Blue jeans. She looked better than ever. She gave me a quick kiss, then we went upstairs to the sixth floor.
When we got to the station, there was no nurse there. We walked down to Mrs. DeMarco’s room and looked in. The bed was empty.
“Mr. McKnight?” I turned and saw the nurse, the same nurse who had been there the night I had paid my visit.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “She went early this morning.”
I thanked her. There was nothing else to say.
“Do you know who I could give this box to?” she said. It was the box she had shown me before, with all the photographs and documents.
“I was her stepgranddaughter for a while,” Natalie said. “I think I’m as close to family as anyone.”
I was surprised to see her take the box. I carried it down to her Jeep for her. We sat together in the front seat while she looked through it. I couldn’t help thinking about everything she had been through, the whole history of three families and how it all went back to one night on a frozen river. She passed quickly through the pictures of Albert, the newspaper articles, the report cards. She stopped when she got to the picture of herself as a twelve- year-old, blowing out the candles at her birthday party. “Everyone’s gone now,” she said. “I’m all alone.”
“What are you gonna do with all this stuff?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “This is the last thing I need, another box of old stuff to take with me.”
To take with me. That was the one thing we weren’t talking about. None of us had faced criminal charges. Not me. Not Natalie. Not Vinnie. But Natalie was an OPP officer, on administrative leave. In another two days, she would appear before a review board. They would decide whether she was to be reinstated. If she was, they’d almost certainly reassign her. Her old commander, Staff Sergeant Moreland, had told her he wished he could transfer her to the Mounties and send her to the Yukon. He was probably only half joking.
I didn’t know what she’d say to the board, what she’d tell them about what had happened in that house on the island. That was the other thing we weren’t talking about.
“What do you want to do now?” I said.
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” she said.
“So we should do something special.”
“Damned right we should. Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
We left my truck in the parking lot. She drove me across town to one of the big ice arenas.
“I played here once,” she said as we pulled in. “A big tournament. I think I had eight minutes in penalties.”
“Why are we here now?”
“Why do you think, genius? Come on.”
She took me inside. The rink was reserved for open skating all day, with a Valentine’s Day special discount for couples.
“It’s been a while,” I said.
“Me, too.”
They tried to give her white figure skates. She pushed them right back to the man. “Real skates,” she said.
A few minutes later, we were on the ice. We went slow at first. I was still getting my strength back, after everything I had been through. The bruises were finally going away. I was no longer scaring children in the streets.
We went a little faster as we got warmed up. We held hands and skated in big circles. When the ice finally cleared ahead of us, she let go of me and skated ahead. As I watched her, I thought about what I was feeling, for the hundredth time that day. Part of me wanted her to go back to the police force, to find her way back into the real world, no matter where that took her. Part of me didn’t.
In a way, I knew exactly what she was facing. I had been in a similar situation once myself. I ended up leaving the Detroit police and moving to Paradise, Michigan. I rented out cabins and went down to the Glasgow Inn every single night. That’s how it turned out for old Alex. But then, I didn’t have someone around to love me.
She picked up speed. Three strides and she was already a blur. She went into the corner and turned hard. There was no net on the ice, but she circled around where it would have been and came out the other side like she was fired out of a slingshot. She skated like a hockey player, head down, shoulders square to the ice-but so graceful it took my breath away. Her hair was sailing behind her. She was smiling.
She went all the way around the ice, dodging anyone in her way. When she came back to me she dug her skates into the ice and sprayed me.
“How’s that?” she said.
“You were flying.”
“Damn right I was.”
I took her hand again. I kissed her right there in the middle of the ice. Then we kept skating. We skated together, around and around, until it was time to go home.
