“Natalie!”
My voice reverberated through the high rafters. It took my eyes a while to adjust to the dim light, after the brilliant snow outside, but when they did, I saw the vast emptiness of that old barn, with the light shining through in thin slits here and there. A swirl of powder hung in the air as the snow worked its way through the cracks. It collected in a light layer on the floor, covering the ancient wood and the hay dust. There were a few farm tools hanging on the walls-a hoe and a pickax and some other metal contraptions I couldn’t have named to save my life. Everything was rusted to the point of disintegration, and an old leather horse collar was eaten away to almost nothing. If someone had told me this barn had been used in the last fifty years, it would have been a surprise to me.
I pushed the door open again and made my way back across the field to the house. I was starting to get genuinely worried. When I was inside, I knocked the snow off my boots and called her name again.
Nothing.
Then I saw the door. It was in the corner, behind the old wood stove. I tried it, and it opened to a set of stairs.
“Natalie, are you down there?”
I didn’t hear anything, but it looked like there was a light on, so I went down, holding on to the wooden rails. There was a strong smell in the air, a cellar smell, of moisture and rot and mildew.
It was dark, the way cellars used to be before they started building them with high windows. The stairs led to a small room filled with stacks of wooden crates and an old metal bicycle with long wooden fenders. The room led to another room, and then to another, the light growing stronger and stronger.
“Natalie, where are you?”
I went through one more room, this one with piles of old magazines on one wall, and on the other wall a set of shelves filled with mason jars. There was a door. It was half closed, the light streaming out onto the floor.
“Natalie?”
I pushed the door open.
She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by more boxes.
“Natalie, didn’t you hear me calling you?”
She didn’t answer me. She held an old photograph in her hands, its edges curled with age.
“What’s the matter?” I said. I winced as I bent down beside her.
She didn’t say anything. A single tear ran down her right cheek.
“What is it?” I said. “What are you looking at?”
She didn’t show it to me, but I could see just enough of it to make out three men. The photo was in color, but it had that washed-out look to it, the way color photos looked in the sixties. I was guessing the older man was her grandfather, and one of the other two men was maybe her father. She had come down to pack up all these boxes of old photographs, and had stopped to look at this picture of the grandfather she loved and the father she had hardly known. And that this had gotten to her, in the same way it would have gotten to me or to anyone else.
I was wrong.
“I talked to the doorman,” she finally said.
“What?”
“At the hotel.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The first night I got there. I talked to him. What did you say his name was? Chris?”
“Yes, but what does-”
“He helped me with my bag,” she said. “He rode up in the elevator with me, and he asked me how bad the roads were. I told him I had a Jeep, and that I knew how to drive in the snow. He asked me how far I had come.”
“Yeah?”
“So I told him I came from Canada. I’m pretty sure I said from Blind River. That old man, the man who left the hat, the man who died in the snow… You told me he was the doorman’s grandfather, right?”
“Natalie, I’m sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She looked down at the picture and swallowed hard. “I need to tell you something, Alex.”
“What is it?”
“When you asked me to come over to Michigan, the first thing I thought of was this promise I had made to my own grandfather.”
“What did you promise him?”
She looked up at me. “I promised him I would never set foot in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.”
“What? I don’t get it.”
“He hated that city so much, Alex. Once, when I was a teenager, a bunch of us went over the bridge to go to this bar. God, I thought he was going to have a heart attack when he found out. I never saw him so mad.”
She looked back down at the picture.
“Why did he feel that way?” I said. “I mean, I remember you telling me he thought it was a wild place.”
“There’s one thing we never talked about in this house,” she said. “My father’s death was the one forbidden topic. But now, I think it makes sense.”
“What? Tell me.”
“My father was killed in Michigan, Alex. In Sault Ste. Marie.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged. “I thought it was time to grow up, you know? My father’s been gone for thirty years now, and my grandfather’s been gone for fifteen.”
“Okay, so go back. What does all this have to do with the doorman at the hotel? Or his grandfather?”
She handed me the picture. I flattened it out. There were three men. The man on the left was the oldest of the three, maybe in his fifties. He was robust and he had a stern smile, and he was dressed in an old suit with a string tie. He stood with his hands on his hips, like he wasn’t quite sure whether he approved of the scene before him. The man in the middle of the picture was young, in his twenties. He had a big wide smile and he was wearing a light linen suit. He was moving toward the camera, his arms spread as if he were about to embrace the photographer. The man on the right was just as well dressed, his suit coat unbuttoned to show off his suspenders. His hands were in his pockets, and he stood watching the man in the middle with a thin smile.
“It was meant for me,” she said. “I’m the one he left it for.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look,” she said. She pointed at the man in the middle of the picture. “Look at what’s on my father’s head.”
It was the same shade of gray, the same band. The same shape. Forty years later, it would end up filled with ice and snow on the floor of a hotel hallway, but in this picture, it belonged to a young man from Canada. Sure, there were thousands more just like it. That much we knew. But somehow, we knew something else-the way you know in your gut that the most improbable thing in the world has to be true.
This was it.
This was the hat.
Chapter Nine
“It was my father’s hat,” she said. “But why? Why would that old man go to all that trouble just to tell me he knew who I was?”
She finally looked up at me. It was like she was seeing the damage on my face for the first time.
“Alex.” She reached out to me. “This all happened because of me.”
“No,” I said. “Come on. It’s not your fault.”
“It is,” she said, looking back down at the photograph. “Of course it is. It was my father…”
I looked more closely at the three men-starting with the old man on the left, who had obviously worked hard his entire life, who had seen so many long Canadian winters. Then the younger man in the middle, Natalie’s father, with the big easy smile, all charm and optimism. He was stepping toward the camera, drawing the attention to himself. Then the third man.
“This man on the right,” I said.
“Albert DeMarco. My stepfather.”
I felt a sick flutter in my stomach. “The one you told me about?”
“Yes, he was my father’s best friend back then. His family lived just down the road.”
I bent down closer to look at him. “You say he’s dead now?”