Mistress of Justice

glorious rush of fear and victory.
    She did four runs this way, until on the last one, on a big mogul, she lost control and had to windmill her arms to regain her balance.
    It sobered her.
    Okay, honey, one suicide a week is enough.
    At the bottom of the mountain, she kicked out of her skis and loosened her boot clasps. A tall, thin man came up to her and said in a Germanic accent, “Hey, that was a, you know, pretty okay run. You feel maybe like another one?”
    “Uh, no, not really.”
    “Okay, okay. Hey, how about a drink?”
    “Sorry.” She picked up her skis and walked toward the cabin. “I’m here with my boyfriend.”
    And she realized suddenly that, by God, she was.

     
    Taylor returned to find Reece in great spirits, the tiny room cluttered with papers and documents delivered by FedEx or DHL. He was on the phone but he motioned her to him and kissed her hard then resumed his conversation.
    She sat on the bed, wincing as she pulled off her sweaterand stretch pants, and began massaging her thighs and calves.
    It was around that time that Reece hung up the phone and stacked the files away in a corner.
    When they awoke in mid-afternoon they went to several antique stores, which weren’t the precious collections of cheese dishes and brass surveying instruments you find in Connecticut or New York. These were barns packed with furniture. Rows of dusty chairs and tables and dressers and pickle jars and canopy beds and armoires. Very rustic and practical and well cared for.
    None of the shopkeepers seemed to expect them to buy anything and they didn’t.
    That night they ate in one of the half-dozen interchangeable inns in the area, their menus virtually the same, they’d found: veal chop, steak, chicken, duck à l’orange, salmon or trout. Afterward, they had a drink in the common room in front of a huge fireplace.
    After they made love that night and Reece had fallen asleep, Taylor Lockwood lay under the garden patch quilt of a hundred hexagons of cotton and felt the reassuring pressure of a man’s thigh beside her. She smelled the cold air as it streamed through the inch-open window and gathered on the floor. She tried to forget about Wendall Clayton, about Hubbard, White & Willis, about life on the other side of the looking glass.
    At 4 A.M . she finally fell asleep.

     
    On Thursday morning Taylor was first in the lift line.
    She skied her first run fast, smelling the clean electric scent of snow, the biting perfume of fireplace smoke, hearing the sharp hiss of her turns in the granular snow.
    Today, however, the speed had none of the cleansing effect that it’d had on her first day out. She felt alone, frightened, vulnerable. Like the first time her father made her ride her bike without training wheels. He’d put her on the tall Schwinn, aimed it down a hill and pushed. (She’d refused toscream until the wobbly front wheel hit a curb and she’d gone over the handlebars onto the sidewalk.)
    She made mistakes, skied too defensively and nearly wiped out bad.
    At the bottom of the mountain she loaded her skis and boots into the rental car.
    No, Dad, I’m
not
getting back on the fucking horse, she thought now.
    She drove to their inn and went back to the room, where Reece was taking a shower. She poured coffee from the pot he’d ordered and dropped into the musty armchair.
    Thinking:
    Where and for a first cause of action, Taylor Lockwood did willfully …
    Outside she could see other skiers heading down the mountain, some fast, some timidly.
 … and with full knowledge of the consequences, without a warrant or other license, enter the office of one Wendall Clayton, the decedent, and …
    She sipped the coffee.
    Where and for a first cause of action, Taylor Lockwood did willfully ascertain and make public certain facts about one Wendall Clayton, the decedent, that caused …
    Taylor sat back in the chair, closed her eyes.
     … that caused said decedent to blow his fucking brains out
.
    Mitchell Reece, wrapped in a towel, opened the bathroom door and, smiling with pleasant surprise, walked up to her. Kissed her on the mouth.
    “Back early. You okay?”
    “I don’t know. Wasn’t fun. Thumb still hurt?” she asked.
    “A bit. I tell you I’m no good at this sort of thing.… I’m much better with simpleminded, safe sports.…” He seemed to be groping for a joke, something cute about sex probably, but he sensed that she was upset. He sat down on the bed opposite her.
    “So