The Deep, Deep Snow

by Brian Freeman

  “Just look at everything my mother did,” Adam said.

  “She was an amazing woman.”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “But?” Because I could hear the “but” coming.

  “But she also went out of her way to make me feel like a failure my whole life. Nothing was ever good enough for her. I know she didn’t mean to be that way. I don’t blame her for it. It’s just who she was.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. I’d known his relationship with his mother was troubled, but I’d never heard him go that far. Adam wasn’t the kind of man who typically shared personal things. He picked up the photo of his mother and stared at it, and then he put everything back in his wallet. I noticed that he folded the magazine article with care and made sure the corners of the picture stayed unbent.

  “I’m just saying that you’re lucky to have a father like Tom, and Tom’s lucky to have you.”

  I nodded. He was right about that, too.

  On the table in front of us, Adam’s cell phone lit up with a call. I tensed, because the ringing of the phone meant there was news, and all my fears ran through my head in a single instant.

  He answered the call and listened. I couldn’t read his face. When he hung up, my throat was so dry I couldn’t even swallow. “Well?”

  “We found him,” Adam said, his face breaking into a smile. “He’s alive, he’s fine.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Tears of relief began to run down my cheeks. I felt as if my whole body would melt. “Thank God, thank God! Where is he?”

  “I’ll drive you over there. He’s at Shelby Lake.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Dad sat in his truck at one of the campgrounds near the lake. With clouds hiding the moon, I had trouble seeing the frozen cove in front of us. He was dressed for the cold in his winter coat, winter hat, and boots, and he’d even made coffee and brought his thermos with him. According to the deputy who’d found him, he was sharp and perfectly focused tonight. And yet he had no recollection of coming out here and no memory of how to get home. It was strange, the randomness of the disease. It was as if the wires in his head were loose, sometimes working, sometimes failing.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said, climbing into the truck next to him.

  He reacted as if this situation weren’t strange at all. Me showing up at the lake with him in the middle of a January evening. He looked over with a big smile, then reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “Oh, hello, Shelby. I’m so glad to see you.”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  He blinked, as if that were an odd question. “I come here all the time.”

  I knew that wasn’t true. He didn’t drive anymore, which meant he hadn’t been here in at least two years. But it made me wonder if he’d been doing this for much of his life, and I never knew about it.

  “Why?”

  “Well, it’s a beautiful spot. My favorite spot in the whole world. Shelby Lake. This is the place that gave me you.”

  “I know.”

  “I was thinking, all these years have gone by, and I don’t believe I ever asked. Do you like the name I gave you?”

  “I do. I love it.” Then I realized I was quickly running out of time to ask the things I’d always wanted to ask. “But why not Ginn, Dad?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why Shelby Lake? Why not Shelby Ginn? You were the one who was going to raise me.”

  “Raising a child doesn’t mean you own them. I thought you deserved to be your own person, separate from me. I had visions of you going off and living your life far away and seeing the whole world. I never wanted you to feel as if you were stuck here with me.”

  “I’m not stuck anywhere. I’m exactly where I want to be.”

  Dad didn’t react or say anything. His eyes were lost in the darkness of the lake.

  On most days, I don’t think he was aware of what was happening to him. That was probably better. Time played hopscotch in his head, and he simply jumped along with it. Old friends became strangers he called “young lady” or “sir,” and he had no knowledge of losing anything. But every now and then, I saw a glimmer of regret as he recognized the horror that was unfolding. He knew that his moments of clarity were growing rare, and he was too proud to say anything about it. He’d watched his parents die of the disease, and he’d always wanted to shelter me from the same thing happening to him. He wanted me to be far away when it took him over. But here I was.

  “We should go, Dad. It’s late.”

  “Let’s just take five minutes at the lake, okay?”

  “Sure. If you like.”

  We got out of the truck and hiked through the snow of the campground to a bench near the flat sheet of ice, where the lake water was trapped until spring. The wind howled at us, as if angry that anyone was here. I was cold, but my father didn’t seem to notice the frigid temperature. He pointed at the narrow gap between the trees where the cove broke out onto the larger area of the lake.

  “That’s where I had the boat anchored. The owl just came down from the forest. And you told me where you were.”

  “I guess I did.”

  He inhaled loudly, swelling his lungs with the winter air. His white mustache looked crusty with frost. “Snow’s coming soon. A lot.”

  “You think so?” I trusted his judgment about that. He’d lived enough seasons here to know what nature was planning.

  “Definitely. A big storm. We’ll be buried in it soon.” He turned his head to look at me. I could barely make out his blue eyes. “Do you know what they say about the deep, deep snow?”

  “What?”

  “It hides every secret. It covers every sin.”

  “But only until spring,” I pointed out. “The snow always melts.”

  “Yes, but sometimes that takes a very long time.”

  I took his hand. “Let’s go home, Dad.”

  But he didn’t move. He didn’t want to go, and to be honest, neither did I. He was himself again, and neither one of us knew how long the moment would last or how many more moments like that we would have. I think he wanted to make the most of it while he could.

  “It was thirty-five years ago, Shelby. On this very day.”

  “What was?”

  “My mother died.”

  “I’m so sorry, Dad. I didn’t know.” I felt bad. I knew it had happened in January, but as far as I could recall, he’d never told me the date. I didn’t even realize that he remembered it himself.

  “It was the worst day of my life. Nothing else comes close. Even losing my father a few months later wasn’t the same.”

  “I understand.”

  “I had a breakdown after it happened. I had to get away from here. I simply got in my car and drove. I didn’t know where I was going. The snow was coming down. It was practically a blizzard and the roads weren’t safe, but I didn’t care. I can’t say I was even aware of the time or the miles passing. Sort of like tonight.”

  I was still holding his hand, and I squeezed it tight.

  “I drove all day,” he went on.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention to signs. I stopped at a campground much like this one and just watched the snow fall. I stayed so long that I got snowed in. I couldn’t go anywhere. It was pretty remote, and I hadn’t taken anything with me. No coat. No food. I grew a little concerned as night fell. However, as I always say, things happen for a reason. A young policewoman came by on her way home, and she rescued me.”

  “That was fortunate.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while, as if he were caught between present and past. The cold got inside my bones and sent a shiver up my spine. Or at least, I blamed it on the cold at that moment, rather than on anything else.

  �
�Dad?” I said when he stayed quiet. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Maybe we should go.”

  “Yes, we should.”

  I led him back to the truck through the snow and helped him inside. I got behind the wheel and started the engine, but the warmth did nothing to shake away the trembling I felt. Dad was next to me, but I could feel him slipping away. He was tired, and he was about to time travel again to a new square in some other part of his life.

  “This policewoman. Do you remember her name?”

  “Policewoman?” he asked. He was already gone.

  “Never mind, Dad.”

  I drove us home through the dark, empty roads. I was relieved that he was safe but anxious about when he would wander away again. Next time we might not find him. Things couldn’t go on like this, and the choices I had to make for our future felt painful and close.

  I thought about that and so much more on the forty-mile drive home. The same forty miles my father had driven to rescue me when I was a baby.

  I thought about the white F-150 that had been abandoned near this same lake.

  I thought about Breezy lying to me about being alone after Jeremiah disappeared.

  I thought about Anna and the damage I’d done to our relationship.

  I thought about Adam and his mother.

  I thought about mothers and fathers and orphans.

  Most of all, I thought about the strange coincidence that thirty-five years ago, in the middle of the deep, deep snow, Sheriff Tom Ginn met a young policewoman, and nine months later, I was born.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The FBI search continued the next morning at the old resort, but there wasn’t anything for me to do there, so I drove to the raptor center in Stanton instead. One of our neighbors agreed to stay with Dad, but that was a temporary solution, and I knew I needed to find a permanent answer soon.

  Jeannie Samper had expanded the center with two new buildings over the years. A couple of her larger donors had passed away and left the organization sizable donations in their estates. She wasn’t involved in the daily operations as much as in the past. She’d had two hip replacements that limited her mobility, but her oldest son, Matthew, had come back from Northwestern to take over the management of the center. Her husband and three younger kids were involved, as well.

  Fewer birds arrived for help during the winter, but I still came over whenever I could to work with the owls and eagles that had permanent homes there and to drink Jeannie’s farmers market tea. And, yes, to see Dr. Lucas Nadler, too. He was now the center’s primary vet. Our visits hadn’t overlapped in several months, but I knew Lucas was on the schedule today.

  I arrived while he was giving a presentation to a middle-school class in the newly opened visitor’s center. He had Winston, a great horned owl, perched on a leather glove, and he was explaining to thirty rapt twelve-year-olds about the hunting and breeding habits of owls. When he saw me, he gave me a warm smile from the front of the room. Winston’s head swiveled on his neck to observe me, too. The owl had white feathers on either side of his beak that looked like Santa Claus whiskers.

  I found Jeannie in the gift shop, awaiting the swarm of kids and teachers after the presentation. She wore cheaters pushed down to the end of her nose. She didn’t get up from her chair, but I bent down and gave her a hug. I was surrounded by shelves crowded with T-shirts, magnets, DVDs, hats, and stuffed eagles and owls. Visitors to the center typically didn’t go home empty-handed.

  “Is today your shift, hon? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “No, I came by to talk to Lucas about something.”

  “Ah. Of course. Lucas.”

  “Yes, Lucas, and don’t give me that look.”

  Jeannie took off her reading glasses and eyed the vet on the other side of the gift-shop windows. I knew what she was going to say. “I still don’t understand why the two of you didn’t make a go of it.”

  “We tried,” I told her for about the millionth time.

  “You tried? You had, what, one dinner?”

  “One very nice dinner where we realized that we both had busy lives and no time for romance. So now I have a really good friend instead of an ex-boyfriend.”

  “Or you could be friends with benefits,” Jeannie pointed out. “So what do you need to talk to Lucas about?”

  “My father.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “He wandered off last night. We found him forty miles away.”

  “Oh, that’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not. I have some decisions to make.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it, hon. I guess you knew this day was coming.”

  “I did.”

  Jeannie’s youngest, a ten-year-old named Hildy, wandered into the gift shop and interrupted us. She was heavily built like her mother and wore a long-sleeved T-shirt with a close-up photograph of Winston’s sober owl face and the slogan, “Hoooo Are You?” Hildy gave her mother a rundown of ticket revenue with all the poise of a corporate vice president. Like the rest of Jeannie’s kids, she was basically a genius.

  I waited until Hildy was gone, and then I said to Jeannie, “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “Do you ever lie to your kids?”

  Jeannie laughed. “What, little white lies? Sure. If there’s only one Snickers bar left, you better believe I’m telling them we’re out.”

  “Not little lies. Big stuff.”

  Jeannie’s round face turned serious, because she could see I was serious, too. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I don’t know. Say you’d done something wrong in your past. Would you be honest about it with your kids? Would you tell them?”

  “I suppose it depends on what it is, but I’d like to think so. We all make mistakes. I don’t want my kids thinking I’m perfect. Not that they’d ever believe that.”

  “What if it was something that affected them?”

  “Like what?”

  “I have no idea. Sorry. It’s not important.”

  Jeannie wasn’t convinced by my denial. “Is everything okay with you, Shelby? What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  I was rescued from saying anything more by the arrival of a crowd of chattering seventh graders in the gift shop. Jeannie was immediately busy at the register. I glanced out the windows of the learning center and saw Lucas and Winston disappearing toward the outdoor shelters for the raptors-in-residence. I waved goodbye to Jeannie and followed them.

  By the time I caught up with Lucas, he had the horned owl safely back on his perch inside the screened enclosure. He returned outside and gave me a friendly embrace on the trail. The morning was cold and as gray as ever, but the snow my father had predicted hadn’t arrived yet. We were surrounded by the watchful eyes of bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, barn owls, and turkey vultures.

  Lucas had hardly changed at all since I first met him. His blond hair was still long and loose, and he still had the most gentle eyes that I’d ever seen. He’d taken over the vet practice in Stanton when Dr. Tim passed away four years earlier, which meant he was on-call pretty much every day of the week. Not that he ever complained. He loved what he did and had the gift of looking at ease wherever he was. That was what came of knowing who you were and being comfortable inside your own skin. The only time I’d ever seen him look out of place was when we met for dinner on our first and only date. Formal surroundings didn’t suit either of us. Honestly, neither did dating.

  It had been several months since I’d seen him, but we always reconnected as if no time had passed in between. I felt relaxed with Lucas in a way that I hadn’t felt with anyone else since Trina died. Maybe it was because neither one of us had any expectations of the other. I didn’t see him as a man, and he didn�
�t see me as a woman. Or at least, that’s what we pretended.

  “How are you, Shelby? It’s been ages. It’s wonderful to see you.”

  That was all it took. That was how close to the edge I was. He didn’t have to say anything more than that to get me crying. I’d been able to hold it together with Jeannie, but not with Lucas. I broke down. Everything that had happened the previous night overwhelmed me. I stood there with tears running down my face, and Lucas pulled me to his chest and held me until I’d regained some semblance of control.

  When I could speak, I told him about my father’s disappearance. I knew he’d been through it with his grandfather and could understand. He waited until I was done before he even said a word. He was a good listener.

  Eventually, when I’d talked myself out, he said, “But Tom’s safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Well, that’s the main thing.”

  “I know. I just feel like I’m at a crossroad.”

  “It sounds like you are.”

  I slipped my arm through his elbow. We walked on the plowed trails through Jeannie’s acreage, ignoring the chill of the winter morning. It was peaceful here under the tall trees.

  “What was it like with your grandfather?” I asked him. “How did you deal with it?”

  “Well, Grampa Paul was much older when I came back here, and the disease was already further along. He had some lucid stretches, but he spent a lot of time jumping through his past the way Tom’s doing now. I’d been hoping to figure out a way to take care of him at home—you know, a combination of myself and in-home nurses—but I realized pretty early on that was going to be impossible. I’d have emergencies where I needed to be out the door immediately and couldn’t wait for a caregiver to arrive. I’m sure you’re in the same situation.”