purple. After all the yanking he had done on that chainsaw starter pull, I was a little worried about his ticker.
“Okay?” I asked, and he nodded, still breathing fast. “Come on back to the house, then. I can fix you up with a beer.”
“Thank you,” he said. “How is Stephanie?” He was regaining some of the old smooth pomposity that I disliked.
“Very well, thanks.”
“And your son?”
“He’s fine, too.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Steff came out, and a moment’s surprise passed over her face when she saw who was with me. Norton smiled and his eyes crawled over her tight T-shirt. He hadn’t changed that much after all.
“Hello, Brent,” she said cautiously. Billy poked his head out from under her arm.
“Hello, Stephanie. Hi, Billy.”
“Brent’s T-Bird took a pretty good rap in the storm,” I told her. “Stove in the roof, he says.”
“Oh, no!”
Norton told it again while he drank one of our beers. I was sipping a third, but I had no kind of buzz on; apparently I had sweat the beer out as rapidly as I drank it.
“He’s going to come to town with Billy and me.”
“Well, I won’t expect you for a while. You may have to go to the Shop-and-Save in Norway.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Well, if the power’s off in Bridgton—”
“Mom says all the cash registers and things run on electricity,” Billy supplied.
It was a good point.
“Have you still got the list?”
I patted my hip pocket.
Her eyes shifted to Norton. “I’m very sorry about Carla, Brent. We all were.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.’
There was another moment of awkward silence which Billy broke. “Can we go now, Daddy?” He had changed to jeans and sneakers.
“Yeah, I guess so. You ready, Brent?”
“Give me another beer for the road and I will be.”
Steffy’s brow creased. She had never approved of the one-for-the-road philosophy, or of men who drive with a can of Bud leaning against their crotches. I gave her a bare nod and she shrugged. I didn’t want to reopen things with Norton now. She got him a beer.
“Thanks,” he said to Steffy, not really thanking her but only mouthing a word. It was the way you thank a waitress in a restaurant. He turned back to me. “Lead on, Macduff.”
“Be right with you,” I said, and went into the living room.
Norton followed, and exclaimed over the birch, but I wasn’t interested in that or in the cost of replacing the window just then. I was looking at the lake through the sliding glass panel that gave on our deck. The breeze had freshened a little and the day had warmed up five degrees or so while I was cutting wood. I thought the odd mist we’d noticed earlier would surely have broken up, but it hadn’t. It was closer, too. Halfway across the lake now.
“I noticed that earlier,” Norton said, pontificating. “Some kind of temperature inversion, that’s my guess.”
I didn’t like it. I felt very strongly that I had never seen a mist exactly like this one. Part of it was the unnerving straight edge of its leading front. Nothing in nature is that even; man is the inventor of straight edges. Part of it was that pure, dazzling whiteness, with no variation but also without the sparkle of moisture. It was only half a mile or so off now, and the contrast between it and the blues of the lake and sky was more striking than ever.
“Come on, Dad!” Billy was tugging at my pants.
We all went back to the kitchen. Brent Norton spared one final glance at the tree that had crashed into our living room.
“Too bad it wasn’t an apple tree, huh?” Billy remarked brightly. “That’s what my mom said. Pretty funny, don’t you think?”
“Your mother’s a real card, Billy,” Norton said. He ruffled Billy’s hair in a perfunctory way and his eyes went to the front of Steff’s T-shirt again. No, he was not a man I was ever going to be able to really like.
“Listen, why don’t you come with us, Steff?” I asked. For no concrete reason I suddenly wanted her to come along.
“No, I think I’ll stay here and pull some weeds in the garden,” she said. Her eyes shifted toward Norton and then back to me. “This morning it seems like I’m the only thing around here that doesn’t run on electricity.”
Norton laughed too heartily.
I was getting her message, but tried one more time. “You sure?”
“Sure,” she said firmly. “The old bend-and-stretch will do me good.”