The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

“That’s why you didn’t wear a hat, why you took off your hat before the party.”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. It’s nothing. Go on. What happened?”

“Well, Christine was so upset. She is so easily upset! She’s always fantasized about her father, dreamed about him, written stories about him. She started drawing pictures of him as soon as she heard about him, though she hadn’t the faintest idea what he looked like. I should have known how actually seeing him in the flesh would affect her. She started to cry. I should have taken them home then. But I didn’t. And then towards the end of the party, this very small thing happened, such a small thing.” She shook her head. Her voice was filled with sadness. “Christine saw Jim walking out to the pavilion with a little girl. He had the little girl’s hand in his. He was talking with the little girl and with an older woman, a grandmother perhaps. And when Christine saw him with that little girl, you see, smiling at that little girl, and talking to that little girl—.”

Susie Blakely, of course.

“Oh, yes, I can imagine,” said Reuben. “I know that little girl. Yes. And I can see why this happened, what Christine felt. I understand everything. Lorraine, will you stay here tonight, please? Please stay here while I talk to Phil and Grace, my mom and dad, about this. Please. We have everything prepared upstairs, everything—pajamas, nightgowns, toothbrushes, everything you might need—three bedrooms have been prepared. Just stay here with us while we take this into consideration, please.”

She was clearly not persuaded. Her eyes were watering.

“You know, Reuben, you are very like your brother. You are kind the way he is kind. Your parents must be marvelous people. But I turned out to be poison for Jim.”

“No, that’s not how it was, not according to him, you were not poison!”

Reuben left the chair and sat beside her on the couch.

“I promise you this is going to work out! I give you my word,” he said. He slipped his arm around her. “Please stay with us tonight. And will you trust me to handle this with Jim? Please?”

After a long moment, she nodded.

“Very well,” she whispered. She opened her purse and withdrew a little packet of folded papers. “This is the DNA of the children,” she said. “Your mother’s a doctor. She’ll be able to check it against Jim’s DNA quietly.”

“Lorraine, may I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Was the pregnancy ever in jeopardy? Did you have to go into the hospital—I mean after the last time you saw Jim?”

“No. Not really. There was a fight. It was ugly. Jamie … well, Jamie was drunk and he did slap me repeatedly. But he didn’t mean it. He would have never done it sober. He cut my face in a number of places. It bled something fierce. And I hit Jamie and things went from bad to worse. At one point I hit my head on something. I fell down. But no, the pregnancy was never really in danger. But it was a dreadful quarrel, that I confess.”

“Amazing,” Reuben whispered.

“My lips were cut. My right eye was cut.” Her hand fluttered over her right eye for a moment. “I had a gash on my head. And I was bruised all over. I had terrible swelling afterwards, but no, the pregnancy was never in danger. Clearly Jamie thought later he had terminated it. I could read that plainly in his letters. I must confess I was still angry perhaps when I first received his letters. I never answered those first letters.…”

“Of course you were angry,” said Reuben.

“Jamie didn’t remember what any doctor knows. Cuts to the face and scalp bleed.”

Reuben sighed. “Amazing, simply amazing,” he whispered. “Thank you for confiding in me. Thank you for telling me that.”

“Reuben, I know what you’re thinking. Why did I let Jamie believe that he’d killed our child? But as I’ve tried to explain—to tell him that he hadn’t, well, it would have meant he couldn’t become a priest.”

“I do understand that.”

“And the children were happy. Keep that in mind when you judge me. And then there was Professor Maitland. He didn’t want me to tell Jamie about the children. The children saved me and Professor Maitland. They gave us our happiest years together. I couldn’t have remained with Professor Maitland if it hadn’t been for the children. And I couldn’t divorce him. I could never have divorced him. I would quite literally have taken my own life before doing that.”

31

GRACE DID NOT DISAPPOINT Reuben. As he poured out the story on the phone, his mother was quiet for far longer than he had ever known her to be in any conversation. He was on the landline when he told her, and with his iPhone he texted pictures of Christine, of Jamie, and of Lorraine that he’d only just taken in the breakfast room.

He could hear his mother crying, he could hear her struggling to say they were beautiful, he could hear her struggling to say, “Please, please, Jim, come home.”

There was no way Grace could come up to Nideck Point. She wanted to come with all her heart. “You tell my grandchildren that,” she said. But she was on call for the entire weekend, and she had two cases in ICU she couldn’t leave under any circumstances. But she insisted Reuben put Lorraine on the phone.

They talked for perhaps a half hour.

By that time young Jamie was in a fierce argument with Phil about “violent” varsity sports and whether it was fair to pressure children to play soccer or football. Jamie himself refused to engage in such sports, and while Phil thought they served a purpose and tried to explain the history of sports, Jamie was adamant that a boy his age had a right to sue the school authorities to remain out of sports in which he could break his neck or his back, or fracture his skull. Jamie had researched this question quite fully.

It was amazing, the rapid young British voice, so crisp, so unfailingly polite, firing back with such speed at Phil. And Phil was trying hard to keep a straight face as he punched the opposing view. “What is the school board to do with a young male population pumped with testosterone at an early age and absolutely unable to work it off or—.” Phil was clearly crazy about Jamie.

“Well, certainly, they have no right to deplete our numbers through violent death and injury,” Jamie retorted. “Look, Mr. Golding, certainly you know as well as I do that the state and all its subordinate institutions face the same problem with the young males of any society. The armed services exist to siphon off the dangerous exuberance of young males.…”