In The Wake
C Major. The dead man heard the piano chord at Hamburg Airport and had installed it as the doorbell. A normal buzzer or ding-dong would be out of place among the Garry oak, red arbutus, and twisted pines along the shore. When the windows are open to the seafront terrace, the ozone from the ocean mixes with the scent of the woods and fingers its way through the house like a loping piano sonata. If nobody is looking, the raccoons follow the same path so it is one of Thomas’s jobs to keep them at bay. Like a sword-fighting cavalier, he drives the light-fingered bandits out of the dining room with a broom and a cattle prod, hoping to zap one on the rear end and send a warning to its den. “Pass that onto your family” he says if he connects with a good poke. The big windows that look across the water to San Juan Island, are not visible from the front entrance of the house. When visitors come in the front door, they are stunned by the panoramic sea view thr...