The Winter People

by Jennifer McMahon

  “Are you sure you’re up for a road trip, Little Deer?” Ruthie had asked.

  Fawn had nodded eagerly, and so Ruthie said okay, even though she was pretty sure that taking Fawn out in the bitter cold when she was sick was not something Mom would approve of.

  It was only day two without Mom, but already Ruthie was starting to realize the million and one things her mother did each day to keep the household running smoothly—cooking, cleaning, laundry, feeding the cat, plowing and shoveling the driveway, bringing in firewood and splitting kindling, taking care of the chickens, giving Fawn medicine and juice. Ruthie didn’t get how her mother managed it all and made it seem so effortless. Maybe her mom wasn’t as much of a disorganized flake as Ruthie had always thought.

  Buzz had borrowed his dad’s GPS, and they were using it to find their way to 231 Kendall Lane, Woodhaven, Connecticut, the address on Thomas O’Rourke’s driver’s license.

  Buzz had tried to talk her out of driving down to Connecticut, said they should at least do a little research first.

  “It’s been a million years, Ruthie,” he said. “What are the chances they’re even at the same address? I’ve got my laptop—give me five minutes somewhere with Wi-Fi and I can check it out before we go all the way down there for nothing.”

  Ruthie was adamant. She insisted they just get in the truck and go.

  “It’s been fifteen years. Maybe they’ve moved, maybe they haven’t. There might be neighbors or relatives who can tell us something.”

  “It’s a hell of a drive for a dead end,” Buzz said.

  “Look, the wallets have to mean something, my mom saving them all this time, hiding them like that, right? That driver’s license is my only clue, and it leads to Woodhaven, Connecticut. I need to go. I’m going.”

  And so they were on their way, Ruthie silent and deep in thought for most of the ride. She knew Buzz thought she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that going to Woodhaven was the right thing to do, and she didn’t want to waste any more time.

  “So what’s the plan if we find them?” Buzz asked as he navigated the streets of Woodhaven.

  “I’ll ask them if they know my mom and dad. Depending on how that goes, I’ll show them their wallets and ask if they know why my mom might have them.”

  “How’s that gonna help us find Mom?” Fawn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ruthie admitted, fiddling with the broken latch on the glove compartment. “But it beats sitting around waiting.”

  Ruthie was sure she had never been to Connecticut; in fact, she had rarely left Vermont. She was studying the landscape—billboards, chain restaurants and big-box stores, rows of identical houses and condos—with a strange unsettled awe. Her jaw ached from grinding her teeth, a terrible nervous habit she had had since before she could remember.

  The streets they’d turned onto now were set up in a neat grid. All the houses were small capes and ranches with barely any yards and sad little hedges marking property lines. The snow lay in filthy clumps along the edges of the streets. She tried to imagine growing up in a place like this—your neighbors so close that you could see into their windows. Maybe her parents were right to keep them removed from the world on their little homestead in Vermont.

  “This is Kendall,” Buzz announced, as if Ruthie couldn’t read the sign herself. He went to gun shows all over the Northeast with his dad and considered himself quite the experienced world traveler. “It’ll be on the left side of the street.” He scanned house numbers. “Here’s 185. 203. Look, there’s 229, so the next one’s it.” The chirpy female voice on the GPS confirmed it.

  Buzz put on his turn signal and pulled into the driveway of 231 Kendall Lane—a squat house with yellow vinyl siding that was cracked in places. There was a plastic kiddie pool in the yard, the outline just visible through the newly fallen snow. An old white Pontiac with a crushed rear bumper was parked next to the house. Whoever lived here wasn’t rich by any means. But Ruthie knew how it was to be scraping by—buying everything secondhand, living with a couch covered in ugly afghans to hide the stains and holes, and knowing there was never money for things like a trip to Disney World. Or college.

  “You guys wait here,” Ruthie said, grabbing her bag with the two strangers’ wallets tucked inside.

  “I’ll be watching,” Buzz promised.

  “Me, too,” Fawn said, her tiny face peeking out from under the hood of her pink puffy coat.

  Ruthie navigated the ice-covered walk and front steps and pushed the doorbell. She didn’t hear it ring. She waited, just in case, then pulled open the storm door and rapped firmly on the wooden one behind it. There was a Happy Easter wreath—a bunny encircled in faded pastel eggs—thumbtacked to the center of the door. Ruthie knocked again. A woman with fried blond hair and bad skin opened it.

  “Yeah?” The hallway the woman stood in was tiny and dark. It smelled like cigarettes. Ruthie hoped she wouldn’t be invited in.

  “Hi.” Ruthie gave her biggest smile. “I’m looking for Thomas and Bridget O’Rourke.”

  “Who?”

  “They used to live here. Thomas O’Rourke? And Bridget O’Rourke?”

  The woman stared at her blankly.

  “Never heard of them. Sorry.” She shut the door in Ruthie’s face. Undeterred, she tried the neighbors. Most people either weren’t home or didn’t answer the door. Across the street from 231 Kendall Lane, an old man in a bathrobe told Ruthie he didn’t know anybody named O’Rourke. At least he was polite about it.

  “Dead end,” Ruthie announced as she climbed back up into the cab of the truck. “The lady who lives there now had no idea what I was talking about and the one old neighbor who was home never heard of the O’Rourkes. Maybe we did come all this way for nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Fawn echoed, a voice from inside the hood.

  Ruthie gave Buzz a sidelong glance.

  He smiled at her. “Wanna try it my way?”

  Ruthie shrugged and sank down in the seat.

  They drove out of the maze of houses that all looked the same and back to the main road. They passed a fire station, bank, pizza place, and grocery store. Soon the road was lined with shopping plazas on both sides. Ruthie was amazed by how busy they were—cars coming and going in and out of parking lots. Shouldn’t people be at work?

  Buzz pulled into a Starbucks, then reached in the back for his messenger bag.

  “Why are we stopping?” Fawn asked.

  “He’s gonna search for them online. Like I probably should have let him do before we left home this morning.”

  “Probably should have,” Buzz said cheerfully. “But it’s never too late. Come on, let’s get some coffee and hot chocolate.”

  “Can you really do that?” Fawn asked as she followed Ruthie and Buzz out of the truck. “Just look a person up?”

  “Sure,” Ruthie said. “I think you can find out just about anything if you know what you’re doing.”

  “Wow,” Fawn said, her eyes big. “I wish we had a computer.”

  For the millionth time, Ruthie cursed her parents for not allowing a computer in the house. They claimed that technology wasn’t safe, that Big Brother was watching everything, monitoring every e-mail and Web search. Her mom also said wireless Internet and cell towers messed with your body’s electricity and could give you cancer. Ruthie had to go into school early and stay late to use the computers to work on reports and essays.

  Fawn was only in first grade and hadn’t taken any classes in the computer lab yet. It was a magical, mythical realm to her.

  Ruthie ordered coffees for her and Buzz and a hot chocolate for Fawn.

  “Let it cool off before you take a sip, all right?” Ruthie warned.

  “Mom puts milk in to cool it,” Fawn said. Ruthie nodded, and dumped in some half-and-half, testing it herself to make sure it wasn’t too hot before handing it back to Fawn.

  They settled in around a table, and Buzz fired up his laptop, which was covered with
stickers of aliens and UFO organizations. He typed for a minute and scowled at the screen. Fawn pulled her chair around for a closer look.

  “Do you have games on there?” she asked.

  “Tons,” Buzz said.

  “Can you teach me to play one? Please?”

  Buzz smiled. “Later. I promise.”

  Fawn nodded excitedly and took a sip of hot chocolate, not taking her eyes off the screen. Buzz kept typing, fingers clicking on the keyboard.

  “No listing for them in Woodhaven, but I get, like, a zillion hits for Thomas and Bridget O’Rourkes all over the country. We’ve got doctors, actors, you name it. Picking the two of them out from all these names would be like finding a needle in a haystack.” He took a sip of coffee, then typed some more. “But it just so happens that there are two O’Rourkes listed here in town, William and Candace. Don’t know if they’re related to our couple, but I got their addresses and phone numbers. At this point, I’d say they’re our best lead.”

  “Let’s go,” Ruthie said, hopeful once more.

  “I thought I was gonna try a computer game,” Fawn said, her face serious.

  “When we get back to Vermont,” Buzz said. “Right now, we’re going to go check out these addresses.”

  “Because maybe the people can help us find Mom?” Fawn said.

  “That’s what we’re hoping,” Ruthie told her. “Slip your coat back on and grab your cocoa.”

  Buzz jotted down the addresses and closed up his laptop, and they carried their drinks to the truck.

  Back on Main Street, waiting at the next traffic light, Ruthie studied the landscape of stores and restaurants in a strip mall up ahead: Woodhaven Liquors, Donny’s New York Style Pizza, Pink Flamingo Gifts. There, at the end of the strip, was a closed business with boarded-up windows and a FOR RENT sign out front.

  She blinked, bit her tongue to make sure she was awake and not dreaming.

  “Stop!” Ruthie yelled, gesturing wildly. “Pull in there, next driveway on the left.”

  Buzz turned left, pulling into the strip mall parking lot too fast—Ruthie bumped against Fawn, and Fawn leaned into Buzz. Ruthie’s coffee spilled all over her lap.

  “What the hell?” Buzz said once he’d stopped the truck, but Ruthie was already hopping out of the cab, heading for the closed shop, the faded red sign drawing her in: FITZGERALD’S BAKERY.

  She held her breath as she approached it, walking in slow motion, suddenly unsure if she really wanted to do this. She shuffled like a sleepwalker, half of her brain lost in a dream-state, the other half scrambling to make sense of what she was seeing: could this place really be here, existing in the waking world?

  She approached cautiously, heart thumping in her ears. Plywood covered the windows, and newspaper was taped to the inside of the glass front door. But a square had fallen away, and Ruthie pressed her face against the glass, hands cupped around her eyes to keep out the glare.

  There it was: the long glass-fronted display case that had held rows of cupcakes, cookies, and pies, now empty except for a broken lightbulb and a few forgotten doilies. Even the black-and-white-checked floor was the same. She could practically smell the yeasty warm fragrance of fresh-baked bread, taste the sugar on her tongue, feel her mother’s hand wrapped around hers.

  What do you choose, Dove?

  “No way!” Buzz had come up behind her and caught her enough by surprise that she jumped in alarm. “Is this the bakery you keep dreaming about?”

  Ruthie shook her head. “It can’t be,” she stammered. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence?” The words felt hollow. But some part of her brain, the part that held dearly to all that was rational and made sense, couldn’t let her accept the truth.

  “Coincidence, hell! How many Fitzgerald’s Bakeries can there be? Does it look the same inside?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, turning away, the lie making her throat tight, the truth making her dizzy and disoriented. “Come on, let’s go check out those addresses.”

  As they pulled out of the parking lot, Ruthie’s eyes stayed on the boarded-up bakery. She grasped for some kind of explanation, but all that came to mind were the sort of crazy theories Buzz might conjure up—a dream from a past life, a psychic link to some other girl—things there was no way she could ever make herself believe in.

  She rested her head against the cool glass of the truck window and closed her eyes, thinking.

  How was it possible to dream about an actual, physical place you’d never been to?

  And if the bakery was real, did that mean the woman with the cat’s-eye glasses was, too?

  Katherine

  Katherine hurried along the slushy sidewalks, realizing how completely inadequate her uninsulated, smooth-soled city boots were. She should have taken the car. But it hadn’t seemed like a long walk, and she’d thought the exercise and fresh air would do her good.

  She was on her way to the bookstore. After finishing Visitors from the Other Side last night, she’d looked up Sara Harrison Shea on her laptop and learned almost nothing. Her hope was that the local bookstore might have something else by or about her.

  Surely it wasn’t just a coincidence that Gary had a copy of this book hidden away in his things, or that Sara was from West Hall, the same place he visited the day he died.

  And then there was the ring: Auntie’s ring. When Katherine read Sara’s description of Auntie’s bone ring as she sat on the couch yesterday, her heart jackhammered. She looked past the book in her hand to the ring she wore on her own finger, the ring Gary had given her. She turned it around, touched the strange, indiscernible carvings. Auntie’s ring. Was it even possible?

  First the hidden book, then the ring—she wasn’t sure what any of this meant, but she hoped to find some answers at the bookstore.

  Katherine’s apartment was at the north end of Main Street, just before the juncture with Route 6. Her neighborhood consisted of stately old Victorian homes that had been converted to apartments and offices. She passed a dentist, several lawyers, an environmental consulting company, a bed-and-breakfast, and a funeral home.

  Farther down Main Street, she walked by a sporting-goods shop with snowshoes, skis, and parkas in the window. There was an old, faded painted sign on the side of the building, just above a window with bicycles hanging in it: JAMESON’S TACK AND FEED.

  Next she came to the old junk shop. No doubt it was full of the kind of sepia-toned portraits of strangers long dead that Gary had loved. It was an obsession she’d never understood.

  “Each photo is like a novel I can never open,” Gary had explained once. “I can hold it in my hand and only begin to imagine what’s inside—the lives these people might have led.”

  Sometimes, if there was a little clue on the photo—a name, date, or place—he’d try to research it, and when they sat down for dinner at night, he’d tell her and Austin excitedly about Zachary Turner, a cooper in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who was killed in the Civil War. Austin would listen intently, asking his father questions as if these were people Gary actually once knew: Did he have a dog, Papa? What color was his horse? Gary would make up answers, and by the time dinner was finished, they’d created a whole life for this long-dead stranger: a happy life full of horses and dogs and a wife and children he loved very much.

  Feet thoroughly soaked now, Katherine paused to look in the junk-shop window: an antique gramophone, a Flexible Flyer sled, a silver trumpet. A fox stole was wrapped around the shoulders of a battered-looking mannequin. The fox had a sunken face, small, pointed teeth, and two scratched glass eyes that stared out at Katherine and seemed, at once, to know all of her secrets.

  The bookstore couldn’t be more than half a mile away, but it seemed impossibly far. The cold bit at her face and at her hands in their thin gloves. Her eyes teared up, crusting her lashes with ice. She felt like an Antarctic explorer: Ernest Shackleton, trudging across a bleak frozen landscape.

  She got to the bridge over the river and stopped to rest along
the sidewalk, hands on the rail, staring down into the brown water, half frozen at the edges. Something moved along the right bank, just below the bridge, a sleek dark shape pulling itself along. A beaver or muskrat, maybe—she didn’t know the difference. It humped its way across the ice and dove into the water, then was gone.

  Katherine turned from the half-frozen river and forced herself to move forward, shuffling across the bridge, continuing down Main Street, her hands and feet numb now, her whole body hollowed out. She thought of the little brown creature, how surely and smoothly it had entered the water, how it had barely made any ripples. It was perfectly adapted to its environment. She, too, would have to find a way to adapt. To move through this new landscape with smooth ease. It would start, she decided, with a trip to the sporting-goods store for proper boots, coat, hat, and gloves.

  She passed a yoga studio, an ice-cream shop, and an out-of-business florist. There were signs taped up in all the shopwindows, on lampposts and bulletin boards, showing a photo of a local girl who had gone missing: sixteen-year-old Willa Luce. Last seen wearing a purple-and-white ski jacket. She left her friend’s house on December 5 to walk the half-mile home and was never seen again. Katherine looked at the girl’s smiling face—short brown hair, a smattering of freckles, the glint of silver braces on her teeth. Maybe she’d turn up. Maybe she wouldn’t. Sometimes bad things—terrible things, even—happened.

  At last, she arrived at the bookshop. The bell on the door jingled cheerfully. The store was warm and smelled of old paper and wood. She was instantly comforted. The worn floorboards creaked under her feet. She wiggled her fingers, trying to get feeling back.

  She passed the front tables of staff suggestions, bestsellers, and new releases, and made her way toward the counter, where a man with a beard and a green wool vest was typing on a computer. But she stopped when she spotted the poetry section. She and Gary used to read poetry out loud to each other in bed on lazy mornings: Rilke, Frank O’Hara, Baudelaire. All the great dead men, Gary called them. He loved poetry and had even written a short verse as part of their wedding vows: