Juliet Was a Surprise Read Online Free

stronger.” Stepping through the cattails he heard her ask Adam to put some lotion on her back.
    He dug the number from the depths of his wallet. An odd European number with more than one area code, he’d dialled it perhaps three times in the half-dozen years since Casey had gone there. Theirs was a profound and troubling relationship, one where not calling always felt as richly significant as calling. He suspected Casey felt the same. They’d never been able to talk about meaningful things; their conversations resembled a small red canoe moving superficially across the lake of what mattered. Casey had been adopted. He was one of the first proofs he had received that nothing happens by accident. Seeming chaos was always choreography, but more complex, and more tightly woven. Your role was yours to find, and the barriers to finding it were towering—career, medication, psychiatry, the visible world, logic itself. But the truth was luminous. It was as exciting as magic.
    And he was excited on the walk up to the house. The sun cooking his neck. The fabric of his shirt teasing his skin. The smell of the grass as it respired, sending his nose the choreography of water and chlorophyll. The bronze doorknob—he could feel tarnish though it wasn’t raised, and though soundless he heard the inner springs and gears of the mechanism as he turned it. Clarity was getting more consistent, and closer.
    As he’d hoped, Casey’s voicemail came on. He found his son’s voice unsettling; he’d never been comfortable with its higher register. Casey asked, in both English and French, that callers leave the date, time and purpose of their call. He sounded the crisp bureaucrat.
    The voice caught him and he hesitated too long. He had to hurry through his message.
    â€œCasey, it’s your father. It’s Dad. I’ll be quick. I’m going … I’m going fishing, trout fishing. I might be in some kind of trouble, I don’t know. So if you don’t hear from me again by tomorrow, I’m at Pinanten Lake, B.C., renting a house from the McGregors. Mom doesn’t know any of this. Okay.” He wondered what more he might say, until a beep sounded.
    He found a thermos, held his finger under the tap as the water got cold and ran over his message in his mind, wondering what his son might make of it. He hadn’t wanted to sound disturbing—or even worse, crazy—but he could think of no better way of telling the truth , so to speak. He’d only been accurate. Still, if Casey decided he was already in trouble, how long would it take for an address to be found and authorities contacted?
    It occurred to him that it might have not only sounded like a cry for help but been a cry for help. Did some hidden, frightened shadow-self want police to show up tomorrow and … what?
    Well, if the police did come, he could always just show them that everything was fine. He could introduce them to his young friends. At that point he could check everyone’s eyes, the police too, see if they pretended not to know eachother, hopefully discover how far-reaching the scenario was this time.
    He found himself gripping the door frame and staring into the hall closet, blinking, as if searching for something he needed for fishing. He truly needed sleep. The coffee hadn’t helped, hadn’t been good for him. He was deadly tired, yet on the opposite side of calm. He cocked his head to a crow yelling from the ridge of trees that separated the McGregors’ yard from the neighbours’, but he didn’t know what it meant. He was getting frustrated with being unable to tell even a warning from a welcome. Generally you just knew, but when they sounded or looked identical, your only chance was to open up and see under the surface of things. Which had been the whole point in coming here.
    Recalling from another time a trick for staying aware, he rummaged through kitchen drawers and cupboards.