Cover of Snow

by Jenny Milchman

  “Oh Nora,” he said, so hushed I could hardly hear him for the clatter of branches knocking against the window in the sudden gale. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry. Please don’t blame yourself. It happens. It can happen to anybody—”

  “To you?” I burst out. “Would you have done this after your family died?”

  He was staring at the floor. “I might’ve done anything in the days—weeks, months—after they died,” he said roughly. “Anything. And it wouldn’t have mattered. If I did do something like this, I might not even remember it.” He raised his face, meeting my gaze. “Which is the biggest reason I wish we hadn’t let that happen just now.”

  It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in.

  And then something happened, maybe the only thing that could’ve made Ned look up, and me look away from him, both of us with a start.

  Outside, in quick succession, two car doors slammed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ned paused for just a second, slapping his pocket, plunging his hand inside.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “I can’t leave this room unlocked,” he hissed. “My laptop’s in here.” He lunged for a desk drawer, yanking it open. A shadow passed over his face, a look that made the one he’d worn when he discovered his house burning appear pacific. Ned fisted his hands, and he spoke in a low growl. “Stay here. I’m going to take a look outside.”

  I tiptoed over to the drawer he had opened. It was empty.

  I couldn’t just stay behind in Ned’s office, or hunched alone in the hall. If I went out the way we’d come in, the back way, then I could conceal myself.

  I retraced our steps and eased open the door.

  Images of coming face-to-face with a mask played like a movie in my mind. At the least there’d be a gray patrol car, maybe a circle of them, surrounding the building like a pack of wolves. Hugging the side of the building, I began to inch forward.

  Snow swarmed around me, stirred up by the wind. The rear lot was empty but for my car. The road that led to the brick structure looked clear.

  Ned stalked up to me. “My laptop’s gone. Goddammit, all the notes for my book were on it. Not to mention this article.”

  Surely Ned had backups: a flash drive, such as Dugger had given me, or hard copies somewhere. Then I recalled. He’d had hard copies inside his house.

  Ned was staring out across the snow-heaped lot. “We both heard those doors close, right?”

  I nodded.

  “But no one was inside the building. We would’ve heard them. My computer must’ve been taken before we got here.” Ned took a slow, dawning look around the parking lot. Gooseflesh broke out on my skin. “Did someone just get here?” he asked. “Or did they just leave?”

  “Nobody’s here now. We can see that.” I shrugged helplessly, and then it hit me. “Oh, Ned, if someone stole your laptop, I wonder if they might also have gone for—” I took off at a run for my car, Ned at my heels.

  I tugged open the car door. The dome light came on, and I took a quick look inside, then one more to make sure. The second look was unnecessary: I could see my bag was gone.

  I had no house, and now no phone, or money. If I hadn’t stuck my keys in my coat pocket, I’d have had no car, either. I would’ve been stuck. Trapped.

  “Hey,” Ned said from behind me. “What’s going on? What happened?”

  Before I could answer him I recalled the one possession I had that mattered more than anything else.

  It couldn’t have cost me more than a minute to hunch down, hunting the last thing I still owned in the world. No one even knows it’s here, I told myself, searching the floor. And the things inside don’t mean anything to anybody else. Still, my fingers trembled as I leaned over, sweeping beneath the seat where it must have slid during my journey, until my hand finally brushed the soft flannel of Brendan’s box. I could lose my wallet, my cell, even my tools. But the items in Brendan’s box were the last things he had to give. Awash in relief, I stood up.

  “Well,” I said to Ned. “Your laptop wasn’t the only thing that was stolen.”

  I turned around on an uneven hummock of snow, scanning the lot for him.

  There was nobody anywhere around.

  Ned was gone, too.

  SECRETS

  Jean was as nervous as a sixteen-year-old getting dressed for a date. She wanted to look not only nice, but important. Like someone you had to believe.

  Although she never forgot to be grateful that she hadn’t suffered like Eileen, her sister-in-law’s life was in truth the fuller, containing all the normal features of womanhood. Eileen once had a husband, children. That made her worthy of consideration in a way Jean never would be.

  The most Jean had had to lose was a house. Lifeless boards and bricks that, once cooled, would be cleared away as if they had never stood or sheltered a soul.

  Maybe that wasn’t true. Jean had known love, it just hadn’t led to marriage or a family. It couldn’t have. How could two people live together with a secret as sharp as a blade between them and never speak of it? They would spend their lives avoiding being sliced to shards. It was better that Vern had married someone who didn’t have any idea, even if that someone was plain, thin Dottie Miller, who had dried out to a husk over the years.

  Jean felt tears prick her eyes. She’d been crying a lot lately.

  She checked the mirror to straighten her skirts and make sure her powder hadn’t gotten disturbed. Then she tugged on a hat and made the trip across the road to visit her only real companion in the world.

  Eileen fixed tea, while Jean tried to hide the fact that she was looking around for something to go with it. Eileen’s counters were so bare, and her cupboards and fridge were always empty as well. She had nothing to offer, and Jean felt stung by sorrow again. In some ways Jean had passed through life untouched. She might leave no footprints, but she was also largely unscathed. While Eileen had been dragged through every bit of her life, and the violence of it had simply worn her away.

  Jean gathered breath. “Dear heart?”

  Eileen lowered her sharp chin to her cup.

  Jean’s tea tasted bitter; Eileen hadn’t added any sugar. She only bought the fake stuff anyway.

  Jean fought to make her next words distinct. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  The sip of tea Eileen had taken started to dribble from her mouth. Her face went slack; it looked like she was having a stroke.

  “Dear heart, what’s wrong?” Jean struggled to rise.

  “Don’t,” Eileen commanded.

  Don’t what? Jean wondered. Get up? Or tell you?

  Jean sat back down, watching her sister-in-law warily. “I might not have. I might never have said anything. But now with Brendan—”

  The cup rattled as Eileen set it on the table. Jean reached out to assist her, and when she did, Eileen caught her wrist in the strong winch of her hand.

  “I’ve told you never to speak about him.”

  A sound escaped Jean’s mouth, something like a mew. But she forced the words out. “I wish you’d known—been able to see how much fun Brendan was. Even afterward. Oh, could he make me laugh—”

  “Stop it.” Eileen’s voice had hardly risen, but her grip was like a vise.

  Jean abruptly closed her mouth.

  “Don’t ever bring him up again.” Eileen bore down on Jean’s arm, squeezing the flesh around the bone.

  “You’re hurting me!” cried Jean.

  “Understand?” Eileen hissed. “And nothing to do with him, either.”

  Jean was stricken by an altogether alien sense of pain. She hadn’t let anything come close enough to hurt her in a long, long time. Her wrist blanched beneath Eileen’s strong fingers. The relief when her sister-in-law finally freed her was so great that Jean couldn’t imagine how she had ever dared consider unburdening herself, far less speaking her mind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  One thought stabbed my brain lik
e a shard of glass. Get out of here.

  For a moment, though, my body wouldn’t obey. I spun in a clumsy circle, noting that the door to the building was still cracked, just as I had left it, and that not a single boot print or slide mark interrupted the swaths of snow we ourselves hadn’t disturbed. It was as if Ned had been pulled up into outer space.

  He’d been right there, just behind me, a moment ago. I was about to shout his name when I stopped as abruptly as if someone had clapped a hand across my face.

  High on the hill, on the opposite side of this valley, stood the police department. It sat in shadow now. All looked motionless there, but Ned’s description of a hive of activity came back to me on a cold current of air.

  Anything that had come so swiftly, as silent and skillful as a sword, was capable of making me disappear as well. I couldn’t help Ned right now. If he had chosen to go, well, that was further indication of the way he’d do anything for a story, even leave me behind on a frozen, deserted lot. And if the more likely scenario proved true—that something terrible had taken place—then the farther I got from the scene, the more I could help him.

  How? By calling the police?

  I dove into my car, igniting the engine. Swerving wildly, I reversed out of the parking lot without once looking over my shoulder or into the rearview mirror.

  My chest was still rising and falling in uneven gasps as I headed down the empty, snow-banked road. The State Police, I realized. They were the ones to call. But I didn’t have a cell phone anymore, nor a house with a phone to use. I had to get out of Wedeskyull. It wasn’t safe.

  And then a thought occurred that made my breathing even out.

  Something had happened to Ned. But I had been standing not twenty feet away from him and nothing had been done to me.

  I began to assemble the pieces of a plan. I would report Ned’s disappearance using a pay phone. Wedeskyull still featured a few; many of the residents still used them.

  It had snowed while I was gone; a foot or more sat atop the rock-hard drifts. I wasn’t aware which way I was driving. Or maybe I was, maybe I’d needed to come here. Because I’d chosen to head into town via the street my house sat on.

  The street my house used to sit on. I hardly slowed as I went past—imagining someone sent to watch and wait for me to do exactly this—but that didn’t stop the sight from registering.

  Club hadn’t begun to hint at the devastation I would find, the accumulation of snow rapidly laying waste to a smoldering ruin. Here and there on the ash-heaped plot of land, smoking black stalks stuck up through the drifts, like shards of decaying teeth. Studs. The farmhouse had burned down to its 150-year-old studs.

  All the hours I had spent there, prying at paper till my fingernails peeled, stroking on paint with a horsehair brush, ignoring my stinging eyes, were gone, as burned up as the house. All of the time Brendan and I had spent living here. The loss of that past hit me harder than the destruction. It was as if it had all never been.

  I entered the intersection that made up the center of town. A fresh onslaught of tears blocked out the sight of familiar things—Al’s garage, Coffee Rockets, the pharmacy—as I drove down the recently plowed streets.

  I pulled up in front of the movie theater. I had to dial information for the State Police, using a credit card number I’d memorized over the years. I told my story to the person who answered.

  “Ma’am, we don’t take missing person reports for an adult until forty-eight hours has passed,” said the man on the other end. “And unless this occurred on the interstate, it wouldn’t be a matter for us. Where are you located? Where did the incident take place?”

  A pause. “Ma’am?”

  Hadn’t Melanie Cooper just been through this? What had I thought would happen? “Ma’am?”

  I pressed the silver lever as silently as I could to disconnect the call.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The patrol car stopped me on Patchy Hollow Road.

  I was headed toward the only person I could imagine seeking shelter with now, the one person who felt like family in Wedeskyull now that Brendan was gone.

  I opened my door and got out, a brute breaking of protocol. Any civilian knew to stay in the car while the police officer walked around. But if I had sat there, the cop would’ve seen me trembling, legs vibrating on the seat. Getting out was a show of strength. It was Tim Lurcquer.

  “Nora,” he said, flicking his light to my face, then damping it, along with a note of surprise in his voice. “You came back.”

  Tim hadn’t been at Ned’s office, then. Not unless he was a damn good actor.

  “Going to your mother-in-law’s?”

  I didn’t answer. There was a mad thrum in my head. There was no feeling of danger about this encounter, and yet a man had disappeared virtually in front of me, and I wasn’t telling the police.

  Tim’s face was mostly hidden behind his mask, only small, close eyes, and a thin, ungenerous mouth exposed to the elements. I pulled my hat down, too.

  A flock of bats took off, skittering, disturbed from hibernation by something. I watched until they became scarcely visible miniature black rockets against the sky. Then a second gray car appeared, just a shadow in the night, and Club let down his window. He shone a flashlight in my face for longer than Tim had; I had to blink and shield my eyes. “Lurcquer, we’re needed.”

  “Yeah?” Tim said, touching the radio on his belt. “Nothing came in.”

  Club looked at me again. “Say hello to Mrs. Hamilton.”

  He meant Eileen; Jean was simply Jean, and sometimes Aunt Jean, to everyone. I decided it was just as well if no one knew where I was really going.

  Club drove away, and Tim got into his car and took off after him.

  Jean’s drive had been recently cleared by whichever service she used, but she didn’t seem to have bothered shoveling the day’s accumulation off her porch. I mounted the humped steps unsteadily, holding on to the railing, then tapped on Jean’s door with a gloved fist. She could be heard approaching slowly before she opened up. A dry gust of heat hit me.

  “Oh, Nora,” she said. “I’m so glad you came back.”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Jean,” I said after a pause. “I’m so sorry about the house.” I leaned forward awkwardly, and Jean enveloped me in a hug.

  “You have nothing to be sorry about,” she whispered fiercely. “Nothing.”

  She led me inside. Jean’s foursquare had always been a pleasant, homey place, but today nothing fragrant came from the kitchen, and the holiday lights she still had entwined around her staircase hadn’t been turned on.

  “I’ll fix us a snack,” Jean offered. “Where are your things?”

  All I had left in the world wasn’t even really mine, but I realized that it shouldn’t be left in the car. I gave her arm a quick squeeze, then turned for the door.

  “Go over and say hello, why don’t you?” Jean called. She meant to Eileen, and I didn’t have the heart to respond.

  As if she’d been summoned, Eileen was emerging from her house when I came out of Jean’s. My whip-thin mother-in-law was coatless; the energy with which she was moving must have helped to combat the cold.

  “Nora!” she shouted as she strode forward.

  I began to shiver. My hand shook as I tried to locate my keys in my coat.

  “I know you’ve been in my house!” Eileen’s arms pinwheeled as she advanced across the snow-heaped field, refusing to slow or find her footing. “Rascal’s hair was on the floor!”

  I felt that lacquered clump again between my fingers. It seemed a long time ago that I had invaded my mother-in-law’s lair.

  “Calm down, Eileen,” I said, when she drew close. Couldn’t a draught have accomplished the thing she referred to so plainly, as if it weren’t the slightest bit odd to keep a dead dog’s fur lying around?

  “Don’t tell me what to do, you thieving witch.” She made a brutal stab at my face. I flinched instinctively, but my mother-in-law didn’t so much as falte
r. “And stop going after things that don’t belong to you.” Did she mean Bill’s journal? “You never know, Nora. Someone might do the same to you.”

  It was a strange comment, especially when you considered that I had recently lost just about everything I had. “What do you mean?”

  Eileen didn’t seem aware of how cold she was, her thin frame snapping back and forth like a line in the wind. There was silence over the twin lawns and roadway that bisected them. Nothing flew or cracked or rustled. The sky was still almost lightless, just an ivory hint of the coming moon.

  She turned on me. “All your poking and prying will get you nowhere,” Eileen said. “Leaving well enough alone is a skill.”

  Words came to me unbidden. “Like you left Brendan alone after Red died?”

  There was a cold, pure silence then. The air seemed to settle around us, heavy, laden with unfallen snow. “You’ve got that backward,” Eileen said at last. “It was your precious husband who left someone alone.”

  “Because he was trying to help,” I replied, almost panting. My own vision was fiery now. “In the only way a child could think of. Has it occurred to you that neither of them should’ve been on their own?”

  My mother-in-law looked at me, and in that moment I was more frightened of her than of any of the cops. Eileen’s fists were folded and in her eyes was a look of sheer loathing. If she’d had a gun, she would’ve shot me. No, something hotter, more intimate than a bullet. She would’ve dragged a knife along the skin of my throat.

  “I’m sorry,” I began. “That was out of line—”

  My mother-in-law turned around on the uneven ground. She walked off, stumbling once and going down on both knees. Before I could get to her, she had risen and started forward once more, back bowed so that she wouldn’t fall again.