Hot Ice

her arm around Pudge, the fat beagle who had been their pet for more than a decade. Pictures of the twins together in the pup tent their mother had set up in the backyard. Of her parents, dressed in their Sunday finest outside church one Easter Sunday after her father had turned dramatically back to the Catholic faith.
    There were newspaper clippings as well. Jack Kimball being presented a plaque by the mayor of Emmitsboro in appreciation for his work for the community. A write-up on her father and Kimball Realty, citing it as a sterling example of the American dream, a one-man operation that had grown and prospered into a statewide organization with four branches.
    His biggest deal had been the sale of a one-hundred-fifty-acre farm to a building conglomerate that specialized in developing shopping centers. Some of the townspeople had griped about sacrificing the quiet seclusion of Emmitsboro to the coming of an eighty-unit motel, fast-food franchises, and department stores, but most had agreed that the growth was needed. More jobs, more conveniences.
    Her father had been one of the town luminaries at the groundbreaking ceremony.
    Then he had begun drinking.
    Not enough to notice at first. True, the scent of whiskey had hovered around him, but he had continued to work, continued to garden. The closer the shopping center had come to completion, the more he drank.
    Two days after its grand opening, on a hot August night, he had emptied a bottle and tumbled, or jumped, from the third-story window.
    No one had been home. Her mother had been enjoying her once-a-month girls’ night out of dinner and a movie and gossip. Blair had been camping with friends in the woods to the east of town. And Clare had been flushed and dizzy with the excitement of her first date.
    With her eyes closed and the album clutched in her hands, she was a girl of fifteen again, tall for her age and skinny with it, her oversize eyes bright and giddy with the thrill of her night at the local carnival.
    She’d been kissed on the Ferris wheel, her hand held. In her arms she had carried the small stuffed elephant that cost Bobby Meese seven dollars and fifty cents to win by knocking over a trio of wooden bottles.
    The image in her mind was clear. Clare stopped hearing the chug of traffic along Canal and heard instead the quiet, country sounds of summer.
    She was certain her father would be waiting for her. His eyes had misted over when she walked out with Bobby. She hoped she and her father would sit together on the old porch swing, as they often did, with moths flapping against the yellow lights and crickets singing in the grass, while she told him all about the adventure.
    She climbed the stairs, her sneakers soundless on the gleaming wood. Even now she could feel that flush of excitement. The bedroom door was open, and she peeked in, calling his name.
    “Daddy?”
    In the slant of moonlight, she saw that her parents’ bed was still made. Turning, she started up to the third floor. He often worked late at night in his office. Or drank late at night. But she pushed that thought aside. If he’d been drinking, she would coax him downstairs, fix him coffee, and talk to him until his eyes lost that haunted look that had come into them lately. Before long he’d be laughing again, his arm slung around her shoulders.
    She saw the light under his office door. She knocked first, an ingrained habit. As close a family as they were, they had been taught to respect the privacy of others.
    “Daddy? I’m back.”
    The lack of response disturbed her. For some reason, as she stood, hesitating, she was gripped by an unreasonable need to turn and run. A coppery flavor had filled her mouth, a taste of fear she didn’t recognize. She even took a step back before she shook off the feeling and reached for the doorknob.
    “Dad?” She prayed she wouldn’t find him slumped over his desk, snoring drunk. The image made her take a firmer grip on the knob, angry all at once that he would spoil this most perfect evening of her life with whiskey. He was her father. He was supposed to be there for her. He wasn’t supposed to let her down. She shoved the door open.
    At first she was only puzzled. The room was empty, though the light was on and the big portable fan stirred the hot air in the converted attic room. Her nose wrinkled at the smell—whiskey, strong and sour. As she stepped inside, her sneakers crunched over broken glass. She skirted around the remains of a