Free Ice Run by Steve Hamilton Page A

kinda strange. And the way his mother looked today …”
    “You went to his mother’s house?”
    “I just wanted to talk to him. I wanted to make sure he’s all right, too.”
    “I don’t know, Alex.”
    “Well, anyway, Leon will let me know if he finds out anything else.”
    “Who’s Leon again?”
    “My sort of ex-partner, remember? He’s the one who found out your address.”
    There was a silence on the line.
    “Okay, that sounds a little weird,” I said. “What I mean is, when I decided to contact you, Leon helped me do that. That’s all.”
    Another silence. Then she said it. “Alex, I can’t do this.”
    It was my turn to be quiet for a while. “Natalie,” I finally said, “what are you talking about?”
    “All of this, Alex. I’m sorry, I just can’t right now.”
    “Wait a minute—”
    “No, please, Alex. I’ve got to say this, okay?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “I don’t know why you came looking for me,” she said. “I’m not saying I’m sorry you did. Because I’m not sorry. It was… The way things happened, it was like a miracle. I was in such a deep hole, Alex. You reached down and you pulled me out of it. I didn’t even want you to do it, but you did. I’ll always love you for that, Alex. I hope you know that. But right now …”
    More silence. I didn’t have any words to say. I just waited to hear the rest of it.
    “Right now, it’s just too much for me. I’m trying to get my life back together, and I can’t do this. Yeah, coming out to that hotel to meet you, and having all that stuff happen, that didn’t help any. That definitely made it feel… I don’t know. Just not right. But it would have come eventually, you know what I mean? The whole idea of me coming down here, I was just going to clean up this house. I was going to sell it and go away and never look back. That’s what I was going to do.”
    I looked out the window. I looked at the clouds and the snowflakes floating slowly in the air.
    “I have to, Alex. Do you know what I’m talking about? Please, Alex. Please say something.”
    “I hear you, Natalie. I understand what you’re saying.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Look, I know you’re still dealing with what happened to you.”
    “It’s not about that,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”
    “I know, but it’s still there. You told me so yourself.”
    “Just forget about that, okay? Forget I ever told you.”
    “I can’t, Natalie.”
    “Okay, now I’ve got to get off the phone,” she said. “Because I’m going to start crying here. Okay? I’m not going to do that.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
    “I’ll talk to you later. Maybe I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
    “That’s fine.”
    “Please take care of yourself.”
    “You, too,” I said.
    Then she hung up.
    You, too. That’s all I could say to her. You, too.
    I got up and went outside, because I’d be damned if I was going to sit there feeling sorry for myself. That wasn’t going to happen, not for one single minute.
    You met somebody. You did something good for her. She has her own life, but now it’s going in a different direction. And all that other crap you tell yourself. All that worthless crap.
    You were just fooling yourself, Alex. You should have known better.
    I plowed the road and I chopped some wood. I didn’t feel like going down to the Glasgow, so I just went back inside and had some more pizza. It was cold now. I sat at the table and ate cold pizza with a lukewarm beer.
    The phone rang. For one instant I thought it might be Natalie calling me back, then in the next instant I hated myself for hoping that it was. It turned out to be Leon again.
    “The funeral is day after tomorrow,” he said.
    “Yeah, so?”
    “So you should go.”
    “Why?”
    “Alex, are you all right? You sound a little down.”
    “No, I’m okay. I just don’t understand why I should go to Mr. Grant’s funeral.”
    “I’m just thinking,” he said. “This is your best