A Malicious Midwinter

by Dee Ernst

  “What are we going to do with them tomorrow?”

  He settled back a bit more into the couch. He had changed into jeans and a deep green fleece pullover, and he looked just right to cuddle up against while he solved all of my problems.

  “The snow is supposed to stop by noon, so maybe if the sun comes out, we can get them all shoveling?”

  I snorted. “I don’t think Beth will ever get that drunk.”

  “So, tell me.” He picked up the remote and turned down the sound. “Was she ever a friend of yours?”

  I shook my head. “We were friendly. We had a good working relationship and I admired her work. Now, I’m pretty sure all the warm and fuzzies are down the tube on her end. I know they pretty much are for me.” I glanced over the back of the couch into the dining room. Garth and Glory were clearing off the table. I felt a moment of oh, how nice of them then realized that they were heading into the kitchen.

  I jumped up and tried to look totally unconcerned as I practically skidded into the kitchen door. “Need any help?” I asked.

  Beth was clutching the vodka bottle to her chest, and her teeth were bared. “I’m going upstairs to bed,” she said, rather dramatically. She stormed out and was halfway up the stairs before she turned around and came back down and back into the kitchen. “I’ll need a towel.”

  “Of course,” I said, and she was gone again, her exit falling way short of its previous attempt.

  I put my arm around Glory’s shoulders. “With her out of the way, we need a real heart-to-heart, okay?”

  Glory nodded, her hair falling around her face, making it impossible to see her expression.

  I went upstairs and met Beth, who was standing outside the bathroom door, holding her bottle.

  “I’ll get you a towel. Do you want something to sleep in?”

  She nodded.

  “Please do not bring that bottle into my bathroom.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, then marched into her—rather, Cait’s—room. I grabbed a towel from the hall closet, and tried to find a sleep shirt in my drawer that wasn’t too ratty. When I returned to the bathroom, she was inside, sitting on the toilet.

  “You hate me, don’t you?”

  I set the towel and sleep shirt on the sink. “I’m having a hard time loving you, that’s for sure. I could almost forgive your drinking. I know about alcoholism. You need help. But the writing, Beth. Glory wrote the Elmwood series, didn’t she?”

  Beth nodded, not meeting my eyes.

  “How could you do that? Take credit for her work?”

  She pushed her hair off her face. “She was a terrible writer, Ellie. Couldn’t put a sentence together to save her life. But the ideas, my God, such ideas. So I helped her with her writing technique until she became good, I mean really good. And then I thought, well…”

  “You took advantage of a star struck kid, and thought that since you helped her along with the process, you could justify taking the credit? For everything?”

  “You know what this business is like, Ellie,” she said, her voice harsh and ugly. “An unknown? With a concept so different that no one would know what to do with it? She needed me, my audience, to start the series off. Without my name on the book, it would have gone nowhere.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes,” she sniffed. “I do.” She stood and gathered the towel to her chest. “Can I take a shower now?”

  I turned around and shut the door behind me.

  Chapter 4

  There was no noise coming from the guest room, so Shelly and James had either strangled each other or were having very quiet make-up sex. I went downstairs and found Garth and Glory sitting around the fireplace with Sam, and they were all getting along famously.

  “Garth, here,” Sam announced when he saw me, “is a free-lancer, mostly tech stuff. I have actually read some of the sites he’s been published on.”

  I sat back down next to Sam. “Do you make any money?”

  He nodded. “I’m not one of those chumps who write so that I can get exposure. If someone wants to publish what I think, they’ll have to pay me for it.”

  Good boy. I looked at Glory. “And how much have you been making on the Elmwood series?”

  She looked down at her hands and started shredding the cuticle of her thumbnail. “For the first book, I got half of what she made. Then she changed passwords, so now there’s no way for me to check the sales myself.”

  “Are they written down anywhere?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “She has an amazing memory,” Glory answered.

  “Yes, but she’s also drunk a lot.”

  Glory thought for a minute. “I know where I can look,” she said at last. “But then what?”

  I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  Sam shifted his weight. “You need a lawyer,” he said.

  “I don’t have the money for that,” Glory mumbled.

  “I do,” said Garth.

  The fire crackled. It was a nice, comforting sound. Outside, there was total darkness. According to the news, power was out in almost sixty-five percent of the northern New Jersey counties, and another eight to ten inches was expected to fall before the storm passed.

  Boot looked at me. Snow or not, Boot could not stay inside all night.

  Sam stood and stretched. “I’ll take her.”

  “At least put on a coat,” I told him.

  “Of course.”

  “And button it? And maybe a scarf?”

  He laughed and reached for his pea coat, hanging by the door. “If you insist.” He took my scarf, a long purple cashmere affair, and wrapped it around his neck. He held out his arms and made a small bow. I clapped in approval, and so did Garth and Glory. Boot stood patiently while her leash was attached, and we watched the two of them get swallowed up by the storm.

  “It’s pretty bad out there,” Glory murmured.

  “Yeah, but he’s tough,” I said.

  “He’s a cop?” Garth asked.

  I nodded. “Homicide detective.” I turned the sound on the television back up, and watched the news.

  He was gone a long time, and when he did come back, he was carrying Boot under his left arm. “Your dog is a wimp,” he said, setting her down and shaking snow all over the floor.

  Boot shook herself, ran over to the fireplace, and started licking off all the clumps of snow she could reach.

  “You knew that,” I said. Where did you go?”

  “I stopped in at the Olsens, ” he said, hanging his coat carefully and unwinding my scarf from his neck.

  The Olsens were my neighbors, an older couple who lived at the end of my block.

  “They’re both fine,” he continued, standing in front of the fire. “They don’t have a generator, so I invited them here. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, not at all,” I said. “But I imagine Vivian will get the clubhouse lit up and going pretty soon.”

  After Hurricane Sandy knocked out the power, Vivian Brewster, local realtor and general doer-of-things-necessary, got the Abrams Lake committee to open up the clubhouse, which had a generator as well as a full kitchen, and the entire community was warm and fed until the power came back.

  Sam sat down next to me and put his cold hand on the back of my neck. I jumped about a foot, punched him several times, swore, and would have threatened the withholding of certain favors had there not been company.

  The company, by the way, thought it was very funny.

  Shelly and James came down a few minutes later, so we opened some wine, sliced some cheese, and had a very pleasant evening, in spite of the howling and dire predictions on the news. Oddly enough, the subject of James and his prior relationship with Beth never came up.

  We finally all went upstairs. I went into my stash of toothbrushes, pulled out towels, and found more things for people to sleep in. When I finally crawled into bed next to Sam, I was exhausted.

  “Did you check on Beth?” he asked as he put hi
s arm around me.

  “No. I mean, I knocked, but there was no answer. I didn’t go in.”

  “I hope she’s not the type to have a miserable hangover in the morning.”

  “Me too.” I was warm and very sleepy.

  “Quite something about her and James,” he said, and I could hear the laughter in his voice.

  “We will not mention it. Ever. To anyone in this house. And if someone else mentions it, ignore them. I can’t even imagine the drama.”

  I felt Boot jump up on the bed, and she snuggled behind my knees. I fell asleep to the sound of her quiet breathing, Sam’s arms holding me tight.

  * * *

  When I woke in the morning, it was completely silent.

  I left Sam snoring and padded downstairs. Out my front window, I could see the snow was up to the top step of my porch, which meant at least two feet It was still snowing, very steadily, and the world looked pale and gray. There were lights on up in the clubhouse. Vivian was there early. In the next hour or two, after the plows had come through, a few volunteers would shovel a path from the road to the clubhouse, and people would start arriving, food from their fridges in boxes, to spend the day in relative warmth. The kids would have the best time, sleighing and snowboarding down the slight hill behind the clubhouse that ran down to the lake.

  I made myself some coffee and bundled up to take Boot outside, where she squatted dutifully four steps off the porch, in snow so deep I could barely see her. She was on the leash, because even in the deepest snow, if she spied her enemy, the squirrel, she would take off in hot pursuit.

  I loved quiet, snowy mornings. Standing on the porch, I couldn’t hear the generator at the back of the house, only the sound of the wind. There was no chirp of bird or rumble of traffic. The lake, spread out in front of me, had been frozen for weeks, and the snow stretched across it, unbroken, until the mountain began far on the other side.

  Boot shuffled on to the porch and shook herself, then looked up expectantly. As cold as it was, I was perfectly happy just standing there, looking out into the white silence.

  But, of course, I heard a thud in the house, my cell phone chirped, and the house phone rang, all at the same time. So I went back inside.

  Glancing at my phone, it was a text from Cait. That could wait. I hurried to pick up the phone on the fourth ring. It was Carol Anderson, my good friend and head librarian extraordinaire.

  “Hi, Ellie, I’m just wondering how things are going with your guests?”

  “I feel like I’m in the middle of an old-fashioned southern gothic novel, complete with the drunken writer, the bitter ex-husband, the shy but determined ingénue and the manly-man boyfriend. How are you? Have you checked in on Emma?”

  Emma McLaren was the resident witch of Mt. Abrams, and one of Carol’s closest friends. She was also slightly older and a bit fragile, and I worried about her and her cats alone with no heat.

  “She’s here with me right now, and we’re doing okay, thanks. You know I had the woodturning insert put in my fireplace last year, so we’re warm, and my stove is gas, so I can cook. I’m just worried about running out of food and the pipes freezing.”

  “Well, the clubhouse is open, if you think Emma is up for the walk up the hill. If you need anything, let me know.”

  “Thanks.” I hung up and looked around. Surely someone had come downstairs?

  Beth was sitting in a corner of the couch. Without her make-up and with her hair tangles, she looked old and very worn.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when she saw me, and started crying.

  Well…poop.

  I brought her some coffee and made comforting noises as I sat down next to her, but she wasn’t having any of it. She had her head down by her knees, both arms wrapped around her body as she rocked back and forth, sobbing.

  Shelly came down, wearing one of my older, less ragged flannel nightgowns, took one look, and rolled her eyes. I could hear her seconds later, making noises that clearly said she was cooking something for breakfast, and it was going to be serious.

  “Beth,” I said gently, “Pull yourself together. Please. Here, have some coffee.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she blubbered. “Don’t be nice to me. I don’t deserve it.”

  Maybe I should just let her sit there and cry? Put an arm around her? Offer to put a little something-something in the coffee?

  “Beth, Shelly is making something wonderful for breakfast, I can tell. Stop crying, or there might not be anything left.”

  She lifted her head. “Shelly?”

  “Yes. The woman who came in with James.”

  She sniffed. “She’s still here?”

  “Why, yes, Beth. They came over to spend the night. Remember?”

  She drew herself up. “No. I’d forgotten. Well, this is awkward.”

  “I think that’s a fair statement. It’s also funny that the world is such a small place.”

  She wiped the tears off her face. “I suppose I should get myself looking a bit more respectable.”

  I wondered if she would have even considered it if she hadn’t been reminded that her ex-husband would be joining her for breakfast.

  I watched her go upstairs and went into the kitchen.

  Shelly knew her way around my house as well as she knew her way around her own. She’d found a loaf of Italian bread in my freezer, and was putting it in the oven as I walked in. “I’ll thaw this out a bit, then make a French toast bake. Enough for everyone, do you think?”

  I made myself another cup of coffee. “Sounds perfect. Thanks.”

  “Well, it’s the least I can do.” She leaned back against the counter and folded her arms across her chest. “That woman upstairs is apparently a class-A bitch with a drinking problem and an ego the size of Cleveland. James was married to her for six years, and she stalked him for three years after that. The stories he was telling me…”

  I held up a hand. “Please, Shelly, I love you, and I’m starting to love James, but this has to wait until after she leaves my house. I mean it.”

  She tightened her lips. “Yes, of course. I just can’t believe, I mean, what are the odds?”

  “I know. Of all the libraries in all the world, she had to walk into ours.”

  She grinned. “Right?”

  Sam came downstairs, kissed my cheek, nodded to Shelly and headed for the back door. “Need to add more gas to the generator. Have the plows been through? We may need to refill the gas cans.”

  Shelly waved a hand. “I’ve got a full can at my house if we’re getting low.”

  He nodded. “Good. I think we have enough to keep going until tomorrow, but after that, we’ll be in trouble.”

  He left, and Shelly and I puttered around the kitchen. The bread came out of the oven and was cut into cubes, eggs were beaten, cream and spices were mixed in, and when Sam joined us, smelling slightly of gasoline, breakfast was safely in the oven, cooking away. I shooed him upstairs to wash off the scent of garage, and tried to find a television channel that was not talking about the storm. Shelly and I finally settled on HGTV, where we spent a few pleasant minutes trashing one of our less-than-favorite interior designers.

  Glory and Garth came down, then James, then Sam. Beth was still obviously preparing for her entrance, but breakfast was bubbling, so we sat down and ate without her. Then we had more coffee without her. Then I started getting a little concerned.

  “She probably started drinking again,” Glory said, her voice tight and angry.

  “Ah, it’s not even ten o’clock,” I said.

  “So?” she shot back. Her attitude seemed to have taken a sharp left turn. Yesterday, she’d have been making excuses for her.

  “I’m going to check,” I said, pushing myself away from the table.

  I knocked on the door gently. I could hear her inside, moving about. “Beth? Breakfast is almost done with. If you’re hungry, you should come downstairs now.”

  The door opened and she stood there, once again in full
make-up, hair done to perfection. Even the wrinkles in her clothes had vanished. She smiled thinly. “On my way,” she said, but as she swept by, the smell of alcohol followed her down.

  * * *

  I know that, technically speaking, the longest day of the year is the summer solstice. However, for me, the longest day was the one spent waiting for the plows to come through Mt. Abrams. There was a rather heated argument about whether or not the town would plow while the storm was still going on. One camp insisted that the smart thing was to wait until the snow stopped and then begin plowing. The other side insisted that, by plowing early, it would be much easier to clear the roads by a second sweep tomorrow.

  Yes, we had quite a lively discussion about this subject.

  Yes, that was the kind of day it was.

  I didn’t blame Beth for sipping away at the vodka all day long. I almost joined her.

  Sam, James and Garth went out after lunch and started shoveling. The porch was cleared off, as was Garth’s truck. Sam started the snow blower and did the driveway, then moved Garth’s truck in next to his Suburban so it would not be packed in when the plows came by.

  Which they did not. At all.

  Apparently, Team Wait-for-the-Storm-to-Pass won.

  But then, quite suddenly, the storm did pass. The snow stopped coming down, the gray sky parted, revealing a startling blue sky, and the air was filled with noise.

  Shelly and I bundled up and went up to the clubhouse, which was technically across the street from me, but in actuality was up a long drive, past the frozen lake, and up the lawn. A path had been cleared, but it still took us a while.

  Vivian Brewster had the fireplaces lit and the generator going, and we could hear lots of noise coming from the kitchen. The clubhouse had been the first home built in Mt Abrams, back when Josiah Milner Abrams first bought up the small lake and the surrounding acres for his personal summer paradise. It was a fifteen-room mansion, as befitting a rich businessman in post-civil war New Jersey, with broad porches and a few turrets for whimsy. Inside, the original hardwood floors were a bit shabby, but all the fireplaces still worked, and the rooms were comfortable and warm.