was a friendly guy in his fifties with a wife and three kids, all at college. He looked up at the sky. “Think this is going to get any worse?”
    The weather was a constant topic of conversation in winter, though around Little River they missed the worst of it. They were in a protected valley at the edge of the Cariboo Mountains, the Columbia ranges beyond and the Rockies still farther east. This winter had been mild compared with others she’d seen in the time she’d lived in the town. The lack of severity was being attributed to the El Nino effect, but all the same, there had been some heavy falls already that month, and more were expected.
    “The weather report said there was a front coming in,” Susan said.
    “Is that right?” Richard stamped his feet. “Looks like we’re in for a cold one, then.”
    They chatted for a minute, then he checked his watch and said he had to be going. “Bye now.” He raised his hand and moved on, snowflakes settling like a shawl across the shoulders of his heavy dark coat.
    She watched him go, then went into her office. Things were quiet this time of year, and she wasn’t expecting to be busy. She planned to make some calls to people who she knew were thinking of selling their houses, and later she’d go over and have coffee with Linda Kowalski, who as well as being her best friend owned the diner across the street with her husband, Pete.
    The morning passed quickly, and at eleven-thirty she switched on the answering machine and hung a sign on the door. Outside, the snow had stopped falling, but it felt colder, the breeze cutting to the bone. She scraped snow from her windshield and drove to Bakers-
     
    town, where she picked Jamie up from school. He was waiting for her inside the entrance hall, and when she pulled up, he came out and climbed sullenly into the passenger seat. Before heading toward the highway, she turned around and went back toward Little River. On the edge of town she stopped outside the church and reached into the backseat for the flowers she’d bought earlier.
     
    “Jamie, are you coming?”
     
    As usual whenever she brought him here, she might as well have been talking to herself. He continued looking out the