The next day Lee took a long-promised trip to drive to his mother's house to pick up his niece and bring her back to town with him for a visit. Chuck had insisted he take the weekend off, and he even though he disagreed with his friend, he had no choice but to obey.
Fiona Campbell lived in the same house where Lee and Laura were born, in a tiny village nestled deep in the Delaware valley. She had lived there since the first day of her ill-fated marriage, and she intended-or so she often claimed-"to die there, by God,"-which was more of an oath than an appeal directly to the divine.
When Lee arrived to pick up his niece, Kylie was on the front lawn waiting for him, standing on Turtle Rock, the big round boulder he and Laura used to pretend was a giant tortoise. Sometimes it was a whale, a pirate ship, or even a magic carpet, but most often it was a turtle. The boulder rose from the earth in a single graceful arc, its smooth gray hump of a back perfect for straddling, or standing on, or jumping from. Once, years ago, his mother had contemplated having the boulder removed from her lawn, but Lee and Laura made such a fuss that she'd dropped the idea.
His niece was dressed in a pink and white snow parka, with matching pink sneakers and a pink ribbon tied around her blond hair. Pink was Kylie's favorite color, followed by purple. Unlike his mother, with her stern Scottish Presbyterian spine, Kylie was all girl, soft and sweet, but with a streak of mischief.
Lee got out of the car. "Hi, there, pastel girl."
Kylie made a face and balanced on one foot. "Why are you calling me that?"
"Is today a No Teasing Day?" Lee asked, scooping her up off the boulder and putting her on his shoulders. He managed to keep her from seeing his face-at least for now.
"Maybe," she said, putting her hands over his eyes. Her fingers smelled of lemons.
"Guess who!"
"Uh, let me see. Pastel girl?"
"Ugh!" Kylie gave a grunt of mock frustration. It was a sound Laura used to make when she was faking exasperation.
"Where's your grandma?" he asked, holding on to her ankles so she wouldn't fall as he walked toward the house.
The house was built in 1748, the large, irregular river stones held together by white masonry. Most of the wide, hand-hewn floorboards and ceiling beams were original, and the ceilings were low-only about eight feet high-and always made Lee feel a little like stooping.
"Mom?" he called, as he pushed open the heavy oak front door. The front hall smelled of eucalyptus and apples and ancient wooden beams. The walls were painted a creamy off-white, adorned with rather masculine hunting prints.
"Hello, Mom!" he called again.
"Fiona!" Kylie shouted.
"You don't have to shout-I'm right here," his mother said, coming around the corner from the dining room. She had perfectly good hearing, but some of her friends had bought hearing aids, and she was sensitive on the subject. Physical weakness would not be tolerated when you were a Campbell.
"Uncle Lee's here!" Kylie cried, rushing to wrap herself around her grandmother's legs.
Fiona Campbell gave Kylie's head a perfunctory pat before extracting herself from her granddaughter's embrace, like a cat stepping over a wet spot on the floor.
Fiona Campbell had the kind of square, strong-jawed good looks that were not exactly pretty, but her high, firm cheekbones, as she put it, "held age well." Her skin had a healthy, ruddy glow, and with her clear blue eyes, straight nose, and firm, determined mouth, she was a handsome woman. Lee had once suggested to her that she try modeling for the cover of magazines for seniors, and she had dismissed the idea with a contemptuous wave of her hand. He wasn't sure whether the contempt was aimed at the idea of modeling or the notion that anyone would think of her as a "senior." She talked about the "old ladies" at her church as if they were an alien species.
Fiona exchanged the necessary kiss on the cheek with her only son and then looked at him closely.
"What on earth happened to you?"
"I had an accident."
"Good lord! What on earth?"
Kylie looked up him too, squinting in the dim light.
"You have a black eye, Uncle Lee!"
"I ran into a door," he lied. "It was stupid."
Kylie was satisfied with this explanation, but his mother was not. She raised an eyebrow at him, but he shook his head and glanced at Kylie. His mother took the hint and changed the subject.
"So where are you two going today?" she asked.
"Can we go to Jekyll and Hyde? Please, can we?" Kylie asked.
"Sure," Lee replied.
Kylie turned to her grandmother. "It's the coolest place!" She hopped from foot to foot, humming to herself.
"Well, mind you don't stay up too late," Fiona said.
"We won't, we won't!"
"Okay, we'd better be off," Lee said, twirling the car keys in his left hand. He had a tendency toward ambidextrousness, a trait Fiona claimed was inherited from his father.
"Would you like a cup of tea before you go?" his mother said.
Lee glanced at his watch. "No, I don't think so. It's kind of a long drive."
"Very well. Off you go, then," she said briskly, whisking the two of them out the door after brushing her lips across their cheeks.
"Who's that?" Kylie asked when she saw the dark sedan parked out in the road.
"Oh, that's my own personal guard," Lee replied, nodding to the plainclothes cop behind the wheel.
"Cool," Kylie said, waving to him.
Lee decided to take River Road-he liked the view as it twisted and wound along the Delaware. As he headed toward the river through the farm fields, he rounded a familiar turn in the road. There, ahead of him, was McGill's Hill. A wide, steeply sloped incline, it was the prime sledding venue for everyone within miles. People came all the way from Doylestown to sled there. The hill humped steeply at the top; then a sharply angled grade bottomed out into a concave, bowl-like base, followed by a football field's worth of flat land all the way to the creek that snaked through a smattering of trees.
McGill's Hill was an exhilarating ride. The top was so abruptly humped that the sled left the ground, only to return with a thump on the fast downhill slope before rising into the air again at the bottom. After clearing the spoon-like hollow, it was straight across the flatlands to the creek. If the creek was frozen, and if you could manage the sharp turn, you could glide along the ice for a while. The trick was not to hit any of the trees lining the bank. He had seen more than one concussion suffered when head met tree trunk, and had banged his own head once or twice trying to make the treacherous turn.
McGill's Hill was a mecca still popular among local children, who zipped down the hill on everything from plastic bags to fancy hand-steered toboggans-and they still tried to make the dangerous turn, hoping to eke out just a little longer ride.
A thin dusting of snow clung to the brown grasses on the hill's slope, and Lee was reminded of a mocha cake with vanilla frosting. A lone terrier trotted along the crest of the hill, sniffing energetically at the base of a tree before depositing his calling card, casting a short shadow in the feeble February sun. A young woman followed at some distance, carrying a rolled-up leash and reading a book, not paying any attention to her surroundings.
Lee had to stifle an impulse to stop the car and tell her to be more careful. The sight of a woman alone in an isolated area always brought up these feelings for him now. Laura had loved sledding on McGill's Hill.
"Does your grandmom take you there to sled?" he asked Kylie, who was sitting next to him, her eyes half closed, lulled by the motion and warmth of the car.
"Sometimes," she answered. "And she likes to be called Fiona, not grandmom."
Lee smiled. He didn't know what his mother's latest little quirk was about-not about her age, surely. She told anyone who would listen how old she was-usually after asking them to guess first. Then she would beam proudly when they guessed ten or fifteen years too low, as they usually did. Once a very young black waitress had gotten it right on the nose, and Fiona had been in a bad mood all during the rest of the lunch.
"Trying to insult me!" she'd muttered as she picked at her salmon mousse. "She'll be lucky to look half this good when she's my age!"
"Well, you did ask her to guess," Lee pointed out, but that didn't pass muster either.
"I don't care-it's just rude, that's what it is!" she insisted.
"Never mind, Mom. We all look the same to them," Lee remarked, but the joke had gone so far over her head he could hear the rushing of wind as it passed.
He had left an especially big tip in case the girl had overheard anything his mother had said.
He looked over at Kylie, whose eyelids were sliding shut, her head resting against the windowpane, her breath forming a cold little spot of mist on the glass. She was a pretty child, with her father's coloring-blue eyes and blond hair. He breathed a silent prayer for her safety to gods he didn't believe in, an empty benediction without the power of faith behind it. Things that were mysterious in his childhood were mysterious to him still. Life's big questions remained unanswered, and he had no faith that would ever change.