Linda Hall - Shadows On The River

The snowplow eventually came by, leaving a tanker-load full of snow at the end of my driveway. By early afternoon, I began to hear the sound of snowblowers in the neighborhood. If you closed your eyes you could almost pretend it was summer and these were lawn mowers.

Midafternoon my neighbor began snowblowing my driveway. I waved to him from the picture window. Bless him. My neighbor Gus and his wife, Dolores, often make sure my driveway is plowed. I rarely even have to mow my own lawn in the summer. I know they feel sorry for me, a single mother with a deaf daughter.

I looked again. There were two men out there working on my driveway. Gus was behind the snowblower and someone else wielded a shovel at the end of it. I peered more closely. Mark? Could that possibly be Mark? I squinted. Yes! Farther down the street was his car. I put a hand to my face. Why on earth was he here shoveling my driveway? And how had he driven these roads in the first place?

I grabbed my coat and pulled on my boots and signed to Maddy to “Wait here. Watch from the window. I’ll be right back.”

I stomped through thigh-high snow to where Gus had cleaned a foot-wide swath to the end of my driveway. Mark looked up, saw me, grinned and put down the shovel and leaned on it rakishly. Mark has these studious, smart, good looks that can stop women in their tracks. With his neatly cut short, light hair, and his little rectangular glasses, he looks upscale; rich even, like he belongs in New York, not Halifax. No matter what he wears, clothes look so good on him. Like today. Even though he had pulled a ratty-looking, gray woolen toque down over his ears and that old man’s green down jacket.

I called to him. “What are you doing here?”

“I thought you might need a plow out.”

“And you came all the way over here?” The moment I said it, I realized I had no clue where he lived. He could live on the next street for all I knew.

“Actually,” he said scooping another shovelful of snow. “I was up late. I got going on the interior design of the boat. I wanted to run some of these plans by you.”

“And so you come out on a day like today?” Without calling first? I wanted to add.

“Why not?” He grinned a crooked little grin and I felt myself melting under his gaze.

“How did you even know where I live?” I was still astounded that he was actually here.

“Your address is on a lot of stuff at the office. It was easy to look it up online.” He searched for my address? Stop it, I told myself, stop staring at him so intently.

I looked at the window and Maddy waved at me. I pointed. “My daughter. I have to go inside. But we’ll be back. She wants to come out into the snow.”

“She’s signaling to you rather vigorously.”

“She’s not signaling,” I said. “She’s signing. She’s deaf.”

“Oh.”

Inside, I helped my extremely eager and bright-eyed daughter into her snowsuit, wool hat and mittens. I did the same for myself, changing out of my grungy baking sweatshirt and into a nice sweater. Then I bundled up against the cold. The wind out there was still gusty.

Maddy rushed ahead of me out the door, arms spread wide. She immediately jumped into three feet of snow and giggled.

“That’s my daughter, Madison,” I told Mark. “As you can see, she hates winter.”

“Just like me,” he said while he pulled the gray cap more firmly down over his ears. “I was in Florida for three years. Some may call me crazy, but I really missed the winter. Had to come back home.”

I looked at him. “This is home?”

We were standing on the sidewalk where he had started to shovel, while in the driveway Gus was still making passes up and down through the deep snow.

“Yep. Nova Scotia born and bred.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Sydney.”

“Wow. I grew up not far from there.” When I told him where, a shadow seemed to pass across his face. Or was I just imagining it? My thoughts were interrupted, in any case, by Maddy.

“Look!” she shouted out loud.

“She’s full of spunk,” he said. “Must get that from her mother.”

“I don’t know about that. Today I feel totally out of it. I didn’t sleep well last night…Maddy!” I signed when she looked over at me. “Come meet my friend.”

She rose from where she’d buried herself and waddled over, completely covered in the fluffy white stuff. Mark bent down to her level and said very plainly, “Hello, Madison.”

“His name is Mark. He’s my friend from work,” I signed to her. She smiled and said in her best voice. “Hello.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Madison,” he said.

I interpreted and she signed, “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

“Do you like the snow?” he asked.

Through my interpretation they carried on a conversation for a few more minutes and at the end of it I marveled at Mark’s persistence. My daughter made most of the men I dated nervous and ill at ease. And here was Mark, down at her level, making eye contact and asking her about school and her favorite things.

For the next hour the four of us cleaned the driveway and sidewalk. Even Maddy helped with her little shovel. After it was over I invited them all in, including Gus and Dolores, for hot chocolate and ginger molasses cookies.

When we’d all gotten inside and shed our sweaters, jackets, mitts and toques, I made a huge pot of hot chocolate in my grandmother’s stockpot. I made it the old-fashioned way, with real cocoa and milk, the way we did in the little town on Cape Breton Island where I grew up.

All we needed were Christmas carols and a fireplace to round out the afternoon, but because Christmas had passed a month ago, we had to satisfy ourselves with just hot chocolate and snow.

“You have a nice house,” Mark said looking around.

“Thank you,” I said. “I like it.”

Maddy and I live in a three-story town house. It sounds big because there are so many floors, but it’s a skinny little place. If you put it all out end-to-end, you wouldn’t end up with much square footage. The basement is basically a laundry room with enough space to store our bicycles and a few boxes. The main floor is kitchen, dining room and small living room. The third floor contains two bedrooms, Maddy’s and mine.

Dolores, who knows a few signs, talked with Maddy while Gus and Mark and I chitchatted about the boat-building industry. Gus, a retired captain, used to captain the ferry that ran between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island a long time ago, before the Confederation Bridge was constructed.

After we’d each had a couple more cups of hot chocolate and had pretty well finished the batch of cookies Maddy and I had baked that morning, Gus and Dolores took their leave. But Mark showed no signs of asking for his coat. Maybe he really had come over to talk about the boat plans. I showed him what I had been working on in the middle of the night, while Maddy settled herself in the living room and turned on the television.

It was a matter of minutes before I realized that Maddy was watching the all-news station, not her usual fare. It was Mark who noticed why.

“Looks like she had a busy day,” he said.

She had crawled up onto the couch and was fast asleep. I went and put a quilt on top of her. Before I was able to aim the remote at the TV to shut it off, the Fremont story was on. I stood, watching it for a few seconds.

Mark was standing in the doorway when he said, “I know that guy.”

I jerked my head up at him. “Larry Fremont? You know Larry Fremont?” I was shocked.

“Paul Ashton. The man who died. I know him.”

“Really?” I was incredulous.

He nodded, leaned his trim body against the doorjamb. “Our families know each other. The Ashtons go to the same church that I do.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, we know him.”

“No, I meant, seriously you go to church?”

“I do. You?”

I shook my head.

“I used to. Not anymore.”

“How are the Ashtons?” I asked.

“I just came from there. My parents have been with the family since this happened. Paul was a good man. Our entire church is feeling his loss.”

I kept my voice even. “So this must be quite shocking to everyone, his dying of a heart attack.”

Mark frowned, rubbed his chin. “That’s the funny thing about it. No one knew he had a heart condition, least of all his wife.”

We were standing and facing each other in the doorway. I said, “The news said he had an existing heart condition.”

Mark shook his head. “No one knows why the media came out with that, but then again, I suppose the media has been known to fabricate things from time to time.” He took off his skinny glasses and cleaned them on his shirt. The news had shifted back to the storm.

I aimed the remote and flicked the television off. Do I tell Mark that I know Larry Fremont? That we grew up in the same small town? I trembled a bit as I returned to the dining room where Mark was still leaning there and regarding me curiously.

“Are you okay, Ally?” There was concern on his face. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m okay,” I lied. “Just really tired.”

By Sunday, the magic of the snow had gone. It was now dirty and a nuisance and piled where it shouldn’t be, hindering the smooth flow of shopping and traffic. It was Sunday and we didn’t go to church. Funny that I thought about that fact on this morning. Sundays come and go in our house and I never consider church at all. I guess it was having Larry Fremont on the news. Or having Mark in my house the previous day. Or learning that Paul Ashton went to Mark’s church. Or even learning that Mark went to church in the first place.

I’d long ago spurned church when the one we attended had spurned my family. When all those long years ago they’d swept what had happened under the carpet, claiming I was the crazy one, that I had not seen what I knew I had. I never went back. The Fremont family were just too strong, too rich, too powerful. And our family wasn’t. We didn’t stay and fight. We left.

On this Sunday two things happened that changed everything for me. And by the time the day was over, I would realize that I should have listened to that uneasy voice the other night, the one that said nothing good will come your way, and that Larry Fremont is a murderer.

First, I was partially vindicated. The all-news station that I’d basically had on 24-7 since I first heard about Larry Fremont, came out with the truth. Paul Ashton had hit his head on the edge of the coffee table in the hotel room. They were looking into the possibility, still, that the fall may have been a result of a heart attack or brain aneurysm, but it was definitely a blow to the head that killed him. The hotel coffee table had been taken in for evidence. But I knew the truth. I was sure that Larry Fremont had hit him over the head with a blunt object and made it look as if he’d fallen into the coffee table. I would stake my life on this.

While I was watching it, the news cut away to Larry Fremont. I stopped and shushed Maddy, who was signing to me rapidly from where she was sitting on the couch. Larry Fremont saying how sad was this unfortunate accident and if the hotel was culpable in any way, they would get to the bottom of it. “Paul Ashton was a fine man,” Fremont was saying into the camera, “and I was proud to have him on my team, even if for such a short time, and to work with such an upstanding individual.” I’ll give Larry credit, he looked near tears.

The reporter added that foul play had not been ruled out. I sat and watched the whole thing without moving.