A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel

by Sara J. Henry

  “But everything’s okay now?”

  I knew Zach wasn’t actually thinking everything was fine; he wasn’t as simple as he sometimes pretended to be. He just wanted to know how this was going to affect his day-to-day life and what was expected of him.

  “Seems to be,” I said. “But it’s probably best we keep the door locked for a while. So you’ll have to find your key, or I can make you a new one.”

  He nodded, and went down the hall. I could hear him pausing to pick up his bag and head up the stairs to his room. I rinsed my dishes and went back up to bed, locking my door behind me.

  I was surprised to see Jessamyn sitting at the kitchen table when I went down the next morning. It was late for me, early for her.

  “You’re back,” she said around a mouthful of toast smeared with jam. It looked a lot like my blackberry preserves, but I didn’t point that out. Maybe I needed to learn to share.

  I nodded. “Hey, Zach got back late last night,” I said. “So how’s everything? Is work okay?”

  “Work’s been fine. No one’s been hassling me. Brent’s been walking me up there, just in case. And Win had me out to the cabin yesterday.” She took a bite of toast. “I thought it might be weird to be out there again, but it wasn’t. It was good to have someone staying there, not have it dusty and empty, like it was waiting for Tobin.”

  As it had been. “Have you had any trouble with reporters?”

  She shook her head. “No, nothing. Hey, did you know Win has a new car?”

  “She changed her rental, right? Or did she pick up her car when she went home?”

  “No, she said that’s a little sports car and no way could she drive it up here. She turned in her rental and had them drop her at a Subaru place in Albany and just bought one, before she even went home. Like yours, only smaller.”

  I stared at her. “A Forester?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. She said she wanted something with four-wheel drive, and she didn’t like dealing with a rental, especially when she didn’t know how long she’d need it.” She laughed at the expression on my face.

  “Wow,” I said, trying to wrap my head around this. I guess it made sense, if you had enough cash to buy an extra new car on a whim. “So it sounds like she’s staying a while.”

  “Yeah, she said probably until the ice palace is finished. Or at least until the articles are done.”

  That was a grim thought: staying until the blocks of ice cut from the lake where her brother was found frozen were transformed into a whimsical building. But maybe that would provide some closure. Or my articles would.

  And now I was starting to feel the pressure to get to work. I made myself some tea and peanut butter toast with sliced banana, and went back up to my rooms.

  I tried the accountant again—no answer. He seemed to have disappeared.

  Next I called the three people on the nanny’s list and left messages for two. The third was home: a former grade-school teacher, now retired. I stumbled a little over my explanation, thinking she might not know of Tobin’s death, but she did. Everyone knew, she said, and she had spoken to Tobin’s nanny.

  “So you know her?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, she was very involved with activities at the school—she came to the children’s events; she made sure they did their homework.”

  “She came to their events? During the school day, you mean?”

  “No, everything. Clarinet recitals, plays, sport events, she almost never missed them. She was more reliable than most parents about attending. She was like a mother, really.”

  “Their parents?” I asked, letting my voice trail off.

  Silence for a moment. “I’m retired, so I can say what I please,” she said dryly. “The father wasn’t involved at all; you never saw him at school. The mother, sometimes, for daytime events. But evening events, no.”

  “She didn’t like to go out in the evening?”

  “She wasn’t, well, particularly alert in the evenings.” My silence must have told her I wasn’t catching on. She cleared her throat and said succinctly, “Mrs. Winslow was fond of cocktails.”

  “Ah,” I said, finally getting it. “But … that would mean the nanny was, well, pretty much full time, twenty-four hours a day.”

  “Yes,” she said simply. And if I had wondered why the vital, intelligent woman who had been the Winslows’ nanny had never gone back to college, I had my answer.

  I asked about Tobin, about her fifth-grade class he’d been in. English, she told me, had been his favorite subject—he loved reading and devoured adventure novels, classics as well as current ones. He’d read beyond his years, she said, and he’d loved the Narnia books. Just as I had.

  “I thought he would be a writer,” she said. “He wrote some lovely compositions and stories.”

  “Maybe he would have been,” I said. “If …”

  She finished the sentence. “If his brother hadn’t died. Or maybe later, if he’d had more time.”

  Now I heard the pain in her voice, behind the briskness of a career grade-school teacher.

  “Send me a copy of your article, please,” she said, and gave me her address. I promised I would.

  I sat for a moment after I hung up. I’d never expected to find parallels in Tobin’s life to mine, but here they were. Distant parents. Loved books, loved writing. Next I’d find out he’d been a Boy Scout who helped little old ladies across the street. Now I’d have to be careful not to start overlooking less savory parts of Tobin’s life because I was falling for the little boy he’d once been.

  I’d gotten a message from Dean that he had gotten in touch with Marilyn, who was back in town, and was trying to inveigle her into talking to me. And yes, her last name really was Munro—parents should think hard before naming their children. I heard sounds from downstairs, and then Tiger running down the hallway and bounding up my stairs. A moment later Win poked her head up.

  “Hey, how’s my dog?” I asked. Which was my way of asking, How are you doing?

  “Great—she’s really good company,” she said.

  “You’re okay staying out there?”

  She nodded. “Dean put up a motion-activated outdoor light for me. So your interviews went well?”

  As she came up the final few stairs I could see she had something in her hands, a fat album. “I brought this back from home,” she said as she handed it to me. “I thought it might help with your articles, and you can use whatever you want.”

  I opened the bulging album. It was crammed with pictures, her and her brothers’ childhood.

  “Thanks,” I said, surprised. This was a bonanza I hadn’t expected—it would help me find the heart of this article, see the child Tobin had been. “Win, is your family going to be able to handle this?”

  “They know you’re doing it,” she said. She looked at a photo on the page I had opened: the three children, lined up on a front-porch step. “That was at our grandfather’s.”

  “You …” I started, then said simply, “You had a dog once.”

  Win sat on my sofa. “Ah, Nanny told you about that. I wondered if she would.” She pushed her hair away from her face. “Yes, our parents weren’t the sort of people who could tolerate messes. Did she tell you what Tobin did?”

  “She said he cried, a lot, that he begged to keep the dog.”

  “The day after Bunny was taken away he went into their room with a pair of scissors and tried to cut up some of their clothes. Nanny caught him. I don’t know whether she stopped him before he damaged much and she could fix them, or if she just got rid of the clothes and never told our parents. But she would have done whatever she had to, to protect him.”

  She saw my face. She smiled softly. “I think maybe Tobin thought if he tore up things like the dog, they’d send him to where Bunny was, and he could live with her.”

  I jumped up. “I’m gonna make some tea.” If I sat there, I would have started crying.

  So we went down and had a pot of Earl Grey, like two frien
ds having a pleasant afternoon tea break.

  After Win left, I went through the album, page by page. To me it’s a little uncomfortable, almost intrusive, to look at other people’s pictures on Facebook or Flickr. And this seemed worse. Someone had selected these photos, painstakingly put them into place. Tobin was a charming little boy, with a sweet grin and full dark hair; his brother was thinner, a little more reserved, but in every picture of the two of them Trey had his arm thrown around his younger brother in a way that seemed genuinely affectionate, not in that just-for-the-camera way. There were no photos of the dog.

  I was getting that slightly sick feeling I do before tackling something I’m not sure I can pull off. And I was well aware that the one significant thing I hadn’t done was talk to Tobin’s parents. I’d written, e-mailed, and left phone messages, all with no response, which was what Win had told me to expect. So I could, with good conscience, put a note at the end of the story: Tobin’s parents declined to comment.

  But the fact was I was afraid to talk to them, afraid to ask these parents about their dead son. Before I could talk myself out of it, I dialed the Winslows’ number one more time.

  And to my great surprise, someone picked up.

  “Hello,” said a voice. A woman’s voice, faint and distant.

  “Hello,” I said, rattled. I made myself plunge ahead. “I’m Troy Chance, from Lake Placid, and I knew Tobin … I’m writing an article about him, about his childhood, and I was wondering …”

  The voice on the other end of the phone made a sound. It wasn’t a cough and it wasn’t a gasp, but something between the two, and if I had to describe it I’d say it was the sound of grief. I waited, and then the woman said, in a reedy voice, “Just say … just say that we loved Tobin and miss him.”

  “Mrs. Winslow?” Now I thought I heard a voice in the background, a man’s voice.

  “Yes,” the woman said, a little firmer, still with the thin edge of grief. “Yes, this is Tobin’s mother. Please say that we loved Tobin and we miss him.”

  And as I heard the man’s voice again, louder, the connection went dead.

  I sat there, phone in my hand. So I had reached Tobin’s mother. Win’s mother. Trey’s mother. It seemed I could feel the waves of pain emanating from her, through the phone line.

  On impulse, I called back. It rang a long time before someone picked it up. No one spoke. “Hello?” I said. “Hello?” I heard breathing, breathing that to me sounded angry, sounded male, and something told me I had Tobin’s father on the phone, standing there holding the phone, saying nothing.

  Maybe I was imaging the malevolence coming through to me; maybe I was only imagining this was the father who hadn’t been there for his children, who had somehow driven Tobin and Win away after their brother’s death. But what I didn’t imagine was the receiver being slammed down.

  And that was that. For now.

  Time to write.

  CHAPTER 27

  I reread my notes, looked over photos one more time. And then I began to put together the portrait of a rich little boy, a second son: a boy who adored his big brother, who lost his beloved dog, who played pranks, who had stepped in to stop the bullying of another boy.

  I’d never written a piece like this. I won’t say it consumed me, but it came close.

  Around eight thirty I became dimly aware my message light was blinking—I’d hit the Do Not Disturb button on my phone system to send calls to voice mail. I checked my messages; it was Philippe. I stretched, and realized I was ravenous. I ran down to make a PB&J and then ate half of it as I punched the buttons to call him.

  “Sorry I missed your call,” I told him. “I was writing.”

  He asked how things were going, and I had to think before I realized he was referring to the media crush. “Oh, good. I think the media sort of gave up, moved on to something else. I’m writing the first article now.” I remembered I’d e-mailed about Win being in town and the articles I was writing. I didn’t mention the break-in; no need for him to worry. I spoke briefly to Paul and then went back to work.

  • • •

  I wrote until nearly midnight. The next morning I did more of the same, printing drafts and reviewing them, revising, checking them against my notes, occasionally remembering to eat something. This was hard, very hard. Maybe worse because I had been there, had seen Tobin’s body in the block of ice as it had slid past.

  Mid-afternoon I e-mailed George that I was close to finishing. He told me he’d stay late if I thought I’d get it in today.

  I printed a copy and saved the file on a flash drive, then drove to Baker’s house in Saranac Lake. She wasn’t a writer, but she was a mother, and I trusted her as much as I trusted Jameson, maybe more. I handed her the printout and drank the tea she made me while her youngest son played in the next room. I hadn’t been this fatigued in a very long time. It seemed that the air hummed, the walls of the room shimmered slightly.

  She read slowly, deliberately, turning the pages facedown one by one. She looked at me when she finished.

  “Holy cow, Troy,” she said. “Has anyone else read this?”

  I shook my head.

  She picked up the pages and neatly stacked them, aligning the edges. “You’ve never written anything this good.”

  My head was spinning a little, and I didn’t think it was just from fatigue. “I kind of thought so.”

  “Are you going to show it to Tobin’s sister?”

  “No.”

  Baker picked it up again. “You turning it in today?”

  I nodded. “Just wanted to get your feedback.”

  She glanced over the pages, and set them down. “Send it,” she said. And I did, plugging my flash drive into her computer and e-mailing it to George, along with the photos.

  I was still there half an hour later when my cell phone rang. “Troy.” It was George.

  “Mmm-hmm,” I said.

  “Does any of this need fact-checking?”

  “Nope. Just proofing. I triple-checked facts.” He knew I kept a neat file of sources, notes, transcribed interviews.

  “I’m going to lay this out now. Can you come over and check it?”

  I told him I’d be over. I gave Baker a little salute on the way out the door. She nodded back. I think she knew this piece was going to change some things in my life, and that it might be time for some changes. Sometimes Baker knew me better than I knew myself.

  The front office was dark, but George had left the back door unlocked. I looked over his layout, suggested resizing one of the photos and swapping one for another. Then he had me doublecheck the cutlines, and saved it.

  George didn’t tell me this article made Tobin come alive, or it was the best piece I’d ever written. I think he knew I knew it. And maybe he sensed that, in a way, this was my apology to Tobin for never having tried to know him.

  “It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper—page one,” was all he said.

  By the time I’d left Saranac Lake and turned onto Route 86, a soft snow was falling. I felt a sense of peace as I watched the flakes coming down. In the rearview mirror I caught sight of a car approaching, and it took a moment to realize it wasn’t going to slow.

  I had nowhere to go but straight ahead. My brain was sending the frantic signal to my foot to press the accelerator when the car zoomed close to my rear bumper, swerved around, and cut in so sharply that I jerked my foot to the brake. And then time jolted into a different dimension as my car went into a glide and then into a swirling, horrible Swan Dance, pirouetting across the road.

  There’s something oddly liberating when your car stops going the direction you’ve pointed it, when fate or gravity or centrifugal force takes control and all you can do is ride it out and hope these aren’t your last moments on earth. Before I closed my eyes I had time to be thankful Tiger wasn’t in the car with me.

  Today the stars were aligned in my favor. When the spinning stopped my car was off the road, half in a ditch, but I hadn’t hit anything. Something
hot and wet had splashed against my legs, and at first I didn’t realize it was the coffee that had been in my console, coffee I’d picked up in the newspaper’s break room. I reached down and shut off the ignition, and sat, listening to the sound of my breathing.

  A tap on the door. I jumped, heart thudding. A man in a dark coat was standing there. He stepped back when I looked up. I flicked the ignition key back on so I could lower the window.

  “You okay?” he asked. “I saw you got cut off.” We both glanced up the road, but the other car was long gone.

  “Yeah, I think I’m fine,” I looked around the car, glanced at my coffee-splattered jeans. “My coffee spilled, but that seems to be it.”

  He walked around the car, looking it over, and came back to the window. I could see his truck pulled off the road, a woman in the passenger seat.

  “Don’t see any damage,” he said. “Think you can drive it out?”

  The car was at a crazy angle, but this is what Subarus are made for. I turned the engine on, pressed the accelerator, toggled the clutch. The tires gripped and I thought I was going to make it, and then the wheels started whirring, spinning up slush and digging into the snow. I stopped trying.

  The man came back to the window. There was something faintly familiar about him, but I couldn’t place him.

  “Look, I might be able to get it, by rocking back and forth, but I’m a little shaky,” I told him. “Do you mind trying?”

  He nodded, and took my place in the car, while I stood off to the side. The snow was still falling steadily, settling on my blue parka. The woman in his truck turned to watch; I saw she had long hair, light in color. He rocked my car a couple of times and gunned the engine at just the right moment, and came roaring neatly out of the ditch. Men either practiced this when no one was looking or had an innate talent for it.

  I thanked him and shook his hand, which seemed to make him uncomfortable. I drove off, and in my rearview mirror I saw him pull out and drive back the way I’d come.

  I drove very carefully the rest of the way, with that tingly feeling you have after a near miss. All your senses are heightened and you’re absurdly aware of everything: the feel of the steering wheel in your hands, the brightness of the sky, the crunch of your tires on the road. You’re very aware of being alive.