Season of Ice by Diane Les Becquets

Author:Diane Les Becquets
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2008-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Eric Pellerin worked with his dad up in Rockville as a carpet layer. He’d graduated from high school the year before. I’d found out who he was from one of my customers just before my shift was up.

I’d waited on several people that day from Rockville. I’d asked each of them if they knew a red-haired kid up that way, about my age, by the name of Eric or Aaron.

“That’d be the Pellerin boy,” Shirley Monson told me. Shirley had come in with a couple of her grandkids. “He’s working for his father now.”

As soon as my shift was up, I checked the phone book in the back. There were two Pellerins listed in Rockville. I called the first one. When I asked to speak with Eric, a man said, “That’s my grandson. You’ve got the wrong number.” He then proceeded to give me Eric’s telephone number, which was the same for the second Pellerin listed on Kearsarge Road. When I called it, the phone rang for a long time, but no answering machine or voice mail picked up. I jotted down the address.

“You looking up that customer who was in here?” Dorrie asked.

“And what customer would that be?” I asked. I was already putting on my coat and hat.

“You might could use someone to get your mind off things,” Dorrie went on. She was putting together a plate of fish and chips. “Sometimes a man can be a healthy distraction.”

I was swapping out my sneakers for my boots.

“I’m just saying, with your dad and all, might be nice for you to have someone to take your mind off things,” Dorrie told me.

I pulled my hat down over my ears. It had mostly dried out by now.

“Thanks for the advice.” I finished fastening my coat. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Hey, Genesis, seriously. You need anything, you let me know, okay?”

Dorrie was giving me the kind of look I imagined a mother giving a daughter. The kind of look Annie’s mom gave her. The kind of look my own mother might have given me if she’d stuck around. Linda didn’t give me those kinds of looks. We’d never had a mother-daughter sort of relationship. I think my dad had hoped we’d at least be friends. I didn’t see that ever happening. The only thing Linda and I had in common was my father, and now the twins. Of course my own mother and I probably didn’t have a lot in common either.

My mom walked out when I was six. I have no other memory of her before that day, no remembrance of a time she and my father were together, no remembrance as to the kind of mother she was to me. But I do remember sitting on the left arm of the sofa, staring out the living-room window, the sky a thick lead gray. My hair was long, even then, like my mom’s, and I was chewing on the ends. Sometimes I think I can even remember the metallic taste of my hair in my mouth, can feel the gritty texture of the ends between my teeth.

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