The Deep, Deep Snow

by Brian Freeman

  But Anna hardly ever smiled.

  We weren’t even a quarter mile from our destination, but Anna made no effort to push off on her skis. It was like this whenever we came here. When we could see the cemetery grove ahead of us at the base of the hill, she would stop and procrastinate, hoping I would change my mind.

  “It’s not much farther,” I said, although we both knew that.

  Anna refused even to look down the hill. She unzipped one of the pockets on her ski jacket and extracted a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and inhaled, and then she held it between two fingers and extended it in my direction, offering me a puff. I shook my head, saying nothing. She knew I didn’t smoke. She knew I hated the fact that she did. We played this same game all the time.

  “Barty’s sick,” Anna said, nodding at the tree.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I met a guy at a bar in Stanton last week. He’s a forestry major at the college. He says it’s some kind of bark fungus. He showed me photos at his place. Barty might not make it more than two or three more years. Sucks, huh?”

  I didn’t like to think of Bartholomew toppling over and taking a couple of centuries of Mittel County history with him. Of course, I knew the point of the story wasn’t to tell me about Barty’s fungus. It was to let me know that she’d been in a bar the previous weekend, met a stranger, and slept with him.

  “We should go,” I said, not taking the bait.

  Anna fluffed her blond hair with both hands. “I don’t know why we have to do this all the time.”

  “We don’t do it all the time. We do it on Mother’s Day and on January 22.”

  “Well, Mother’s Day is only four months away. Let’s wait.”

  “Come on, Anna.”

  “I’m cold. It’s freezing out here. It’s stupid to go at this time of year. I told you I didn’t want to come out here.”

  “This won’t take long. Then we can head home.”

  Anna shook her head, and her jaw hardened with stubborn resistance. “I’m not doing it this time, Shelby. I’m sick of this. You can go by yourself if it means so much to you. Tell her I said hi.”

  I pulled off my own balaclava, and the wind slapped my face, as if it were mad at me. “Look, go home if you want, but it’s been ten years, Anna. Ten years.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?”

  “I know you do. I think that’s why you don’t want to go. I’m just saying, you’ll regret it if you miss this one.”

  Anna tilted her head and blew smoke toward the trees. “Blah blah blah. God, Shelby, give it a rest, will you? I know you’re into the spiritual New Age stuff, but I’m just not, okay? Coming out here doesn’t change a thing. If it makes you feel better, great, go for it. But I hate it.”

  “Okay. If that’s how you feel, then go.”

  Anna threw her cigarette into the snow. Awkwardly, she lifted up her skis and turned around on the trail, forcing me to glide a few steps forward to make room for her. I twisted around to watch her over my shoulder. She settled into the tracks we’d made and with a giant shove on both ski poles, she launched herself toward the crest of the hill, heading back the way we’d come. Her arms and legs pumped. Her loose hair flew behind her. A few seconds later, she slid across the top and vanished.

  It was just me and Bartholomew now. I wondered if he really was sick.

  I tapped my poles on the slope and let gravity whisk me downhill past the dense trees. A couple of minutes later, I reached the clearing, where I slowed to a stop. It had been a mild winter until recently, melting most of the early season snow, but January had taken us back to the deep freeze. Six inches of fresh snow had covered up some of the flat headstones that we usually saw here. It was like missing old friends. Even so, I relished the peace and silence here. The grove, like the bears, was in hibernation until spring, although a few deer tracks tiptoed through the fresh powder to let me know I wasn’t alone.

  Trina was buried on the far side of the clearing.

  Her headstone was built of pink marble and topped with the sculpture of an angel. With her rosy face and wings, she looked like a fairy caught in the middle of a dance. I skied that way, until the angel was in front of me and Trina was below me in the frozen ground. Her carved name rose over the snow.

  “So I’m back.”

  I never felt strange talking to her as if she could hear me. Anna didn’t feel the same way. In all the years we’d been making these visits, Anna had never said a single word to her mother. She’d always stood beside me in frozen silence, her face showing the anger she felt that Trina had left her so young. But until this time, she’d always come with me. This was the first year she’d made good on her threat to turn back and leave me to visit the grave alone.

  “My father says hi,” I went on.

  Then I figured, why lie to the dead?

  “Actually, that’s not true. I told him I was coming here, but he didn’t remember you. Don’t feel bad. Most days he still knows me and Monica, but not too many others. He doesn’t even recognize Adam anymore. He’s still physically healthy, which is a good thing, I guess. I don’t know, maybe he’s happy, too. I’m the one who can’t handle it. It’s getting to a point where I don’t know how much longer I can do it myself, you know? I still have to work. Friends help out, but there’s only so much they can do. I’m putting off the decision, because I don’t want to deal with it. I can’t even think about it.”

  I wiped a couple of tears from my face. I thought about what else to tell her. I always gave her an update about her husband.

  “Karl changed jobs. He can work remotely now, so he doesn’t have to travel as much. That’s good. And he’s seeing somebody. A woman he met at an IT class he was giving in Stanton. It’s been a year now. It seems serious. I didn’t tell you last time, because I wasn’t sure it was going anywhere, but now, I don’t know. He might be ready to move on. He didn’t know what you’d think about that, but I told him you’d say it was crazy he waited so long.”

  The wind blew and swirled a little cloud of snow around the angel’s face. I thought that was Trina agreeing with me.

  “And Anna,” I began.

  But I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m sorry she’s not here. It’s still hard for her. She’s so lost, Trina. It breaks my heart.”

  I crouched down in the snow, so I was eye to eye with the angel.

  “She hates the woman Karl is seeing, but it’s not about her. I’ve met this woman. She’s nice. Anna just can’t accept it. She had a huge fight with Karl over the summer, and she left. Took all her stuff and moved out. We didn’t know where she was. We were all in a panic. Breezy finally told me she saw her in the bar in Witch Tree with Will Gruder. That girl knows how to pick them, doesn’t she? I mean, Will hasn’t been much trouble since his brother died, but I wasn’t going to let her stay there. I told her she had two choices, move back home or move in with me. So she picked me. She’s been living with me and Dad for about three months. At least she has a mission in life now. She wants to find every way humanly possible to push my buttons and make me lose it with her. So far, I haven’t, but the ice is getting pretty thin.”

  I didn’t tell her the rest.

  I didn’t tell her about Anna barely graduating from high school and saying no to college. I didn’t tell her about the girl getting fired from four jobs in eighteen months since then. Or about the boys and the bars, one after another. Or about the shoplifting charge in Stanton that I was able to get dropped when I paid the owner back.

  Then again, I suppose she knows.

  “Anyway, I miss you. I can’t believe it’s been ten years. Every time I pass your photograph on my dresser, I stop and think it’s just not possible that you’re gone. I don’t know. Life just feels pretty empty at the moment. The thing is, I’m letting you down. That’s what really hurts. I promised you I’d be there f
or Anna, and I can’t reach her. I don’t know how to get through to her. She’s such a great kid, but she’s in so much pain, and she shuts me out. She’s going off the rails just like you feared, and I can’t do anything about it. I could use your help, Trina. That sounds silly, but wow, I could really use your help right now.”

  She didn’t answer, of course.

  I laughed a little at myself.

  There was nothing more to say, so I told Trina goodbye and said I’d be back on Mother’s Day. Then I worked myself around on my skis to head home.

  That’s when I saw the owl.

  He was perched on top of a stone cross on one of the headstones jutting out of the snow. A perfect, serious, white-and-gray snowy owl. We stared at each other like old friends. I hadn’t seen one in a long, long time. In fact, it took me a while to remember the last time I’d seen a snowy owl, and I realized it was atop Adam’s motorcycle on the day Jeremiah disappeared.

  Was it another sign?

  Did Trina send it to me?

  You don’t have to believe that if you don’t want to. All I know is, later that same day Jeremiah’s ghost came back into my life. And just like it had ten years ago, everything changed.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Winter is traditionally the slow time at the Nowhere Café. Not too many tourists come to Mittel County in January. A few ice fishermen, a few lonely artists, a few naturalists doing research. Otherwise, we have no one to talk to except each other, and we always look up when the bell rings on the diner door to see who’s coming in next.

  It’s slow for the Sheriff’s Department, too. We get busy during ice storms when cars and trucks slide off the highway, but sub-zero cold tends to keep people inside and out of trouble. The nights bring out the domestic disturbance calls, but the days can pass without the phone ringing at all.

  On that Monday afternoon, Monica and I sat in a booth with my father. He was working intently on one of his puzzles, although he no longer tried to solve the actual clues. About a year ago, he’d started filling the boxes with random words. At least he was still using real words when he did. One of the next warning signs, according to the doctors, would be when he began using nonsense letters.

  “Looks like you’re almost done with that one, Tom,” Breezy said brightly as she topped up our coffee.

  She was right. Dad had filled in most of the boxes, and he beamed when she noticed it. “Why, thank you, young lady. If I am good at one thing in this world, it’s crossword puzzles.”

  Breezy squeezed his shoulder affectionately. She’d been “young lady” to Dad for about nine months. That was what he called all of the women he didn’t recognize now. Age didn’t matter in his calculations. I was still Shelby. Monica was still Monica. Everyone else in the world was “young lady” or “sir.” He didn’t know who any of them were.

  The doctors in Stanton had told me that my father was in what they called stage five of the disease. We’d been at that plateau for about two years. If you asked him what he’d had for breakfast, he wouldn’t have a clue, but he could talk about the details of police cases from decades earlier as if they’d happened the previous day. Maybe, in his mind, they had. He could still bathe and dress himself, and he made it a point to look good, the way he always had. But I wasn’t comfortable with him being alone anymore, and the doctors said it was only a matter of time before he moved on to stage six, at which point I would either have to quit my job to take care of him 24/7 or find a facility we could afford. I hated the idea of either option.

  Dad put down his pencil. He focused on Monica, who was crocheting a navy-blue scarf that I knew she intended as a present for him. “How’s that puppy of yours?” he asked her. “Is he house broken yet? You have to stick with training once you start and be consistent, you know. Firm and consistent. Dogs appreciate that.”

  Sometimes we couldn’t always keep up with the shifting sands of my father’s mind.

  “Puppy?” Monica asked, looking puzzled.

  “Moody! Isn’t that what you call him? Malamutes are such beautiful dogs.”

  Moody, of course, was sitting where he always did, in the flowered urn on the table in front of Monica.

  “Oh, he’s just fine, Tom, thank you for asking. Of course, puppies have limitless energy. I swear that dog will wear me out.”

  “I’ve thought about getting a dog myself,” Dad went on. “Shelby loves the idea. It’s good for kids to grow up with a dog. But right now, that little girl is so much work that I don’t think I could handle a puppy, too.”

  I wondered how old I was at that moment in his mind. Two? Three?

  Dad had a proud, happy look on his face, but then he glanced across the table and focused on me, and there I was, thirty-five years old. He knew me. He recognized me. But his eyes went glassy with confusion as his mind tried to reconcile the impossible contradictions. I couldn’t be a toddler who wanted a dog and an adult in my deputy’s uniform at the same time.

  The confusion made him afraid, and I hated seeing fear on my father’s face. Then, as if giving up on things that made no sense to him, he went back to finishing his puzzle.

  I got out of the booth, because I couldn’t stay there at that moment. Monica patted my arm in sympathy. I followed Breezy back to the lunch counter and sat down in one of the chairs. I’d left my coffee on the table, so Breezy filled another cup for me.

  “Sorry, Shel. That’s hard.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Where’s Anna? I mean, it’s the anniversary, right? I figured the two of you would be hanging out together.”

  “I truly have no idea where she is.”

  “Things aren’t so good with you two?”

  “Not good at all.”

  Breezy lowered her voice. “Listen, just so you know, I saw Anna back at the bar in Witch Tree last weekend. She was with Will Gruder again.”

  “Great. That’s just great. Was she drinking?”

  “Beer.”

  I shook my head. “She’s underage. I could bust the place.”

  “I know, but don’t do that. I’ll talk to the owner and try to get her cut off if she comes in again.”

  “Is she doing drugs, too?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Come on, Breezy, be straight with me.”

  “I am, Shel. I haven’t seen her with drugs. As far as I know, she’s clean.”

  “Thanks.” I eyed Breezy, who was as thin as a sapling but had clear, bright eyes. “How about you? Are you still clean?”

  She offered a cynical laugh and pulled up her sleeves to show off her bare arms.

  “Cleanest I’ve ever been. Being on food stamps will do that to you. No drugs. No cigarettes. And hey, I’ve lost ten pounds. This no-money diet really does the trick.”

  “You need any help?”

  “I need plenty of help, but you’re not rolling in dough either. I’ll be fine. Something will turn up.”

  Everyone around here knew Breezy had it rough this year. She’d never been flush, but she’d had an emergency appendectomy the previous summer, and the medical bills had cleaned her out. The diner didn’t need her for extra shifts during the slow season, and there weren’t a lot of ways to make money on the side in January.

  Breezy leaned across the counter. She tried to put the best spin she could on my situation with Anna.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s actually sweet that she hangs out with Will. Most girls won’t do that. I mean, the burns and all.”

  “It’s Will Gruder, Breezy.”

  “I get it. He’s not your favorite person. But you know, he’s not dealing anymore. He paid the price in all sorts of ways. Right now he’s just kind of pathetic. He blames himself for Vince’s death, and he wallows in it. Mostly he drinks in the bar and reads the Bible.”

  “The Bible? Seriously?”


  “Seriously.”

  “Well, if Anna wants religion, she doesn’t need to get it from Will. She can come to church with me and Dad.”

  I knew I sounded bitter. I was feeling bitter. It was a bad day.

  The bell on the diner door jangled, and all of our heads turned like trained dogs. Adam strolled inside, bringing a cold burst of winter air with him. He took off his sheriff’s hat and tucked it under his arm, and he used one hand to primp the few remaining brown curls on his head. His hair had thinned over the years, but his waist had gone the other way, bulging as he added twenty more pounds. He greeted people at every table the way a politician does. He said hello to Dad, too, which I appreciated, but Dad simply called him “sir.”

  Adam joined me at the counter but didn’t take a seat immediately. “Is Rose here?”

  “Rose? No, I haven’t seen her. Why?”

  “She called and said she had something she needed to show me.”

  He slid onto the chair and eyed the morning glory muffins under a glass dome. He checked his phone, found no new messages, and put it faceup on the counter in front of him. I could smell cigar smoke clinging to his uniform the way it usually did. Now that he was the sheriff, no one was going to tell him to stop. He had money, too. His mother had died three years earlier and left him her fortune. I thought he might retire at that point, but he didn’t. He was in the second year of his third term as sheriff. People kept voting for him because he was a known quantity, although he wasn’t really beloved the way my father had been. And I think Adam knew it.

  You can check off all your goals in life, but it doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Adam had the job he’d always wanted and the money he’d always anticipated, but something was still missing. The old restless Adam was back. Physically, he’d let himself go since he lost his mother. In addition to putting on weight, he was drinking again. He was back on his motorcycle and driving recklessly when he wasn’t on duty. He’d gone through a string of girlfriends. None of them had stayed.