Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy

My head grew light.

My limbs cumbersome.

The world dim.

I slipped under, fought my way back to the surface, thinking, Next time just stay down.

Violet had reached the shore where she stood crying in the beach grass.

It finally registered.

She’d been made a widow, witnessed things that, outside of war, few people ever see.

Monsters had set her adrift in a lonely desert.

But I’d been there.

And I’d found a way out.

I could show her.

E P I L O G U E

I would like to unlock the door,

turn the rusty key

and hold each fallen one in my arms

but I cannot, I cannot.

I can only sit here on earth

at my place at the table.

—Anne Sexton, 'Locked Doors'

N i n e  M o n t h s  L a t e r

VIOLET awoke.

She rubbed her eyes.

It was morning.

Max was cooing.

At the kitchen table in a threadbare flannel robe, Andrew sat hunched over a pile of pages, pencil in hand, scribbling corrections on his manuscript. He’d built a small fire in the hearth that had yet to drive the nightcold from her corner of the cabin.

The place smelled of strong coffee.

'Morning,' she said.

Andrew looked up through a tangle of shaggy hair.

'Morning.'

She crawled to the end of the bed, reached down into the crib, and picked up her son. As she lifted her undershirt, his little wet lips opened and glommed onto her brown nipple. Leaning back against the smooth timbers, she watched him nurse.

The infant gazing at its mother through shiny orbs.

Andrew got up from the table, started toward her.

'What’s wrong?' he asked.

Violet shook her head.

'It’s all right. These are good tears.'

The pond was dark as black tea, steeped in tree roots, clear to the bottom, and rimmed by black spruce—a glade of water in the forest. Even in mid-August the pool carried a cold bite except at noon, in the middle, where sunlight reached all the way to the soft and silty floor. There, the sunbeams made a shaft of luminous green, warm as bathwater.

There, Andrew surfaced. He treaded naked, basking in the direct Yukon sun, contemplating how his autobiography should end, wondering if perhaps it should conclude here, in this pond in this valley at the foot of the mountains.

Everything had been chronicled: the desert, Orson, the Outer Banks, the Kites, the Kinnakeet. All that remained was to bow and step behind the curtain.

Andrew waded the last few feet to shore and climbed up onto the bank. He pulled his hair into a ponytail, wrapped himself in a towel, and flopped down on a sunwarmed blanket. Violet handed him his pair of sunglasses and he slid them on and lay flat on his back and closed his eyes to the sun.

'How was it?' she asked.

'Amazing.'

'Think I’ll take a dip.' Violet set her son on Andrew’s chest. 'Don’t look at my pooch, Andy,' she warned though her belly had nearly contracted back to its pre-baby girth. Violet had given birth to Max just three weeks ago after a long labor at Whitehorse General Hospital. Andrew had not left her side.

Now he stared at the bundled and sleeping infant while Violet stripped.

'All right, I’m going in,' she said.

'It’s warm out in the middle.'