Miranda, page 29
Ivy’s voice wavered with emotion. “Anyway, so here I am with my two big brothers. Daddy always loved it when the three of us were together, skiing and having fun.”
Adam moved his head to let the camera record the majestic scenery all around them. The sculpted crags of the Southern Alps, which ran the entire length of New Zealand’s south island, were sharply silhouetted against the sky. Mason wondered what the day had been like when his parents had skied this mountain, their last run together. Was the sky so blue that it hurt the eyes? Did the sharp cold air stab their lungs? Was the silence this deep? Had there been any inkling that the entire face of the mountain was about to bury them?
“Are we ready?” he asked.
Adam and Ivy nodded. He studied his little sister’s face, now soft with the sadness of missing her father. She’d had a special closeness with him, and she’d taken his death hard—maybe even harder than their mother had.
“Who’s going first?” asked Adam.
“It can’t be me,” said Mason. “You, um, don’t want to get caught in the blowback, if you know what I mean.” He gestured with the beer stein.
“Oh, right,” said Ivy. “You go last, then.”
Adam twisted the camera so it faced uphill. “Let’s take it one at a time, okay? So we don’t cause another avalanche.”
It was a known safety procedure that in an avalanche zone, only one person at a time should go down the mountain. Mason wondered if his father had been aware of the precaution. He wondered if his father had violated the rule. He doubted he would ever ask his mother for a detail like that. Whatever had happened on this mountain a year ago couldn’t be changed now.
Ivy took off her shades, leaned over and kissed the beer stein. “Bye, Daddy. Fly into eternity, okay? But don’t forget how much you were loved here on earth. I’ll keep you safe in my heart.” She started to cry. “I thought I’d used up all my tears, but I guess not. I’ll always shed a tear for you, Daddy.”
Adam waggled his gloved fingers in front of the camera. “Yo, Dad. You were the best. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. Except for more time with you. Later, dude.”
Each one of them had known a different Trevor Bellamy. Mason could only wish the father he’d known was the one who had inspired Ivy’s tenderness and loyalty or Adam’s hero worship. Mason knew another side to their father, but he would never be the one to shatter his siblings’ memories.
Adam pushed through the warning gate and started down the mountain, the camera on his helmet rolling.
Ivy waited, then followed at a safe distance behind. Thanks to Adam, the cautious one of the three, each of them wore gear equipped with beacons and avalanche airbags, designed to detonate automatically in the event of a slide.
Their mother had been wearing one the day of the incident. Their father had not.
Adam skied with competence and control, navigating the steep slope with ease and carving a sinuous curve in the untouched powder. Ivy followed gracefully, turning his S-curves into a double-helix pattern.
The lightest of breezes stirred the icy air. Mason decided he had worked too hard to climb the damned mountain only to take the conservative route down. Always the most reckless of the three, he decided to take the slope the way his father probably had, with joyous abandon.
“Here goes,” he said to the clear, empty air, and he thumbed open the lid of the beer stein. The cold air must have weakened the pottery, because a shard broke loose, cutting through his glove and slicing into his thumb. Ouch. He ignored the cut and focused on the task at hand.
Did any essence of their father remain? Was Trevor Bellamy’s spirit somehow trapped within the humble-looking detritus, waiting to be set free on the mountaintop?
He had lived his life. Left a legacy of secrets behind. He’d paid the ultimate price for his freedom, leaving his burden on someone else’s shoulders—Mason’s.
“Godspeed, Dad,” he said. With his ski poles in one hand and the beer stein in the other, he raised his arm high and plunged down the steep slope, leaning into a controlled fall. Just for a moment, he heard his father’s voice: Lean into the fear, son. That’s where the power comes from. The words drifted to him from a long-ago time when everything had been simple, when his dad had simply been Dad, coaching him down the mountain, shouting with unabashed joy when Mason conquered a steep slope. That was probably why Mason favored adrenaline-fueled sports that involved teetering on the edge between terror and triumph.
The ashes created a cloud in his wake, rising on an updraft of wind and dispersing across the face of Trevor’s beloved, deadly mountain.
The things we love most can kill us. Mason might have heard the saying somewhere. Or he had just made it up.
The faster Mason went, the less he was bothered by something so inconvenient as a thought. That was the beauty of skiing in dangerous places. Filled with the thrill of the ride, he was only vaguely aware of Adam pointing the camera at him. He couldn’t resist showing off, making a trail in a fresh expanse of untouched powder, like a snake slithering down the mountain. Spotting a rugged granite cliff, its cornice perfectly formed for jumping, he raced toward it. Lean into the fear, son. He aimed his skis straight down the fall line and launched himself off the edge. For several seconds he was airborne, the wind flapping through his parka, turning him momentarily into a human kite. The steep pitch of the landing raced up to meet him with breathtaking speed. He wobbled on contact but didn’t wipe out, managing to come out of the landing with the mug still held aloft.
He gave a short laugh. How’s that, Dad? How’d I do? In one way or another, his whole life had been a performance for his father—in sports, in school, in business. He’d lost his audience, and it was liberating as hell. Which made him wonder why tears were fogging up his goggles. Then, as the slope flattened and his speed naturally slowed, he realized Ivy was waving her arms frantically.
Now what?
He raced toward them and saw that Adam had his mobile phone out.
“What’s up?” he asked. “Was my epic run not pretty enough? Or are you posting a Tweet about it already?”
Despite the chill air, Ivy’s face was pale. “It’s Mom.”
“On the phone? Tell her I said hi.”
“No, dipshit, something happened to Mom.”
Copyright © 2015 by Susan Wiggs
ISBN: 978-1-474-04575-9
MIRANDA
© 1996 Susan Wiggs
Published in Great Britain 2015
by Harlequin MIRA, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited,
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher..
Harlequin MIRA is a registered trademark of Harlequin Enterprises Limited, used under licence.
www.mirabooks.co.uk
SUSAN WIGGS, Miranda
