A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel

by Sara J. Henry

  Some of this was background, like the scenery behind the actors on a stage, but none of it particularly illuminating. I would have loved to ask what three words he would use to describe Tobin to see if he could come up with anything besides “great,” but that would have been cruel.

  By the time I got to Classmate 3, I was tiring and my guard was down. So of course this one was exactly what I’d expected the other two to be. If you had made a request to central casting for “private-school snob, Caucasian,” this fellow would fit the bill: thinnish face with a seemingly permanent sneer, hair carefully styled, cut a little too long. And I wasn’t imagining the disdain in his tone.

  “So you work for a newspaper up in, where was it, Saranac, wherever Tobin went off to.”

  I didn’t correct him about the name of the town, just said, “Yes, we’re doing a series on him and his life.”

  “Found frozen in a lake, right? What an asinine way to die—falling through the ice.”

  It was, if that was all there had been to it, but I knew this guy wouldn’t be talking this way if Win were sitting here. But to him I was inconsequential and he could say whatever he liked. If I reminded him I knew Win, that she would be reading this article, he’d likely change his tone, but I figured playing the meek, mild-mannered reporter was my best bet. I was right.

  “Such a loser,” he said, tone derisive. “He skated through high school, then dropped out of Princeton and became a bum. His brother, now, Trey was the best. All-star on just about every sports team, class president, you name it.”

  I carefully wrote all-star and class president with my smooth gel ink pen. “So Trey wouldn’t have dropped out of college if Tobin had died, you think. If the situation had been reversed.”

  He looked at me sharply. But I’d kept my face pleasant and my tone neutral.

  “You’re damn straight he wouldn’t have dropped out—he would have sucked it up and kept on going, done even better because of it.”

  I smiled and nodded and wrote would have sucked it up.

  “You knew his sister, his family?”

  “Oh, yes, his parents were great, I’ve been to their house.” He rambled on about their accomplishments, their insurance business, their standing in the community.

  Time for something more direct. “Do you have any idea why Tobin had been estranged from his parents?” I asked.

  His answer was so swift and vicious it surprised me. “Well, the ‘accident’ ”—and I wasn’t imagining the verbal quote marks around the word—“when Trey died. No one believes Trey was at the wheel of that boat. He never would have crashed it, not in a million years. But Tobin would have. And nobody saw him sobbing at the funeral, that’s for sure.”

  It seemed the air in the room had changed. I chose my words carefully.

  “So … you think Tobin didn’t miss his brother?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Trey was the one who was going to take over his father’s business. Tobin was always going to be the underling, the hanger-on.”

  “And the accident … it was Tobin’s fault?” I asked.

  “Of course it was,” he said, his face ugly now. “Tobin was a screw-up. And everybody knew there was only one life jacket on that boat, and guess who was wearing it?”

  The words seemed to resonate in the office, bounce off the walls and around the room. Even he seemed to realize how harsh this sounded, and he backpedaled, muttering about how lovely the family was and finishing with the party line, I send my deepest condolences to the family, and to his sister.

  When I pulled away from his office I had to concentrate to follow the directions to where I was staying for the night, with a couple I’d found on Couchsurfing.org, a website that lists people willing to take in travelers for a night or two. It does sound a bit like a shopping arena for sociopaths, but you read input from other guests, and see photos and descriptions. And sometimes your hosts will feed you.

  That’s what this couple did. They were in their mid-thirties, she a paralegal in a law firm, he a department-store assistant manager. In another time or place they might have been backpacking around the planet, but now they did their traveling vicariously, through their guests. I told them about being a freelance writer in Lake Placid and what I was working on—they knew about the Winslow family, and had heard about the elder son’s death. They fed me a thick lentil stew and crusty bakery bread, with rich, creamy ice cream for dessert, and put me up on a comfortable sofa bed.

  I pulled out my laptop and sent quick e-mails to Philippe and to Jameson. Then I sent Win a text message. All is well; how are things going? A few seconds later she texted back: Getting back tomorrow. Will borrow Tiger as you suggested—thanks. So she was coming back, and she was going to stay at the cabin. She was a brave woman, or stupidly stubborn. Or both.

  After I curled up under the covers, my door creaked slightly, and a sudden weight on the bed told me the couple’s cat had jumped up. She ventured up beside me and, purring steadily, settled down and kneaded away. She was warm and alive, and I reached out and stroked her. I was glad she was there.

  CHAPTER 25

  In the morning the couple gave me steaming hot cereal, something munchy with several varieties of grain. I packed my bag and folded up the sofa bed while they bustled about getting ready for their jobs. We left at the same time, exchanging little hugs at the door. I’d given them my contact info, and invited them to visit. But if they came up, I thought, they might never want to leave—they’d want to find a battered old drafty house in Lake Placid and odd jobs and spend every spare minute hiking or skiing. But almost no one steps out of the life they think has been selected for them unless something pushes them from it. Tobin had, and at some point as I wrote these articles I wanted to get a better grasp on why.

  Today I would be meeting with a man who’d known Tobin since kindergarten, and then the nanny who’d been with the family throughout Tobin’s childhood.

  My first interviewee was an accountant with a private office connected to his home, a stately brick affair. No answer when I rang the doorbell. I checked the address, checked the time on my cell phone, waited five minutes, and tried again. Still no answer. I called both his numbers; both went straight to voice mail. I waited another fifteen minutes, then wrote a note and folded it neatly and wedged it in the door, and called to see if it was all right to move up my appointment with the nanny. It was.

  She had been with the Winslow family sixteen years, and had left them over a dozen years ago. I was expecting an apple-dumpling of an elderly lady, but she was barely middle-aged and carried herself erectly, with the demeanor of a businesswoman. She must have been very young when she’d started working for the Winslows.

  She met me in the kitchen of her current family’s home—a bright, cheery room with photos of smiling children stuck to the refrigerator. They were off at school, she told me, the youngest now in first grade.

  “Were the Winslows the first family you worked for?” I asked. I didn’t know the right terminology: worked for? nannied for? lived with?

  “Yes, other than babysitting. I’d been at college and was taking the year off, and the Winslows were about to have their first child and needed help. So I took the job, and at the end of the year Trey was just starting to learn to walk and I decided to stay on, and then, well, this just became my work.”

  I looked around the kitchen. “So then you came here?”

  “One other family in between, with children already in school, then once they got older I came to this family. They’d tried an au pair, but the little ones don’t like having a new one every year, because they get attached, you know.” She smiled.

  Yes, children got attached, and of course she, too, got attached. It would be like being a rent-a-mom who could be returned when no longer needed. I couldn’t imagine it: seeing a set of children into teenagerhood and then starting over with another set of children, over and over, until you became too old. Suddenly I wondered what Elise would do when Paul was older—
but Philippe would, I thought, keep her on as a housekeeper, as he had during the months Paul had been missing. And then she would retire and visit as a grandmother would, or keep living in her attached apartment. And never have to shift to a new family and start over.

  “They’re lovely children,” I said, glancing at the photos.

  Now her smile reached her eyes. “They are all lovely children. Every one of them. They all develop differently, but they’re all lovely.” She said it like she believed it, which in my view pretty much made her the perfect substitute parent.

  “You know that I’m writing articles about Tobin, about his life, starting with his childhood,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Can you tell me what he was like, what you most remember about him?”

  I didn’t have high hopes for this interview, other than some background color. I knew from Elise that proper nannies didn’t gossip about their families. Maybe some did, to other nannies, but not to outsiders. I’d figured out more from what Elise hadn’t said than what she had.

  She smiled again. “Tobin was a good boy. Smart, funny. He learned to read when his sister did, when he was just four. He learned to walk early, probably because he wanted to keep up with the other two. He always wanted to do whatever they were doing, particularly whatever Trey was doing.”

  “Were he and Trey alike? I know Tobin was four years younger.”

  “Tobin was more rough-and-tumble, more stubborn, more headstrong. But that’s common for a younger child, especially a younger brother.”

  We talked about childhood likes and dislikes, favorite games and books and foods, how Tobin had done in school. Then I asked, almost offhandedly, “Did he have pets, one in particular he liked?”

  Her face got a bit pinched—like Elise’s when she didn’t want to tell me something. I waited. Finally she spoke, and her voice was thin and tired.

  “Tobin had a dog. He always wanted a dog, and finally his grandfather got him one, the year he was six. Oh, for all of the children, of course, but it was really for Tobin. A chocolate Lab—he called it Bunny, because it was the color of the stuffed bunny he kept on his bed. But puppies are puppies, and Lab puppies, you know, they’re a bit, well, energetic.” I nodded. She went on.

  “One evening the puppy got into their parents’ bedroom and chewed some expensive shoes, and Mr. Winslow got angry, and said it had to go. The children pleaded and Tobin said he would save up money and buy more shoes and always eat his vegetables and be the best boy in the world, but their father said it had to go, the next morning.” Her voice was expressionless.

  She paused. “I think he would have dropped the dog on the street or had her put down, so I told him I would take her to the shelter. Instead I took her to my brother, and he kept her. She was a good dog.”

  I forced myself to speak. “How did … Did the children get to see the dog?”

  She shook her head. “Tobin cried for days. I told him the dog was in a new home, that I could take him to visit sometimes if he wanted. He thought about it but said it would be too sad. But …” Here her reserve faltered and her voice almost broke. “But at night, once a week, he’d want me to tell him a story about Bunny. I’d either tell him something my brother had told me the dog had done or I’d make something up, and I’d tell him that Bunny never loved another little boy, and never stopped loving him even though she never saw him. I was never sure if that was the right thing to do. But it seemed to help.” Her clear blue eyes focused on me.

  “I think it was,” I said past the lump in my throat. “I think it was the right thing to do.”

  The air seemed to hang heavy in the room. She spoke through it, trying for a return to her former briskness. “His sister is a lovely young woman,” she said.

  “Yes, she is.”

  “These articles your paper wants, I think they will do her good. She needs to have her brother’s life told, on paper, all of it.”

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. She was, I thought, telling me to tell about the lost dog and the lost brother, and maybe more I hadn’t found yet.

  “Do you know of anyone else I should talk to?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment, and then looked in a small address book and wrote down names and contact information for me. “These first two were some of Tobin’s favorite teachers, and this one was his girlfriend in college. They dated sisters, you know, he and Trey. They used to joke about having a double wedding someday.”

  “So you kept in touch with the Winslow children?”

  She nodded. “They called me. I’d see them once in a while, in the summers, once they could drive. They’d meet me somewhere when they could.”

  I looked at her face. “It was hard to lose them,” I said softly.

  She blinked once. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was.”

  “Did you know … did Tobin ever talk about the accident, with his brother?”

  At this her face tightened, and it took her a moment to speak. “It wasn’t something Tobin wanted to discuss,” she said at last.

  She took my e-mail address and phone numbers and gave me hers, and shook my hand crisply. I thanked her, and felt hollow as I got in my car and drove away, away from the cheery house that was her home only until this group of children grew up. It was like a reverse Neverland, being in a world where everyone grew up around you, leaving you behind.

  But at least she has them. At least she has those families for a time, I thought, those children to rear and influence and love.

  On Google Maps I’d zoomed in on the street where Tobin had grown up, the park where the nanny had taken them to play, the grounds of his private school, the club where his senior prom had been held. I’d told myself this was enough, that I didn’t actually need to go look at these places. And maybe I didn’t, but here I was, with time to spare. I pulled out the maps I’d printed from Streets & Trips—the poor person’s GPS—and found my way to the park where Tobin had played with his sister and brother. I walked around, envisioning the young nanny with the three children she’d loved, the ones she’d taken care of instead of returning to college. It almost seemed that I could see them, see their ghosts at play. Then I sat there a while, my coat open, sun on my face. It’s surprisingly warmer even a few hours south, once you get out of the mountains.

  When I’d started this I’d been excited about writing something this big, this momentous, and it seemed it would help set things right. But it had morphed into more. I’d discovered I’d made a lot of assumptions about Tobin I’d had no business making. And now I wondered what else I’d be finding out.

  I got on the road just in time to evade rush hour, eating the apple and carrots I’d brought along and then a rest-stop dinner of Fritos and a Snickers bar. All the basic food groups, plus chocolate.

  It was a long drive back. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, and I ended up pulling over at a rest stop and taking out the sleeping bag I kept behind my seat, wrapping it around me and waking an hour later, cold, and for a moment not knowing where I was.

  CHAPTER 26

  The house was dark. It was odd to have to fumble for a key and unlock the door instead of just walking in, and odder still not to have Tiger running to meet me. I flicked on my computer long enough to send I’ve gotten home messages to Win and to Jameson.

  Maybe I should have tried to force myself to go through my notes before my impressions had dulled, but I couldn’t. The best thing I could do was sleep. Sometimes I knew when to quit. Not often, but sometimes.

  I woke from a dead sleep to what I thought was the ringing of my phone, but again there was nothing but a dial tone. This time I turned on the light and looked at the caller ID: number blocked. So I wasn’t dreaming. Someone was harassing me, maybe the fired reporter—this I could deal with. I got up and turned on my computer, signed into my phone service’s website, and clicked the box to refuse calls with blocked numbers.

  But now I was awake, and hungry. This was what I got for no
t having eaten anything when I’d arrived home. I looked at my clock—half past midnight. I eased down my steep stairs to the kitchen. I’d nearly finished a bowl of granola when I thought I heard something, and set down my spoon and listened. And heard it again.

  It was from the front hallway, someone fumbling at the door. Brent or Patrick weren’t likely to be out this late, but Jessamyn might, and could have forgotten her key. I began to walk down the hall toward the front door, and got close enough to see the doorknob turn, and then turn again. The hair on the back of my neck rose. Then I heard a muffled exclamation, and a thump against the door.

  I inched closer and peeked around the cloth over the window. Then I reached down and opened the door to Zach, our fifth roommate. Home from his trip visiting his girlfriend.

  “Troy,” he said. “W-w-what’s going on?” For him, coming home to find our front door locked with a curtain over it would be like coming back to an altered universe, a Bizarro World.

  I put my finger to my mouth in a shhh gesture. He picked up his bag and came in; I reached past him to close and lock the door, and gestured for him to follow me to the kitchen.

  “What’s going on?” he whispered.

  In the chilly kitchen, my voice low, I told him all that had happened. Even condensed, it took a while.

  “Where’s Tiger?” he asked. Zach was fond of my dog.

  “Staying with Win tonight. I got back late from a trip doing interviews.”