Free Snow Angels by James Thompson Page B

Kate.”
    “And I can’t speak Finnish!” Pound.
    I don’t want to manhandle her, but I don’t want her to hurt herself, so I’m considering it. “Kate, stop it, goddamn it.”
    She stops and bursts into tears. “I’m sorry Kari. I’m just so frustrated. I’m helpless and trapped in this house.”
    With both hands, she lifts her broken leg up to rest it on the coffee table. She drops it too hard, and the cast shatters the glass tabletop. Glass flies. The weight of the cast going through the table makes her pitch forward onto the floor. She breaks her fall by jamming her right hand into the broken glass on the rug. When she holds it up in front of her, blood streams out of it down her arm.
    I rip my white shirt down the front. I whip it off and wrap it tight around her hand, then take her in my arms. She presses her face into my shoulder. Her chest heaves and tears explode out of her in big racking sobs. We stay that way for a few minutes until she calms down. Blood has soaked through my shirt and drips on the rug.
    “I don’t want to go back to the hospital,” she says. She starts sobbing again.
    I unwrap her hand. Some glass shards are stuck in it. She has about a dozen puncture wounds, but none of them need stitches. I get antiseptic, tweezers and bandages from the bathroom. She winces as I pick out the glass, but she doesn’t cry anymore.
    I bind up her hand. “It’s going to be okay,” I say. “A couple weeks at home, then you can go back to work. In a few weeks, the cast comes off. A couple months after the babies are born, you’ll be back on the slopes.”
    “But I can’t do anything. I can’t work, can’t take care of the house, can’t shop.”
    “We’ll work it out. I’ll get somebody to help you.”
    Before long, she passes out from exhaustion. I call a neighbor, wake her up, explain things and ask her to check on Kate in the morning. I clean up the glass and blood, rearrange the living room, then take our bed apart and bring it downstairs. Even the buzz of the electric screwdriver doesn’t wake her when I put the bed back together. We have a small bathroom next to the foyer, so at least she won’t have to worry about the stairs now.
    The clock reads two A.M. I won’t get much rest again. I pick her up, put her in bed and crawl in beside her. Kate’s eyes open. “What happened with your murder investigation?” she asks.
    “The case broke.”
    “Who did it?”
    It’s late, I don’t want to talk about it and I don’t want to upset her. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow,” I say.

9
    WE HEAD OUT IN two squad cars, Antti and Jussi in one, Valtteri and me in the other. It starts to snow. On the way, I tell Valtteri about the evidence against Seppo and my conversation with the chief. “So you’re going to arrest Seppo Niemi,” he says. “The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.”
    He doesn’t take it farther than that. It’s a subject people don’t broach with me.
    We roll up on Seppo’s winter cottage. It’s bigger than my house and set on a two-acre lot. It cost a lot of money. We park behind a gray BMW 330i. I get out and look at the tires with a flashlight: Dunlop Winter Sports. Valtteri calls for a wrecker to drag it to the police garage. The four of us go to the door together and I knock.
    My ex-wife, Heli, opens the door. I haven’t seen her for thirteen years, since she left me for Seppo. I was in the hospital for a few days after getting shot. She never came to see me, wouldn’t answer the phone. When I got home, her things were gone. She refused to ever see me again, or even to speak to me. After a few weeks, I got the divorce papers in the mail.
    She’s sweaty, in tight workout clothes, and techno music is playing. We caught her in the middle of exercising. She was a good-looking girl when we were together. Even then, she worked hard at it. It’s difficult to reconcile the image of the girl I was married to with the woman before me. A combination of