Read Adam's Peak for Free Online Page B

be nothing remarkable. The answer to her question would be just another oblique reminder of something she already knew: in the social world, Clare Fraser was a failure. A bore. A mute, staring spinster from a different century.
    Oh, for God’s sake,
the Emma in her head blurted.
Don’t be so negative.
    I’m just being realistic.
    She removed her headband and shook her hair down in front of her face. Emma had suggested she colour it. Highlight the blond, or darken it all. It might look good, she had to admit, though surely people would see through the disguise. Her mother had been colouring for years, but the red had once been natural. Clare had her father’s hair, his blue-grey eyes.
    â€œSo you had a good holiday?” Isobel said.
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œAnd how’s our little Emma?”
    Clare slid the headband back across her head. “Not so little. But she’s fine. She’s teaching voice this term.”
    â€œOh, lovely. Does she ever miss Montreal? How long has she been in Vancouver now?”
    â€œI don’t think so. Almost six years.”
    â€œThat long! Are you sure?”
    â€œShe left right after I moved back with you.”
    Isobel changed lanes without signalling. “Gordon Bennett! Does that mean it’s been almost six years since your father ...”

    â€œI guess so.”
    â€œGood lord.”
    Ask her now
, Emma’s voice urged.
While she’s on the topic
.
    She’s remembering Dad’s heart attack. It wouldn’t be fair.
    Fair-shmair. Your mother has dealt with his death just fine. You’re the one who still has issues.
    â€œAnd are the flowers out yet in Vancouver?” Isobel said, switching on the headlights.
    â€œUh-huh.”
    Clare closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. She could be lazy with her mother. Conversation for Isobel was a gliding over smooth surfaces, an avoidance of bumps and cracks. Her questions never challenged; they led directly into short, easy paths of response. Emma’s questions, on the other hand, opened onto vast and frightening terrain. Politics, ethics, relationships, sex. Apart from the ones about sex, she didn’t mind Emma’s questions. Talking to Emma wasn’t like talking to other people. It was the closest she came to the conversations in her own head. But on this last visit, Emma had been pushy on the sex thing. In her view, sex was a character-defining experience, a crucial element of one’s humanity, and, having made this argument, she’d forced a blind date with the recently divorced director of the jazz studies program at her college. Not, she pointed out, that it would necessarily lead to anything at all. Just to get Clare in the swing of things.
    They’d gone for coffee on the east side of town. The Jazz Studies Director had carried their cappuccinos to a table in the middle of the café, and as he sat down he smiled and said, “Emma tells me you’re quite the pianist.”
    â€œNot as good as Emma,” Clare had answered, her hands clenching under the table. A terrible answer—and not even true.
    The Jazz Studies Director then raised his eyebrows. “So what was it that drew you to music?”
    If he’d been a voice in her head, if he’d been Emma, she could have answered him, easily. But everything about him—his skin, his clothes, his raised eyebrows—was so real and physical, so
other
, that the space between them seemed gaping and uncrossable. Hewas terrifying in the way that all strangers, with their unpredictable words and boldness of existence, were terrifying.
    â€œI’m not sure,” she’d said, and sipped her coffee. “It just happened, I guess.”
    The date had ended with a handshake.
    Emma had stifled her disappointment admirably. She suggested that Clare’s social difficulties were a result of being born prematurely. “I’m serious,” she said. “You