Read Online Travelling Light by Peter Behrens - Free Book Online Page B

accident there was an item on the CBC News about a hiker who’d fallen into a crevasse in the 1920s and been rescued but left his knapsack and skis behind. Half a century later the knapsack turned up at the foot of a retreating glacier, and the sandwiches inside were still frozen, perfectly preserved.
    â€œDome Petroleum’s down, Alix,” Mr. Heaney said. “I wish we’d sold those shares of yours last month.”
    Many times in the years since Bobby’s death they had reassured themselves they were doing all they could for their surviving children. They’d always wanted children in their own image of themselves — magnetic, wilful, tough — but Alix wondered if they had been fooling themselves and all that they’d had to offer as parents had been taken from them and not replaced. She needed to hold Clare, Jean, and Mike close, not because she loved them but because she was terrified of losing them. Terror took up space that should have been filled with love, just love, pure and simple. She did love them, but it was never simple and direct, the way it had been with Bobby.
    Mike finished breakfast and went upstairs. Alix was washing dishes in the sink and Mr. Heaney was sipping a third cup of coffee when their daughter finally telephoned.
    â€œMike’s still in the shower,” Alix said over the phone, “but Daddy is right here and he’s not leaving for the office until Mike’s gone.”
    â€œLet me speak to her,” Mr. Heaney said.
    Alix handed him the receiver and went back to the stove and tried to adjust the flame beneath the coffee pot. The pilot had gone out. As she struck a match and held it to the pilot she noticed her hands were trembling.
    Mr. Heaney covered the receiver and said, “Give Mike a shout, would you? He must be out of the shower by now.”
    Alix walked slowly to the front of the house. She glanced into the living room, which had been redecorated over the winter. She had studied hundreds of fabric swatches and paint chips, determined to get the room exactly as she had always wanted it. Walls and carpets were pale grey and the furniture was upholstered in heavy Irish linen. She could hardly remember what it had looked like before the renovation. On the ninth anniversary of Bobby’s death her husband had suffered his heart attack lying on the old sofa. She’d knelt beside him, loosened his collar, and kissed his hands. Her gesture had frightened him and he’d pulled his hands away.
    Michael heard the phone ringing as he stepped from the shower. Towelling his hair, he went to his bedroom and started getting dressed. From the window he could see his car out in the driveway. He studied it for a moment, pleased with the way the paint gleamed, then he sat down on the corner of his bed. In the shower it had occurred to him that maybe he was being born now, this morning, this actual hour. He let the feeling soak in further as he sat on the bed. How great — if he could only believe in it. If only he could trust that it was, in some sense, true.
    His mother knocked on the door. “California on the phone!”
    â€œOkay,” he said. “I’ll take it in your room.”
    As he passed his mother he deftly kissed her cheek. In his parents’ bedroom he picked up the bedside phone. He intended to tell his sister about his plan to visit the glaciers but before he could mention it their father was back on the line. He began asking Clare about her pregnancy. Mike said goodbye and went back to his own room.
    It had once been Bobby’s room and, in some indefinable way, still was. Anyway, it had never felt to him like his room.
    Sometimes he wondered if his brother would have been as large a presence in their lives if he were still alive. Bobby had become something more than a person, but no one could give a name to what he actually was.
    Gathering up a few last things, he stuffed them into a small backpack. He had