Run Cold by Ed Ifkovic

Author:Ed Ifkovic [Ifkovic, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781464211164
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2018-10-19T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Irina Petrievich left a message at reception asking me to join them late that night. “We want to see you.” A glass of sherry and some wild-raspberry strudel, Irina said in her note. “Please. We don’t like leaving you alone at this sad time.”

Paul picked me up at the Nordale and said little on the short ride to the Petrievich home. He sneezed, apologized. He sneezed again. Apologized. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. Sonia once mentioned Paul’s history of long, nagging illnesses, in bed for weeks, shivering under blankets, plodding through the horrible winters.

“You have a cold?”

He grumbled. “You noticed?”

“Alaska doesn’t agree with you.”

“Truer words were never spoken, but they have nothing to do with my health. But, yes, our family doctor says I was born to live in the tropics. And the Fates plunked me down in a town where winter never ends and everyone is joyous when the temperature rises to zero.” He shrugged. “I don’t have the robust constitution of my warrior father.”

I looked at his profile. “Do you go hunting in the Arctic with your father?”

He sneezed, apologized. “As a boy, yes. I did. The males in the family have no choice. Bonding, initiation, puberty reached when you shotgun a grizzly to death. I haven’t gone in years. I see no need to freeze in a sagging wilderness cabin or tuck myself into a snow crevasse or skin the hide off a monstrous caribou. Outhouses have little appeal for me. So I stay here and ingest cough medicines.”

“I was surprised at the invitation from your mother.”

He glanced at me. “Why?”

“A time like this. Grieving. A family often wants to be alone at night.”

He stared out the windshield. “My parents are committed to being…civil. The perfect hosts. And you’re famous—here to visit them.”

“No, Paul, I came to visit Fairbanks. Yes, them, too, because I consider them friends, but not…” I stopped.

He sucked in his breath. “I’m sorry. My words make me sound too…unforgiving. It’s a sad house now. I think they don’t want to be alone. They don’t know how to deal with Sonia’s death.”

“And you?”

He looked away. “I keep to myself, Miss Ferber.”

“I must tell you again how sorry I am, Paul.”

He waited a bit. “I know.” A heartbeat. “Me, too.”

“You weren’t close?”

He drew in his breath. “Nobody is close in my family.”

He shot a quick glance at me.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m wondering what you think of me.”

“Is that important?”

“Oddly, yes. I’ve watched you from across a room over the dinner table. You don’t miss a thing. Sharp lady, you are.”

“And what do you think I see?”

He deliberated a second. “Someone who isn’t too happy with the family he was born into.”

“But they’re good people. Hank and Irina.”

“They certainly are. But goodness has nothing to do with happiness. And now that Sonia’s…gone, well, there’s too big a hole in that house.”

“It must be horrible for you to lose your sister like that.”

But Paul stopped talking, hunched over the steering wheel as though unsure

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