Winter Storms

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Through snow, in the gray light of storm clouds massing over the beach, Rick thought he saw a figure in a knee-length, quilted white coat approaching him as he squinted out through the furred circle of his parka hood. He pushed himself forward while wind screamed ashore skimming water off waves so the air was wet and it seemed as though he were walking in rain and snow at the same time. He had taken this walk along the Fire Island beach in winter before, and he knew how the bitterly cold wind firing particles of ice and sand could make bare skin feel as if it were burning. He knew how to dress for such walks: with good boots and thermal underwear under several layers of clothes inside an arctic parka. Still, this was a test. The storm-pushed water had reduced the wide beach to a narrow strip of sand, and visibility was failing rapidly, threatening to turn everything into an inde­terminate field of gray light—and since the point of a walk like this was to see up close the rage of the ocean in a storm, he was on the verge of turning back, of turning his back to the wind and letting it push him toward the parking lot where his red Jeep waited alone, parked obediently between a pair of white lines. But he was almost sure he had seen someone in the distance, walk­ing toward him from Fire Island, and the prospect was so improbable—that some­one else would be out on the beach in a storm like this—that he continued on, peer­ing out from inside his parka when the icy wind and gray haze permitted.

"Rick," he heard Clare's voice inside his own head, clear as if she were standing alongside him, "you're getting too old for this kind of thing." Clare was his daughter. Somehow, amazingly, the years had spilled along and now (continued on page 112)

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she was a 34-year-old woman and a journalist who was forever placing her­self precisely in the center of the most dangerous spots on earth. When she graduated from Columbia, she went freelance to Somalia, where civil war and famine were spilling blood by the tanker load. Since then, she'd been all over the Middle East and Africa as a correspondent with several papers. Now she was in Iraq with the Times. Clare was always in Rick's thoughts, and because the voice in his head had sounded so real, he answered her out loud. He said, "You're right, sweetheart. I'm getting old." .As he spoke he looked up the beach and again saw the diminu­tive, wavering human figure in the white coat, only now it appeared to be partly in the water, immersed to the waist— except that the figure was steady, solid in the roiled water, as if it were stand­ing in a backyard pool, impossible in a turbulent ocean in the midst of a storm, and then, as he watched openmouthed, the wind blew back a hood of some kind, and long black hair whipped out and flew around wildly before a wave came in and washed the figure away, leaving only violent water and the mirroring images of clouds and ocean.

Rick took one quick step forward, as if, for a heartbeat, he could help, but he knew with certainty that what he had just seen had to be an illusion—a human being doesn't stand upright and motionless in turbulent water. As he tried to unravel the possibilities, he turned and let the wind drive him back against the dunes and forward to the parking lot. White driftwood blown along the beach was the best explana­tion he could tome up with. Through the snow and mist, in the dim storm light, it was conceivable that a piece of driftwood might look like a human figure—but what explained the hood blown back and the black hair blow­ing in the wind? Still, by the time he reached his Jeep, he had dismissed it as a trick of the weather. What might have amazed him as a young man merely interested him now, if that.

When he got back to his house, he found Clare waiting for him, Clare who was supposed to be sweltering somewhere in the desert heat of Iraq. The storm had just started a few hours earlier, and there was already three or four inches of snow on the ground. He had gunned the engine to climb the steep part of his driveway, and when he

parked where the blacktop leveled out. the front bumper of the Jeep up against the house, he found himself looking into the big bay window a lew feet in front of him, where Clare was sitting on the window shelf looking out. just as she did when she was a child. Even through the blowing snow, he could see a look of grief on her face, and he guessed she was dismayed that he had been out driving around somewhere while all the various apparatuses of the mass media were urging people to stay in their homes and oil the roads. He smiled a big toothy smile both to signal that everything was line and at the joy of seeing her there safely at home—the pure pleasure of that affecting him like a drug, a sense of relief washing through him, his worry over her a con­stant pressure he wasn't even aware of until it relaxed some, as it did now.

Out of the car, in a little pocket of stillness as the wind dropped away lor a moment, he stepped up to the window and pressed his nose against an icy pane of glass, trying to get a laugh out of his solemn-looking daughter. She was small, live-live just, and petite like her mother. At 34, in her brown leather boots, crisp blue denims and pretty yellow blouse, she might easily be mistaken for a col­lege girl. She pulled her knees to her chin and raised her eyebrows, making a face that said Well, aren't von coming in? He moved back from the window but couldn't pull himself away from the vision of her there, looking beautiful and healthy if also tense, which showed in the lines around her mouth and jaw and in the telltale way she lingered her hair, an old habit from her childhood, playing at it thoughtlessly, just some­thing she did when anything at all was even a little bit wrong, like, perhaps, worrying about her father out driving around in a storm.

Inside she met him with a hug around the neck that pulled her up onto her toes. Rick, at a little over six feet, bent down to her embrace. He wrapped his arms around her waist, lilted her off the ground and pulled her into the pillowy down of his parka. "What," he asked, and he kissed her on the top of her head, "are you doing here-1"

"My Clod!" she said. "You're freez­ing!" She kissed him on the forehead.

"Look at you! There's ice-----" She

reached up to touch his eyebrows and his beard, then tugged at the zipper of his parka, opening it midway. "You

neeu to gel mio warm, urv cuunes. Mie moved back from him. put her hands on her hips and looked him over. Her eyes filled wiih tears, which she ijuicklv wiped away. "I'll make you some tea." she whispered. "Co get yourself out of those clothes." She turned her back to him and went into the kitchen.

Rick pulled oft' his boots and tossed them in a corner, under the hall tree where he hung up his coat next to Clare's, which was a long, bright-white quilted parka—much like the one he had seen on the beach. When the connection registered, he felt the eeriness of it. the plain spookiness—but he forced himself to return to the current, verv real, situa­tion. Clare wasn't a crier. Their reunions were usually hill of joshing and hugs and long talks. Not tears. She wasn't an emo­tional person, which was something, he guessed, she had learned from him. Rick's response to emotional situations was to lall into a trance ol detachment, even cell in his body working to discern the best course of action. It was just the way he was. Vivian, his wife. Clare's mother, had been killed in Jordan. They were living in Amman—this was 1972—during the violence after Munich. An Al-Fatah bomb went off inside the house of an Arab National Union official when Vivian hap­pened to be walking past outside.

A piece ol shrapnel killed her. She was the only fatality. He remembered that day and those weeks with preternatural clarity. He was Clare's age. Clare was 11 weeks old. He had made all the neces­sary arrangements with such calm that the officials he worked with could not have known how much he loved his wife. A month after Vivian's murder he was back in the States with Clare. He quit his job with the World Bank so he could be a lull-time father, and he had been living ever since off investments and consulting work. Kssentially, at the age of 34, he had retired.

"Rick__" Clare peeked into the

hallway. "I'm okay," she said. "Quit standing there like a statue trying to think of what to do, and go get out of those dollies and into something dry and warm." She offered him a quick, reassuring smile and then disappeared again mlo the kitchen.

Rick followed her. She was standing at the stove, staring at a thin line of sleam escaping from the spout of the keltic. "Clare," he said, "what is it?" Then he added, stupidly, "Is something wrong?" Because something obviously was. There were tears in her eyes again.

She wiped a hand across her face and shook her head as if she were about to say. So, there\ nothing wrong, ii'iilh, but instead she said, "Yes, there is something wrong," and then laughed at herself. She turned away from the stove and teakettle and said, again, "I'm

okay," and pointed up the short flight of stairs to the bathroom. "Get...de-iced," she said. "I can't talk to a snowman!"

Rick touched her shoulder and hesi­tated another second before heading upstairs to the bathroom, where he quickly stripped off his parka and the ski pants and bib under it and tossed them into the bathtub. From the rack, he grabbed a towel to dry his face and hair. As he looked in the mirror, he pushed longish gray hair back off his face, neat-ening it with his fingers and the palms of his hands, and it occurred to him that he grew more bearlike with every pass­ing day. He had been living alone too long, he thought, with no one to bother him about his appearance. He needed badly to lose some weight. He ran his fingers through his hair one last time and then padded down to the kitchen in heavy wool socks.

Clare was sitting at the table, holding her teacup in both hands, gazing up at him. She looked lovely with her straight brown hair cascading over the bright yellow of her blouse. A second cup of tea awaited him across the table from her. "How did you get here?" he asked. He pulled out his chair and settled into the seat.

"Someone dropped me off."

"Who? In this weather?"

"I don't know him, really," she said, the tears gone, her voice placid. "He's new in the office. He insisted."

Rick sat back in his chair, as if he needed greater distance to absorb this information. "He insists on driving you out to Long Island in the middle of a win­ter hurricane, and you don't know him? What? Does he have a thing for you?"

"Not like that," Clare said. "Look," she

made a face that dismissed the issue. "Guy gave me a ride. It's not a big deal."

"Okay," Rick said. "So?"

Clare exhaled dramatically. "Look," she said, her eyes fixed on her teacup.

"There's so much.... First-----" She

looked up at Rick. "I got back a few days ago. I didn't call because I wanted to work some things out before we talked."

"Have you been...hurt?" he asked. "Has something-----"

"I haven't been hurt," she said. "I was threatened. My life was threatened."

"Are they taking you out of Iraq?"

"Yes, but it's more complicated. I might get cut loose altogether," she said, "because of what happened."

"They're going to let you go because your life was threatened?"

"Please. Dad...." She placed her hands flat on the table. "Let me explain all this. First, I'm here waiting for a call. They're going to let me go, or they're going to reassign me—someplace in the Middle East. Not Iraq. I'm done in Iraq."

Rick nodded, working hard not to show his pleasure at this piece of news.

"This is my career," she went on. "If they let me go...I don't know what's next." Rick had to struggle to keep him­self from reassuring her, from telling her everything would be okay, just tell him, just tell Dad what happened—as if she were still a child and he had the power to fix all her problems, which, he knew, had never been the case.

"All right," she said. "This is going to be hard for me to tell you. which is another part of the reason I waited to come 0111 here. So please. Dad, just listen."

"1 promise," he said. "I'll listen."

"First," she said, "you have to under-

stand, lo get one single bit ot reliable information anywhere in Iraq—forget our side. Truth is. absolutely, the first casualty. I'm living." she said, "lo report on the insurgency. This is. from the start, tricky. You're dealing with people who are killing American soldiers, who are killing Iraqis. They're in the business of killing. It's so difficult, morally, in every way. Bui mv |ob is to report the storv. to

report it, and 1 can't----- I'm not going

to be a propagandist lor the Armv. 1 need to see for myself, to report what's going on, and you can't do that from one side's perspective only."

Rick gave Clare a look thai said he wasn't an idiot. He didn't need this explained to him.

"All right," she said. "I made a contact inside a group of jihadis. This is near impossible for someone like me to do. It happened." she rapped the table with her knuckles, as if urging him to pay particu­lar attention, "after I met an Arab woman named Sabiha. She represented herself as a freelancer. She had bylines from Al Jazeera to the Monitor. They all checked out. She moved into the hotel room next to mine, and we met in the hall one eve­ning. We had drinks, we got friendly. Through her 1 made the contact with

Othman. You would never----- He was

actually working in the fucking hotel."

Rick laughed uncomfortably. He had never heard Clare curse before. It was like being given a quick glance into her other life, the life where she had drinks in hotel bars and made contacts with killers.

"I'm telling you things you shouldn't know, Dad. I'm assuming you under­stand that."

Rick shrugged off the warning.

"All of Sabiha's stories fairly dripped with bias against anything in any way Western. She was more an Arab propa­gandist than she was a reporter. I wrote her off as a journalist. She practically gloated every time an American got killed. She'd be chirping, Five Americans killed this morning! Like I was supposed to join her for a drink in celebration, and

I'm----- 1 understood she was the best

shot I had at making a contact some­where, given she seemed to have con­tacts everywhere. Il was like she worked for the insurgents. I wouldn't at any time have been surprised to find out she really did work for them." She leaned back in her chair. "I thought I was playing her, working her for the contacts. Only she was playing me from the start. She lakes the room next to mine, we conveniently meet—perfect. She knew how I'd read her. She knew what I'd want from her. And she used me...like I was a novice."

"Used your"

"She was one of ours." Clare got up. took both teacups from the table and stuck them in the microwave. "You pick the initials," she said. "We've got opera­tions going on there that you never heard of and vou never will hear of."

She pressed a series of buttons and then slammed the microwave door hard enough to rattle the counter. When she turned to Rick again, her face had red­dened and she was breathing harder.

Rick said, "Clare, just tell me what happened."

She ran her fingers through her hair. Finally, she took a deep breath and went on. "She was about to up the level of sur­veillance on these jihadis," she said, "and she knew that would be risky. So what better than to introduce me to them right before she does it? This way, if they find out they're being watched, they're not going to think of her—a sister, a sym­pathizer. She's practically writing press releases for them. They'll think of me. The American they didn't want to meet from the start. They only did it because of her influence, her pressure. She con­vinced them they needed an American reporter to tell their side. She prom­ised them I could be trusted. She gave them a goddamned course in American journalistic ethics. And they went along, because of her, only because of her—and only reluctantly."

"And then that's what happened?" Rick said. "They figured it out...and they threatened your life?"

The microwave beeped loudly, and Clare spoke through the beeping as if she didn't hear it at all. "They were going to kill me. Dad. I was going to be one of those tapes that wind up on the Inter­net." She looked down, and her eyes were full of tears. "They were going to saw my goddamned head off," she said, "and I kept thinking-----I kept imagin­ing you watching the videotape-----" She

pulled her arm roughly across her eyes.

Rick felt that familiar focusing of attention that seemed, at times like this, to replace emotion in him. "Was this an

actual, physical-----Did they have you?

Did they capture you?"

"They grabbed me off the street. Car pulled up, two seconds later I was on the floor in the back with a U.S. Army-issued hood over my head. I never made a sound, it happened so fast. I didn't scream. Nothing. I just...waited."

"Did they hurt you?"

"Kicked me," she said, as if the details were inconsequential. "Screamed at me."

"How did you-----My God, Clare...."

"People like Sabiha. like us over there," she squinted and backed away slightly, as if she were recoiling from an unpleas­ant sight, "we have this...smugness, like we think we're better, smarter, more...

evolved. Like they're savages. 1 swear to God, that's why they hate us more than anything else." Her mouth twisted up in anger, contorting her lace. "Othman figured it out in two minutes." she said. "There were questions 1 couldn't answer, things I obviously didn't know. All 1 could have possibly done was go to the CPA and say. He\, / know this fOnuii—and that would not explain the net that all of a sudden fell on them. There was

this point where----- They had me

duct-taped to a chair, I was answering questions, and then it was like we both figured it out at the same moment It was Sabiha. It had to be Sabiha."

"They let you go? When they figured that out?"

Clare was silent for a long moment. Her body seemed to grow heavier with the weight of what she was thinking. She met Rick's eyes and blinked and then said, softly, matter-of-factly, "They let me go because I gave her up. I gave them Sabiha."

"I don't get that," Rick said, quickly. "What do you mean you gave her up? You said they knew. You said he'd fig­ured it out himself."

Clare rubbed at a spot on the table with the heel of her hand. She was thinking.

but it looked as if she were trying to erase something. She said, 'Just listen, Dad." She folded her hands together, interlock­ing her fingers, as if in an effort to keep them still. "They would have killed us both," she said, "or held us both as hos­tages. They would not have let me go." She paused again, her gaze fixed on Rick. "Sabiha didn't go back to her hotel room that evening. She was, in fact, nowhere to be found. Which is part of what clued in Othman. Why would she disappear like that? And why wouldn't I? Why would I be strolling around outside the Green Zone without even a bodyguard if I had a clue what was going on? If I knew? You

see? I mean__ Did she think he would

miss that? Did she think he wouldn't pick

up on that? I knew where she would be," she said flatly, "and I traded my life for hers."

Rick shook his head slightly, hardly aware of it, as if some silent part of him were unwilling to accept this piece of news. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.

Clare said, "It gets worse."

As if wanting to put off however this story could get worse, he asked, "How did you know where she was?"

"For someone who thought she was very smart," Clare said, "she wasn't. She under­estimated them, and she underesti­mated me. There was a Kurd family working with one of the local councils. I figured them as U.S. operatives. So did everyone. I saw

her with the tather. I hey were keeping their distance, but I could tell. I followed them and saw her slip in the back door of their home. This was weeks earlier. I thought then, She's just trying to get a story. I thought she was doing what journalists do, gathering sources. That she was being secretive was no big deal, not then, anyway. But duct-taped to that chair, 1 saw the chances were excellent that's where she'd be."

"And that----- You told them, and

they-----"

"This is where it gets worse." She opened the microwave as if the bell had just sounded. She put Rick's cup in front of him and took her seat at the table

again. "I know it must be hard to listen to this," she said. "Bottom line, I gave up a fellow American. I understand that. But...I feel like.... You're the only per­son on earth who might-----"

"What?"

Clare looked down and didn't answer; the grief Rick had noticed when he first saw her intensified then, spread all through her, was visible in the way her shoulders slumped and her head hung over the table.

"All right," Rick said. He reached across the table to place his hand over hers.

She slid her hand away. "I had to take them to the house. I was worried because I knew the Kurds had children: two lit­tle girls and an infant. They assured me

they only wanted Sabiha. That once they had her, they'd let me go and no one rise would be hurt. They told me this on their honor—which means something to them. I knew they'd do what they said. I didn't tell them," she added, tapping one finger on the table for emphasis, "until I had Othman's word. They would take Sabiha. and they would let me go. I had his word. She was the combatant," she said, as if making her argument to Rick. "She set all this in motion." She had to pause for a breath. "1 knew they'd let me go," she said, almost in a whisper. "What I didn't count on was that Sabiha might be prepared to resist such an exchange." 'Jesus," Rick said, knowing without hav-

ing to be told what was coming. He held his head in his hands, covering his eyes.

"We went in two cars. Othman went in with four others. They left me in the car with a driver and another guv in the backseat, next to me. All I heard was the gunfire. It didn't last long. Othman came out alone, bleeding and limping. He pulled me out of the car, spit in my face and left me there."

"The children?" Rick said, and when he looked up, Clare was nodding. Her eyes were dry, and her face was tight, hard.

"When I went in the house-----" she said,

and then apparently couldn't go on, though her expression remained unchanged.

"All of them?" Rick pressed.

"All of them." she said anerilv. as if

uiruwmg me worcis in his face, as if to say, // you have to know, here it is. "The infant was shot in the face," she said. "Most of its head was gone."

"All right," Rick said, wanting her to slop. "All right."

Then they were both quiet for a long while as wind battered the house, banging into win­dows and pura-meling doors as if desperate to get in. The dim light outside faded away altogether, and the darkness of the spaces surrounding the kitchen grew more pronounced until it felt to Rick like their brightly lit kitchen table, situ­ated directly under a ceiling light, was at the center of a stage, and in the surrounding dark­ness an audience sat quietly watching them. After a while

he got up and turned on more lights. He looked out the living room's glass doors and saw the wind had blown the snow in the yard up against the fence, where it was sculpting it in waves, like a moun­tain's hollows and rises. Though the wind was blowing hard, it was snowing only lightly now. Not much more had accumulated since he had returned from the beach.

When he sal down again at the table, he picked up the conversation where they had left off. "So he lied to you," he said, "this Othman. He told you they would just take Sabiha, but then they executed the whole family."

Clare was staring at her teacup.

holding it in both hands, looking a mil­lion miles awav. She pulled herself out of her own thoughts and looked up at Rick as if surprised to find him there. "No," she said, "I don't think that's what hap­pened. Othman—on his own terms— could be trusted. No," she repeated, "they went in: Sabiha, the Kurds, they defended themselves reflexively, prob­ably before anything could be said. And once the guns were out.... Once the shooting started...."

"But the Kurd family-----"

"They were working with Sabiha." Clare got up from the table. She sounded frustrated. "You're not getting this," she said. "The Kurds were ours. Sabiha was ours. They were all working for us. Once I understood that Sabiha was ours, the rest was obvious. That's how I knew where she'd be. Do you get that?" she asked, her words clipped and angry.

"Okay," Rick said. "I didn't fully-----"

"There were enough weapons in that house," she said, as if she hadn't even heard Rick try to explain himself. She got up and started toward the bedroom stairs, then turned around in the kitchen doorway. "All their guns were current U.S. issue," she said. "Not the ancient shit the Iraqis use. There was enough weaponry for a small army. Plus sophisti­cated communications in a back room."

"All right," Rick said, raising his voice to get her attention. "Still, you don't know what happened in that house. You don't know who's responsible-----"

"I'm responsible," she said, as if there were no question.

"Please, Rick," she said, "I'm not inter­ested in equivocations. I knew what I was doing. I traded Sabiha's life for mine. It's basically that simple. And the rest.... The children.... 1 have to live with that. I'm responsible." She sat down on the stairs, more dropped than sat, as if all the strength suddenly went out of her. "Listen to me, Dad," she said. "No one knows any of this for certain. I've told them all that 1 was kidnapped, held and then brought to that house and kept in the car when Othman and the others went in. From the car, I heard gunfire. When Othman came out wounded and in a panic, I was able to escape. I jumped out ol the backseat as the car screeched away. " She made a horrible, pained sound that Rick saw was supposed to be a laugh. "It's that last part," she said, "that nobody's buying."

"You don't think." Rick said, "if you explained what happened fully-----"

"To whom?" Clare raised her voice as if shocked at the prospect of explain­ing herself to someone. "Rick, do you understand? If one of Sabiha's circle gets it in her head that I was sympathetic with the insurgents, if one of her good friends, let's say someone who loved her, who went to Harvard or Yale with her—Yale Drama, given the actor she

was—if one of them gets it in her head that I was working with that group. I can disappear. Or even if someone decides I should be punished—it's not hard to interpret what I did as treason—I wind up in some black hole in Romania as an enemy combatant, where I can be raped, tortured, killed, with no recourse to you or anyone. You can tear your hair out all you please. Do you understand? Do you understand the danger?"

Rick didn't say anything. He watched her sitting on the stairs, her eyes full of anger and fear. .After a moment he nodded.

"I think it's touch and go as it is,"

she said. "They figure-----They're not

dumb. They can figure out that I pretty much must have made some kind of deal to get out of that situation alive. But they don't know. The Times doesn't know. No one knows for sure. It could have happened the way I said. And as long as they don't know, I'll be all right. I think I'll be all right."

"Okay," Rick said. He wanted to touch her, to comfort her in some way because she was his daughter, to say something about the horrors of war, about the ter-

rible things it makes people do—but he knew better. He heard himself whisper, "You don't want me to say anything, do you, Clare? You just need me to listen."

She looked down at her feet and then back up to Rick as if that weren't quite it, as if there were something else she needed from him. She watched him for a long moment before speaking again. "I was thinking of you," she said, in a whis­per even lower than his. as if there might be someone listening and they were both trying hard not to be heard. "You lost your wife to this. You shouldn't lose your daughter. She paused and then added, "I kept imagining you watching a vid­eotape of my getting beheaded. I kepi imagining what that would do to you. Mom's murder killed most of you. You kind of died there with her, didn't you? You didn't really survive it. Not really."

"You don't," he said without thinking. "You don't. Not really."

Clare watt bed him, and for an instant an expression very near contempt seemed to cross her face. Then she pulled herself to her feet and climbed the stairs to her old bedroom.

lui iiiuic* man an iiuui rue k sal i|Ul-etly at the kitchen table in the hope that Clare might come down for a drink of water or something 10 eat. In the quiet house even the softest sounds she made in her bedroom drifted down the stairs. He heard her rise and pace the floor. He heard her lie down and get up again. He heard the soft electronic sounds her cell phone made as she dialed numbers three times in the space of an hour or so, each time leaving what sounded like a brief message on someone's machine Kventually he got up and turned oil the lights in the kitchen and the surround­ing rooms so he could stretch out on the couch in the dark.

After a while a plow went past the house, its revolving orange light Hashing through the room, accompanied by the rhythmically repeating warning tones of the vehicle and the rough scraping noise of the massive blade pushing along the street, throwing oil the accumulated snow. He went to the front door to sec-how much snow the plow had piled up in his driveway and tound a small hill of it there, maybe three feet high. It was still snowing, but lightly. In the night sky, thick bands of gray clouds tumbled and rolled low and fast, pushed along by powerful bursts of wind. From behind a double-insulated glass door. Rick lis­tened to an animal wind snarling and watched it twist and swirl, given shape and body by the haze of snow it car­ried and the artificial light from the street's lampposts.

When, eventually, he closed the door, he found himself facing the dark interior of his house. It was still relatively early in the evening, and he considered turning on the television to watch the news and weather, but the prospect of all that noise seemed impossible. Instead, he made his way through the dark house to his den. where he turned on the desk lamp so he could look through the library of books lining the bookcases built into the den's four walls. He thought he might start one of the several novels he had bought recently but found himself gravitating toward his collection of books on the his­tory and politics of the Middle Kast. His own experience there and Clare's work had fostered a longtime interest in the region. He pulled out a recent volume on the American occupation of Iraq, but as soon as he held the book in his hand he felt an overwhelming tiredness, as if the book somehow radiated all the endless heartache that had poured out ol thai little corner of the world, back to the hirih of Islam, the birth of Chris­tianity, back to the ancient tribes of the |ews and before. He put it back on the shelf and went down to the living room couch with a novel.

From where he was stretched out he could see up the stairs and along the hallway all the way back to Clare's room. A yellow wash of light seeped out from

under her closed door. He placed the novel on his chest as he sorted through his memories: Clare as a baby asleep on his shoulder. Clare as a child in her favorite black floppy hat, Clare in col­lege.... The fight they'd had when she came home on break with a tattoo of a red lynx peering out of a protective green forest that covered a significant portion of her shoulder blade. He'd been furious. She'd been defiant. He told her it looked like the kind of tat­too a sailor on a binge might gel—and when her eyes lit up with pleasure at the comparison, he'd stomped away into the den and locked the door. On the couch, with the wind screeching at the window, he smiled at that, at locking the door as if she might try to break it down to get to him. With the novel still open on his chest, he fell asleep, recalling a night when she was a baby, not long after Viv­ian's death. She had a cold and couldn't sleep, and he had walked her back and forth in her bedroom, rocking her as he paced, her head on his shoulder, patting her on the back and talking to her softly until her weight shifted in the subtle way it does with sleep.

When he opened his eyes again, there was a pillow under his head, and he was covered with Clare's quilted down com­forter. At about the same moment he registered the familiar bluish light fill­ing the living room window and figured out it was early morning, Clare pushed in through the front door, bundled up and carrying a snow shovel. She was fol­lowed by an icy blast of air that bullied its way into the house. She smiled shyly at him and said, "Good morning. I tried not to wake you." She stomped her feet, kicking off snow, and went about taking off her gloves and coat.

"What are you doing up so early?" He wrapped the quilt around him and shuttled to the window, where he saw she had already shoveled out the drive­way. In the road a pair of telephone lines were down, the raw blond wood spiked savagely where the poles had snapped, high, near the transformers. A repair

crew was already out there working. "Do we have power?" he asked.

"Not yet. You want some orange juice?" Clare shook off the cold and started for the kitchen. She had on boots and jeans and a black mrtleneck sweater that made her fair skin look pale and not particu­larly healthy- "Phone guys said it'd be a couple of hours still."

Rick followed her into the kitchen, holding the quilt wrapped around his shoulders, the length of it dragging behind him like a bridal train. "What's— why are you up so early?" It was the only question he could manage.

Clare stood in front of the refrigerator, holding a glass of orange juice. "Didn't actually go to sleep. I was out there at

around 3:30, and-----" She sipped her

juice and pulled her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans. "It's a little after seven now."

Rick reached out from under the quilt to rub his eyes. He couldn't quite grasp what was going on. "Why,' he asked, "would you shovel the driveway by your­self in the middle of the night?"

"Because someone will be here in a few minutes," she said, and the way she said it made it clear she understood this would not make Rick happy and she was sorry about that. She added, as if to be sure he understood, "I'll be leaving with him, soon as he gets here."

Rick looked out the kitchen window into the backyard, to be sure he hadn't dreamed the whole snowstorm. "In this weather? Where are you going? Are the roads even passable?" He sat down at the kitchen table. "Clare...."

"Storm of the century dumped about a foot and a half of snow before it moved out to sea." She rinsed her glass out in the sink. "The major arteries are all clear. Some of the back roads are still a mess, but the guy drives a Land Rover, so— roads shouldn't be a problem."

"But why?"

Before Clare could answer, her cell phone rang. She flipped it open, lis­tened a second and then went to (he liv­ing room window. "You're two houses

away.' she said into tin- phone. "We're tile driveway with the red |eep. on vour left. I'll be right out."

"1 don't believe this!" Rick said. "He s not even going to come m? Whv not? Who is this guv, Clare"-"

'Just a guy," she said, and she snapped her phone closed.

Rick took her by the arms and held her in front of him. "You can't just leave with some guv and 1 have no idea------

"All tight, listen." She stepped back out of his grasp. "He's someone who's been assigned to protect me from threats------"

"What threats"-"

"Let me finish. 1 don't know what

threats either. He won't------ He savs he

can't get into particulars."

"Well, who is he?" Rick asked, his voice shooting up again. "Do von know for sure who he is?"

"He's Homeland Security." Clare said, as if running out of patience, "and I have to go."

"Do you believe him? That he's pro­tecting you------"

"No," she said. "Please. He's here to make sure I don't go anywhere before they all decide what to do about me."

"Before who all decides?"

"I can't------" Clare pushed past him

and started up the stairs to her bed­room. "I'm sorry. Dad." she called back. "I really------I have to go."

Rick dropped the quilt and fol­lowed her. With the power out, the house was dark and chilly as a cave. "Is there something else going on that I don't know about. Clare?" He asked his question alone in the shadowy hall. Clare having already disappeared into her room. "Is there something you're not telling me?" When he reached her room, he met her in the doorway, a red backpack flung over one shoulder as she pulled a black suitcase behind her. "Is there?" he asked again.

"I have to go," she said, looking through him. She pushed past him out into the hall.

Rick took her by the arm. "Hoi God's sake," he said. "Clare! You can't

just leave! 1 don't even-----What hap­pened"- Did the Times call? Are you going back to work? Are you in trou­ble? Are you in any danger? You can't just walk off and leave me without any idea what's going on! It's-----"

"All right," she said, cutting him offby putting her hand flat against his chest. "Calm down.

Rick let go of her arm and put his hands up. 11 is heart was beating fast enough to worry him. "I'm sorry," he said. "But this is-----"

"Okay," she said, and then she looked at him hard for a long moment, and Rick thought that, again, he saw something close to contempt in her eyes.

"Have I done something?" he asked. They stood face-to-face in the dark hall.

"Look, Dad," she said, "I don't know what's happening with me. Please? All I know is, I have to go."

"At least tell me where you're going, then. Is this about the Times} Did they call?"

"I called them," she said. "I asked for an indefinite leave, which they were more than happy to grant."

"But why? I thought you wanted-----"

"No," she said, as if the issue were decided. "I did want to go back." Her voice rose a little. "I though! I could put it all out of mind, put it all behind me.

That I didn't have to-----" She stopped

and shook her head, as if she didn't want to say what she was thinking.

"Are you going to tell them what hap­pened?" Rick said. "You said you couldn't do that. You said that was impossible."

"I don't know what I'm going to do." She looked down the hall toward the living room, and at the same moment her phone rang again. She told the voice on the other end that she was on her way out the door, and then she touched Rick's arm gently after putting the phone back in her pocket. "I have to go," she said and rolled her suitcase behind her down the stairs and to the front door, where she stopped to put on her winter gear.

"You can work in the States," Rick said. "You can work for another paper."

"Maybe." Clare reached down below her knees and pulled up the long zipper to her coat. "But wherever I go, there'll be whispers." She slung her backpack over her shoulder again. "I don't think it's going to work, lying about it." She closed her eves as if to give herself a much-needed moment of stillness. "I think I may just have to deal with it."

Rick grabbed her suitcase as she reached for it. "What does that mean, deal with it?" he said. "You said you couldn't tell them. You said it would put you in too much danger."

Clare opened the door, but before she stepped out, she said, "I don't want to run away. Dad. I don't think I can live like-that, hiding out." Suddenly she seemed angry again. "This whole situation is

miserable. I need to think it through.

Bull can't-----" She stopped and look a

breath and shook off the anger. "I can't

run away. I don't think, for me----- I

don't think that will work.'

Outside, when Rick hesitated in the doorway, she said, "You have my cell number," and then she held his head in her hands and kissed him hard on the forehead before taking her suitcase from him and making her way carefully to a black Land Rover waiting in the mouth of the driveway-Past the Land Rover, farther up the street, two more poles were down. When Rick took a few steps out into the cold so he could see in the oppo­site direction, past the row of hedges that lined his yard, he saw several more poles snapped, their wires and wood and transformers littering the snow-covered blacktop along with garbage cans, a patio table, roof tiles and vari­ous chunks and pieces of debris. He took one quick step toward the drive­way, thinking he had to stop Clare from trying to drive through that mess, but he slopped just as quickly as he had lurched forward. He hunched his shoulders against the wind. In the driveway, Clare had just thrown her suitcase into the back of the Rover, and she was moving toward the passen­ger door as she looked up the street. When she stopped a moment to survey the damage, she pulled up her hood, and no sooner had she done so than the wind blew it off again and her long hair whipped around her head—and the vision from the beach came back to him. He saw Clare duck down and disappear into the car, and he saw her standing in the turbulent water, being hauled under by a wave. Before he could think of anything to do, she was slowly driving away, the black car wind­ing along the street—but it felt as if she were being dragged out to sea.

For a long moment he stood out in the weather as if stunned, and when a blast of wind charged him like a beast, with such ferocity it nearly knocked him down, he noticed a silvery flash of metal against the snow on the drive­way—and he knew immediatelv that it was Clare's cell phone. He hurried clown to it, for a confused second think­ing he could call her on it, could tell her to come back, she had dropped her phone, and when he realized the absurdity of that, he pressed the phone against his heart, as if it were a token of someone who was lost to him, and he stared out at the road, seeing again and again first the image of a woman being swept away by a storm wave and then Clare driving oil in that black car. For what seemed like forever he stood there like that, holding the cell phone to his heart, oblivious to the storm.

A piece of shrapnel killed her. He remembered that day and those weeks with preternatural clarity.

'All their guns were current

U.S. issue," she said. "There was enough weaponry

for a small army. Plus

sophisticated communications

in a back room."