Read Online Adam's Peak by Heather Burt - Free Book Online Page B

room, staring out the front window. In all the noise and confusion of his own house, it seems suddenly impossible that across the street Mrs. Fraser has just disposed of her husband’s ashes. But she did. He was there. He could even say that, in a way, he was part of it.
    â€œFound them!” Adam suddenly calls out. “Christmas oven mitts! I told you they were in here, Aunty.”
    â€œVery good, son. Now take the turkey out before it dries up.”
    Adam pulls on the mitts—ridiculous, ruffled things with reindeer on them—opens the oven door with a flourish, and slides out the rack on which the turkey pan sits. The bird is greeted with noisy enthusiasm. Adam lifts the pan and stands with it while Aunty Mary clears a patch of counter space and the others shuffle aside. Then, from the archway, Rudy sees Zoë race toward the oven on hands andknees. He guesses what she’s going to do, but he’s a kitchen’s length away from her. His father is closest.
    â€œDad!” he shouts. “Get Zoë!”
    Alec looks down, and as the baby’s arms stretch upward, her eyes fixed on the oven rack, he calls to her.
    â€œZoë! Don’t touch!”
    Zoë’s hands grasp the rack, and the kitchen is shaken by her scream. She topples over and strikes her head on the linoleum. Rudy winces.
    Susie cries, “Oh my God!” and shoves past Aunty Mary to get to her wailing daughter. She gathers Zoë in her arms and struggles to open the child’s clenched hands—calmly at first, but as Zoë’s screams become more and more desperate, she snaps. “Dada, what were you thinking? She can’t hear! She’s—Oh God, never mind. Mark! Do something, for God’s sake. Don’t just stand there!”
    Mark flounders. Aunty says, “Butter” and goes to the fridge.
    Rudy is staring at the far kitchen door, through which his father has just disappeared, silently, unnoticed by the others. Startled back by his aunt’s suggestion, he calls “No!” and heads for the sink. But his brother is way ahead of him. Throwing off the reindeer mitts, Adam crouches next to Susie with a bowl of water, into which he plunges the baby’s hands. Zoë’s screams taper off to sobs.
    â€œSomebody get the bag of peas out of the freezer,” Adam says. “She’s getting a bump on her head.”
    Mark gets the peas and drops to his daughter’s level, nudging Adam out of the way. Adam doesn’t seem to mind. He offers to search for some first aid spray in the bathroom.
    â€œThanks, Addy,” Susie calls after him. “And turn off the damn music, would you? It’s driving me crazy.”
    Rudy steps aside to let his brother pass. Dad, he notices, hasn’t reappeared. He knows where he is, of course, and as the commotion in the kitchen dies down he goes there, ambivalently.
    From the trophy room, a shaft of lamplight cuts across the dim hallway. The small room is the place that houses Alec Vantwest’s past—the cricket trophies and English literature classics from his days at Trinity College Kandy, the old black and white photos taken at Grandpa’s tea estate, even a wooden tea chest, once used to shipfamily belongings from Colombo to Montreal. A puzzling room, Rudy thinks, given his father’s aversion to the past, but on the other hand everything in the room is neatly shelved or framed, kept in its place, and it’s possible to imagine that this museum-like containment is a comfort. At the moment, Alec, curator of the trophy room’s artifacts, is sitting in the armchair next to the tea chest reading table, staring at the wall of photographs.
    Rudy raises his hand to the half-open door then lowers it. He knows what will happen if he enters the trophy room with words of consolation. His father will rise from the chair and put a hand on his shoulder. He’ll say, “Thank you, son,” all the while