The Wolf Border(18)

It’s Rachel. They just rang me.

Lawrence is too distraught to speak coherently.

I can’t believe it, he says. She isn’t. Why would she do it?

Rachel does not say – but she could – because Binny wasn’t a hysteric, because she was a dyed-in-the-wool, high-calibre, selfish bitch. Then again, was the action really so inappropriate, really so bad? Get off the bus when it’s your stop.

I think maybe it was her plan.

I don’t understand. She planned it?

Maybe.

How do you know?

Something she said when I was there.

What the f*ck?

Her brother begins to cry, hard sobs, which he muffles. Rachel’s heart begins to bark and her head swims; she feels as if she will be sick again.

Why didn’t you warn me? he asks.

Lawrence, she says. Come on.

But he is lost in grief. She listens to him weeping, the sound both awful and remote. Emily takes the phone from him. No greeting. No consolation.

I think we better call you back later, she says. He needs to rest.

Is he alright?

Obviously not. His mother just died.

His mother. As if Rachel were not related, as if she were a stranger to the events. There is little point trying to liaise with Emily. Rachel hangs up. Whether they will call back, she does not know.

She sits by the ashy stove, a blanket cast around her shoulders, her feet bare and numb on the floorboards. She pictures a pure, clear glass of water, but it seems like a fantasy, out of her reach. The soft layers inside her skull throb. After a time, there is a knock at the door. She does not answer. She hears Kyle’s boots breaking the crust of new snow as he walks away. She gets up and moves cautiously to the kitchen, runs the tap and puts her head underneath it, drinks as much as she can without vomiting. The brandy from the previous night seems to reanimate. The room hazes. She sits by the cold fire, feeling drunk again.

The manager of Willowbrook calls a second time – the hour late in the UK. He is sorry again for her loss, he says. Dreadfully sorry. Everything was done by the book, interviews have been conducted with staff, there were no signs, such a situation is unusual. Covering his ass, she thinks. Does she have any questions? he asks. She doesn’t. Among the possessions there is an envelope addressed to Rachel from her mother, he says. The care home will post it immediately, of course.

No. Just open it, Rachel tells him.

It looks like private correspondence. It’s no trouble to post. I wouldn’t want to intrude.

She convinces him that it will be simpler this way. Another heavy snowfall is due in Idaho. Postal deliveries may not reach the centre; it could be weeks before anything gets through. There’s a pause, silence. She imagines him sitting at his desk, in lamplight, the envelope being opened, probably with a paperknife, respectfully.

It’s more of a note, really, he says. I wonder if it mightn’t be better to send it on to you.

No. Please just read it.

I’m sure your mother would have wanted you to know how much she loved you, he says. She talked about you all the time. About how proud she was.

Rachel baulks. His words are excruciating to hear, ludicrous. The comment so blatantly twee and false, it is almost as bad as his breaking the news of the death. This man knew Binny; he knew her proclivities, her disposition. Rachel sits rigidly, waits for it all to be over. The manager clears his throat, then reads.

Dear Rachel. We all choose. You can come back home now. Binny.

*

A polar vortex over North America. The heaviest snow for fifty years, structures locked in ice. January is all drifts; the forest disappears under white cataracts. Bannisters of ice form along the stacked roadside timber. The sky is iron-grey and unforgiving. Idaho exists in a delirium of cold, the number of old people dying soars. The neighbouring states, too, report record snowfalls. The Snoqualmie and Lolo passes remain closed. Avalanches in the Cascades.

Rachel misses the funeral. She does not send a wreath. She does not supply words of remembrance for the service. Communication has ceased between her and Lawrence, that is to say, between her and Emily, who has assumed control of the proceedings, and after a huge argument on the phone about duty and emotional incapacity, excludes her. She is now fully a criminal in exile. Another hard layer forms around her heart against her brother’s wife. The end ceremony is irrelevant, she tells herself. It is meaningless. What matters is the relationship through life. Would Binny care if she attended? She would not. She tells herself this, pours a drink, opens the cabin window, and leaves it wide until the cold is unbearable.

The centre winds along at its winter speed. In the evenings the workers play cards, watch DVDs, are sequestered in their cabins reading. Rachel tries to continue with her book chapter, but cannot concentrate. Her mind drifts back to her mother, and New Year’s Eve. Bereavement has displaced any initial awkwardness with Kyle that might have occurred. He is kind to her, gives her space, does not raise the subject. She tries to write a letter to her brother, but she hasn’t the skills, emotional or linguistic, and she is full of bile. Something massive and primary feels as if it has broken. Their connection always seemed pinioned by their mother. So what, she tells herself. Let it go.

The snow keeps coming, blanking everything. When she walks out in it she can barely see. Days pass, weeks. Thoughts of her childhood: high-stakes weather in the Lowther valley, almost legendary in her imagination, helicopters flying over Lakeland carrying new electricity pylons after storms had brought the others down. She and Lawrence, clad in woollens and wet boots, watching them cut the cables and lay the poles down on the moors, like a game of matchsticks. In the mornings she feels sick and tired, viral; her body knows the wrongness of what has occurred even if her mind won’t metabolise it.