Baby It's Cold Outside

by Susan May Warren

But he said nothing as Gordy banged out of the house, slamming the door.

  Jake washed the dishes in silence.

  “You offered to help. Why didn’t you tell him that?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He handed her another plate. “He’s right. I should have insisted.”

  “I believe her exact words were, ‘I’m not an invalid.’ Were you supposed to argue with her?”

  “Yes. Probably. I don’t know.” He took the stack of plates, walked over to the hutch, and loaded them in. “Maybe Gordy’s right. A real man would have.”

  “I think a real man accepts that a woman can carry in wood if she says so. Letting her doesn’t make you less of a man…or her, less of a woman.”

  “Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” he said, stalking back to the sink.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Help!” The door to the mudroom banged open, and a second later, Dottie flew into the kitchen, running through the house. “Get a blanket, and start a warm bath running!”

  Behind her, in his arms, Gordy carried a body, limp and crusted with snow. “We found a kid in the barn,” he said, running behind her. “He looks dead.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Don’t put him in the bath!” Jake followed Gordy through the house, catching up to him. He laid his finger against the boy’s neck. Yes, a pulse, but bare. “Give him to me.”

  Gordy had the boy in a death clench, his eyes fierce with the horror of finding him. “Why?”

  Upstairs, Jake heard the water running in the tub.

  “He needs his body core heated first. If you warm his extremities, the cool blood will rush to his heart, cause a cardiac arrest.” He reached for the boy. “Give him to me.”

  Gordy might have been more shocked than willing, but he handed over his bundle to Jake.

  Jake set the boy on the velvet divan in the family room. “Stoke the fire.”

  He looked about ten years old, caught in the pallor of death, his skin gray, his rabbit shopka encrusted with ice, his wool scarf frozen to his cheeks. Curled tight into a fetal position, his frozen posture made it nearly impossible for Jake to start shucking off his snowy boots, his icy pants.

  “What are you doing?” Violet had hobbled into the room behind them—now crouched beside him.

  “Get his jacket off him.” Jake tugged off the boy’s stiff pants. His legs appeared nearly white. Violet worked on the buttons of his coat, frozen solid to the cloth.

  “Dottie, we need scissors!” He pressed his warm hands to the boy’s cheeks. “Where’s the blanket!”

  Dottie appeared, shoving the blanket at him. He tucked it over the boy’s legs, for now, and, because Violet still hadn’t wrestled free the buttons, he grabbed the jacket, took a breath, and ripped it open.

  Buttons popped off as he yanked the jacket down, off the frail body. The boy wore a wool sweater under the jacket. Violet was unwinding the scarf from his neck.

  “How did you find him?” Violet said, tugging it free.

  Dottie had returned with scissors. “I went to the barn for wood and saw that the door was ajar. I thought maybe an animal had gotten in—and then I saw the door to the truck was open. I couldn’t believe it when I saw him, lying there on the seat, all balled up. Why didn’t he come to the house?”

  “Maybe he didn’t see it. Or couldn’t make it,” Violet said.

  “Do you know him?” Jake asked as he took the scissors and began to cut off the sweater. He did the same to the frozen undershirt.

  Dottie shook her head. “I don’t know. He looks familiar.”

  “What are you doing?” Violet said. “He’s going to freeze.”

  “He’s already frozen. He needs warmth, right now. Get another hat for him.”

  “I ran a bath,” Dottie said as she ran toward the mudroom. Gordy bumped past her, carrying wood.

  “No—it’s not fast enough.” Jake stood up and only hesitated a moment before he shucked off his undershirt. He didn’t look at the rumple of scar tissue across his chest as he reached out and picked up the boy. He pulled him against his chest, the chill of the child’s body shuddering through him, raising gooseflesh. Then he lay back on the sofa, cradling the boy against him. “Tuck the blanket around us, Violet. Then get more. We have to warm his core.”

  “Is he alive?” Gordy said, stirring the coals in the hearth to life.

  “For now. We need more blankets.”

  Jake had been thirteen that day when they’d fallen through the ice. He remembered the trick Svetlana used to keep Alex alive.

  He wrapped his arms tighter, willing his heat into the child. Coaxing each breath from him. Please God, don’t let this little one die. Alex had been colder—and underwater—and he’d lived. Although, after that, just like Jake, he’d become even more prone to bronchitis and pneumonia.

  Dottie returned with a hat and shoved it on the boy’s head. When she met Jake’s eyes, he saw the mother in them.

  “Pray, Dottie,” he said softly.

  She pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes wet.

  “Dottie, where do you keep your blankets?” Violet said, gripping her arm.

  Dottie met her eyes. “Yes, blankets. They’re upstairs in the closet.”

  Violet limped toward the stairs, but Dottie stopped her. “Put on some tea.” She took the stairs up, two at a time.

  Violet glanced back at Jake. The boy seemed no warmer, but the chill of his body had begun to shiver through Jake, making him shake. “Yes, we need tea. I need tea, to keep warm.”

  He watched Violet hobble to the kitchen, getting stronger, it seemed, with each step.

  Gordy’s fire crackled to life, and he fed it to a robust blaze. Then, slapping off his hands, he left for another armful of wood.

  Just Jake and the boy remained, cocooned in blankets on the sofa.

  “Where did you come from, kid?” Jake said into the boy’s hat. He closed his eyes, found himself back at Lake Calhoun.

  The sky a crisp, pristine blue, it had coaxed his attention away from his lessons, and when he returned home from school, he found Alex in the back room, behind the kitchen, holding their skates.

  Alex always was trouble—his mother said so with a glint in her eyes, but she shooed them both out the door.

  They’d lost count of the warm days, this crisp late-March snap of cold charming them to see only the shiny layer of ice. Deep under the smooth surface, however, water channeled through tunnels of warmth. Pressure from the top would add cracks, weaken their skating rink.

  They hiked out on their blades, across the street to play knights, fighting with sawed-off poplar branches, then raced around the shoveled rink, the snow like blue diamonds. His toes had turned numb by the time the sun began to drift to the horizon, casting perilous shadows upon their playground.

  He grabbed a rock, used his sword to knock it around. Alex headed back to the bench.

  Jake heard the crack as he rounded the far edge of the snowbank.

  Probably, the snow had warmed the ice underneath, weakened it, and the cracked webs grew in front of him as he watched them, mesmerized for too long.

  When Jake sprinted toward shore, the ice collapsed beneath him.

  The water was a thousand icy needles, searing him whole. He opened his mouth to scream and water filled his lungs.

  He went down in his heavy wool jacket, tried to kick to the surface, but banged his head on the ice. His eyes burned when he opened them, his lungs on fire. He slammed his mittened hands against the ice.

  Then, he was being dragged through the water, out of the hole, his head cresting the surface. He breathed in, coughed, but managed to grab the jagged side of the ice.

  Alex had him by the scruff of his coat. He scooted back as he pulled Jake from the water, then rolled him away from the hole. Jake found his knees, coughed out more water, but began to crawl, scrambling away from the hole.

  He heard it crack again, a shot splicing the twilight, then Alex’s shout as i
t crumpled under him. He turned just as Alex splashed into the dark water.

  “Alex!” The cracking spider-webbed beneath him, and he scrambled back as it dissolved just beyond him.

  Alex hadn’t surfaced. “Alex!” He scrambled to his feet, still coughing, his coat saturated, already shivering.

  The water had sucked him under.

  Alex was strong, wasn’t he? A Russian boy, a year older than himself. He’d survived the Bolshevik revolution with his mother, escaped, and started a new life in Minneapolis. “Alex!”

  Jake turned and fled for his house on his skates, banging into the back entrance, screaming.

  Their butler, a burly man from Ireland, had finally pulled Alex out, almost ten minutes later. Gray and not breathing. They pushed the water out of him, and Jake’s father blew oxygen into his lungs as Alex’s mother undressed him and held him to her chest in front of the fire.

  Jake had turned himself into a corner, shivering under his blanket, and wept.

  Dottie tucked another blanket around him as Violet returned from the kitchen. “Tea’s ready.”

  Dottie went to fetch it and Violet sank down on a chair. She gave him a strange look. “Alex told me once that he fell through the ice, and his best friend saved him. Said he came onto the ice after him and nearly died when he fell in himself. Said his best friend was a real hero.”

  She had eyes that could swoop every word from his chest, but this time, her story held them fast.

  “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  He tried to hide the horror from his eyes. Dottie came into the room carrying a cup of tea. She sat next to him and lifted it to his mouth. He sipped it, the heat traveling to his chest, where the boy had begun to shiver.

  He didn’t look at Violet.

  Oh, Alex, what did you tell her? “No,” he said finally. “That wasn’t me.”

  But she got up, pulled the chair toward him, and sat close enough to put her hand on the boy’s cheek. “I still think you’re a hero.”

  * * * * *

  Dottie set Jake’s empty cup in the sink, rinsing it. The spray rounded in the cup, hit her face, and she jerked back. But perhaps the water would hide the way her eyes burned, filmed with tears. She lifted a towel, pressed her face into it.

  Oh, God simply wasn’t going to let her forget her sins, was He? He was going to make her watch this little boy die.

  “Dottie.”

  She didn’t lower the towel at Gordy’s soft voice. She couldn’t let him see her cry. Ever. She turned back to the sink, tossed the towel on the counter, then added soap to the water and began to clean the cup.

  Gordy stepped up behind her. Too close. She could smell him—a hint of the barn, yes, but woodchips and smoke from the fire, and so much of that comforting masculine aura that she knew as well as she knew the color of the dawn over the eastern fields behind his house.

  She drew in a breath. He couldn’t see her anyway, couldn’t see her hands shaking, the way the cup rattled as she set it on the counter.

  He reached around her and touched her wrists. Held them. “Dottie, are you okay?”

  She drew in a breath, seeing his hands holding her arms. Strong, steady hands. Hands that she trusted.

  Not that she’d ever tell him.

  But, in reality, he probably knew.

  She shook his grip away and reached again for the towel. “Yes, of course,” she said, and her voice nearly backed her up. She turned.

  If she took one step, she’d be in his arms. She could almost see herself curling her arms up around his, folding herself against his chest, lifting her face to meet his. She’d let herself have this moment too many times over the past twenty-plus years. Powerful moments when she tucked herself in the comfort of memory, now even more dangerous when he hovered so close. She pressed her hand on his chest to back him away. “I’m just worried about him.”

  “Jake seems to know what he’s doing.”

  “Someone needs to tell his mother he’s here.”

  “Do you know him?”

  She nodded. “I think his name is Arnold Shiller. This—this is his storm house.”

  “His storm house?”

  “They send me a notice every year. I threw out…I never dreamed—”

  “No wonder he came here.”

  She pinched her lips tight then went to stand by the door, peering in at Jake. Violet sat next to him, pressing her palm on the boy’s frozen cheek. “Do you think he’ll live?” Oh, he had to live.

  Her eyes burned again, and she drew in a quick breath.

  When she turned, Gordy had poured her a cup of tea, was handing it to her. She took it without meeting his gaze. “I think his father was in the war with Nelson. I see his mother around town. She’s—she’s not well.” Dottie slid onto a chair, staring out the window.

  After a moment, Gordy pulled out the chair opposite her, sat down. He set his tea on the table, ran his wide thumb over the handle. “You’re remembering the Armistice Day blizzard, aren’t you?”

  She closed her eyes. Why, thank you, Gordy, for dredging up that horror again.”

  “Three days, by yourself, wondering if I’d bring Nelson home safely.”

  “Of course you would bring him home safely,” she snapped. But yes, she’d sat right here, for three days, watching the world turn white and bury them all alive. “It would have been…well, maybe I wouldn’t have gone out of my mind if I’d known you’d made it back to your place safely.”

  A tick of the clock.

  The thunder of her heart.

  Then, “I know,” Gordy said quietly. “I should have brought him straight home. I’m so sorry.”

  She glanced up at him. Really? And all these years, she’d thought he’d grabbed his one opportunity to pay her back. To make her sit by the window, waiting, just like he’d done all those years earlier. “So many people died. You saved his life.”

  Her own words, emerging softly, startled her as much as they apparently did him. He frowned at her, as if words had abandoned him.

  “I never thanked you for that.”

  “What was I going to do, Dottie. Let the boy freeze?” He turned away, toward the window, his voice sharp.

  Right. She should have known better than to offer up gratitude, even forgiveness. After all, this was Gordy Lindholm. He didn’t know how to forgive.

  She glanced back out to the parlor. Then outside. “I’ve got to get word to his mother that he’s okay.” She got up. “The Dersheids have a telephone. Maybe I can—”

  “Stop thinking with your heart and use your head. You can’t go out there in this storm—you’ll get yourself killed. Besides, I can guarantee you that the Shillers do not have a phone, so unless you’re prepared to hike out to their farm—”

  “Maybe I am.” She found her feet, leaving her teacup. “Maybe that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “Oh please.” He skidded his chair back, following her. “Just stop, and think this through for one second. Why do you have to always be so impulsive!”

  She turned on him, her finger at his arrogant chin. “Me? Impulsive? I haven’t been impulsive for over twenty years.”

  “Once was enough.”

  “Oh, for cryin’ in the sink—I make one impulsive decision and you can’t forgive me for it—even twenty-seven years later.”

  “Your one impulsive moment cost me my family!”

  She stilled, his words shuddering through her. His jaw tightened and he looked away, closing his eyes as he shook his head. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “Yes you did. “

  “You should have married me.”

  “You should have asked.”

  “I did!” His eyes were reddened now. “I did, Dottie.”

  “Was that what that was? Because it seemed more like a tumble in the hay, and a command, issued by a desperate boy.”

  Oh, she hadn’t meant to make that moment sound so sordid. And, when he swallowed, the hurt filling his eyes, she was right there, back
in the barn, startled by the force of his ardor, as if he had something to prove to her. Her heart turned to fire as he lifted his eyes to hers, his voice low and tunneling through her. Don’t leave Frost. Marry me, Dottie. I’m the one you want.

  She gritted her teeth against the memory. How his words had stirred her ire.

  He’d been correct, of course, but she couldn’t allow him to be.

  She pushed past him, grabbing her father’s parka, his rabbitfurred hat.

  “You’re not going out there.”

  She ignored him.

  “Fine.” He grabbed his coat off the peg, that flimsy wool one, and shoved a stocking cap on his head.

  “You’ll freeze in ten minutes,” she said.

  “Fear not, I’m angry enough to keep me warm for the next year!”

  She shook her head, shoved her feet into her boots. They were still soggy from the jaunt out to the barn, but she didn’t care. She zipped up the parka, grabbed her mittens.

  Gordy wound a muffler around his neck. “You’re going to get us both killed.”

  “No one asked for your help.”

  He winced at that, and she hated her words. But it was too late now, wasn’t it?

  She wrenched open the door. The wind blew her back in, but she righted herself and stepped out.

  Oh, a person could slip into the frothy white waves and be buried in a minute. She blinked back the ice that hit her eyes. She should grab a scarf.

  No, she should turn around.

  But Gordy stood, blocking her path. So, she stepped out into the whiteness, put her head down, and hiked down the driveway. If she followed the stone wall that would bring her to the road, she could just…

  The wind ate her breath, the snow knives on her exposed flesh. She’d get lost and perish and prove Gordy right. Again.

  She was impulsive. And she did think with her heart. And she did…

  She did cost him his family. Their family.

  Her eyes filmed, began to freeze. Gordy, I’m sorry.

  She turned, almost ready to say it, when her feet slipped on the ice below the snow. She grabbed out for Gordy as her feet lifted, her arms windmilling.

  He grabbed at her, tried to right her, but the force of her fall skidded his legs out from beneath him.