Cover of Snow (28 page)

The single traffic light in Wedeskyull was quaint, the complete absence of any such beacon in Cold Kettle less so.

The only thing that signaled my arrival was a sign, swagged with snow, announcing the name of the town. There was also one stop sign, so riddled by BB pellets that the “S” had been obliterated, and the “T” turned into a “C” so that its face seemed to read
COP
instead of
STOP
.

Ironic.

I decided not to risk any more unplowed streets. I pulled over on Main Street, guessing at the lines to park between. Then I emerged into the swirling sea of snow. It flew up, down, and sideways like corn in a popper.

Brendan had been here. I could feel him all around me; this was a place he'd been a part of. But Brendan was Wedeskyull, born and raised.

For a second I actually scanned my surroundings, imagining my husband's tall, lanky form appearing amidst a cloud of snow, both of us rushing to reunite.
Where have you been?
I would cry.
Right here, Chestnut.
A pause.
I've always been here.

With a start, I realized that I'd better find my way inside quickly. I was chilled, my mind showing the effects of the cold.

The shops along Main Street had been sealed up tight, closed early, not due to the storm, which the residents were surely used to, but because business in Cold Kettle moved like a trickle of water in a winter stream, and there was no reason to be out on a day like today. The houses on the side streets were warmly lit but also somehow shut off.

The only sign of movement was scurrying snow, and a fluttering lamppost, cloaked in the detritus of small town announcements.

I walked up to it.

Lost kitten and dog signs, a tattered missing child flier, several torn advertisements for yard sales and church bake-offs that took place last summer. One particular scrap of paper whipping in the remnants of wind snatched my attention. Half of a poster for Stonelickers Tavern.
THURSDAY
IS
LADIES
NIGHT.
HALF-PRICED
SHOTS
AND
CHASERS
ON
FRIDAY
.

My husband and the dead boy in the woods had both been to this bar.

Suddenly, the Looking Glass Inn appeared behind a curtain of flakes. It had a majestic mansard roof, and what looked like an original stained-glass transom.

Before I could head toward it, there came the squeak of fresh snow being trod upon.

I spun around, the movement nearly sprawling me on my feet. Nobody was there. Not Brendan. Not anyone. The inn would be a haven, a place I could both hide in and look for information about the many dead left back in Wedeskyull.

I rang the bell on a long, burnished desk, and a man emerged from a back room, scratching his head in a befuddled way and looking around. “I need a place to stay,” I told him.

He didn't react to my abrupt tone. “Of course. Just for the night, then?”

“I'm not sure how long.” I patted my pockets, feeling the wads of Jean's money, and also a prick of tears at my eyes.

He eyed me with concern. “If you don't mind … you look a little peaked, luv. Could you do with a cup of tea? You might get settled in your room while I fix it.”

Now tears were really welling up. I turned away. “Tea would be wonderful. Thank you,” I said, hoping a touch of formality would compensate for my sad display.

My room was papered in pink, and had a lofty bed with blankets upon it, the puffiest one matching the flowered walls. I had to work to remember the last time I'd spent a whole night in a bed. I found a small chest and placed Brendan's box inside, taking two photos from it first. Then I made the journey back down the curving staircase in search of my tea.

The innkeeper met me in the parlor, tray held aloft in his hands. “I'm Dick Granger, by the way,” he said. “Dick, if you need anything tonight.”

I tried to work up a smile. “Nora Hamilton.”

Dick set the tray on a table and indicated that I should take a wing chair beside it. I sat down, squinting as he handed me a cup. The skin on his hands looked familiar, blotchy with paint, and so roughened and dry that shreds of paper stuck to the knuckles.

He saw me looking and blushed. “We weren't expecting guests this week.” He gestured over his shoulder to some cans and tools stacked in a corner. “We've just arrived back in town, and I was taking the opportunity to go about some work.” He shook his head. “The upkeep on this place—well, it's hard to believe.”

I laughed, a sudden, spontaneous sound. “Not as hard as you might think.” I looked around. “The whole house is beautiful. You've done a great job.”

“Thanks, luv.”

“May I ask you a question?” With a few warming sips in me, my manners had returned.

Dick nodded.

“Do you know this man? Or this woman?” I asked. I withdrew the picture of Brendan, with the sliver of Amber beside him. The one without the bloody streak on it.

Dick looked down at it, and shook his head. “I don't recall ever seeing him. And as for the lady, I can hardly make her out. Have they been to our inn?”

The question brought with it a charge of pain. “I think so. A long time ago. How long have you been here?”

Dick looked at me, perhaps just a touch less friendly now, and I imagined how close to urgent my tone must've sounded. “We took over three years ago.”

Brendan and I were married by then.

Dick added, “I'm afraid that I'm one of the few people in town who wouldn't recognize everyone who's ever lived here or passed through.”

I nodded, then withdrew the other photograph. The boy in the Stonelickers T-shirt. “Is there a chance you know him?”

A frown blossomed on his face, and he took a step back. “Did you tell me how you came to be here, luv? Do
you
know this boy?”

The silence of the parlor, the whole cavernous, empty inn, settled around us.

“Not exactly,” I said in a small voice. “Who is he?”

Dick didn't answer my question.

“I'm looking for someone who knows him,” I went on. “I know something about—I mean, I might have some information—”

“Well, that would be a blessing now, wouldn't it,” Dick said, his frown easing. “He comes from a town in Colorado, but he has family here in Cold Kettle. A grandmother. I can put you in touch with her.”

“That would be great,” I said.

Dick's hands rasped as he rubbed them together. “Perhaps you already know this, but he went missing while he was on holiday here a few weeks ago.”

“While he was here?” How had the boy made it to the woods in Wedeskyull?

“His poor grandmum, she's been a wreck. I'll go ring her right now. She thinks the sun rises and sets on the lad.”

Sometimes a circle closes so seamlessly, you don't remember that it was ever open.

I posed one final question. “Can you tell me when he disappeared?”

Dick hesitated. “I do hate to keep the date in mind. The police say that the more time passes, the less chance they have of bringing the lad home safe. Do you know, the townspeople still search, days when it's clear. There's too much land to cover all at once. I've taken part in some searches myself when we haven't been booked.”

I watched him steadily.

Dick let out a sigh, and began to tick off on chapped fingers. “Let me see. It was …” A pause as he calculated. “Longer than I thought. It's unfair how quickly time passes, isn't it?”

I was gripping the photo so tightly that a corner of it slit my skin.

“It happened the day after we returned from England, so it must've been—”

A line of blood appeared on my hand.

“Yes, that's right,” he said, more to himself than to me. “It was the sixteenth of January.”

“Do you want me to call Liv Peterson, luv? You can run over to see her in the morning,” suggested Dick. When I didn't answer he added, “Greg's grandmother?”

I frowned. Fragments were flying, connections being made, faster than I could keep track of them.

“No,” I told him.

“No?” he repeated.

“I mean, I'd prefer to see her today. If that's all right.”

Dick glanced toward a large parlor window. Early-winter dark was gathering.

“Please,” I continued. “It's—I think it might be important.”
And I might not have much time,
I added silently.

“All right, then,” Dick said. “Let's see what she has to say.”

It didn't matter what she said now, of course. What mattered would be what was said when I told her. I stood up effortfully. This town still held hope—probably Greg's grandmother most of all—and I was the only person who knew that he was dead.

The innkeeper said that Liv Peterson lived just a few blocks from the center of town, the center being the stretch of street with the inn upon it.

“Of course, in this town, everyone thinks he lives in the center,” Dick added, and we shared a smile, mine brief. We both came from places bigger than Cold Kettle.

I decided to walk. Things seemed safer on foot, where I could take off instantly at a run. I hurried forward, fresh snow flying soundlessly in front of my boots.

Glancing over my shoulder, both the shoveled sidewalk and drifted street appeared to be empty. A shortcut the innkeeper had described came up suddenly on the left. The path bisected an orchard of apple trees, stripped bare and hunched like crones in the twilight, then wound into Mrs. Peterson's yard.

I climbed a wraparound porch, and knocked on an elaborately carved door.

My mind flitted briefly to a day when all this might be over. Could I be happy in a place even smaller than Wedeskyull? The trouble was, whether I could or not, I couldn't imagine what
over
meant. What answers would I have found, what would be the status of the police, and how would I ever feel safe again?

The door opened and a woman appeared, looking many years younger than grandmother age. She was dressed in jeans and tall boots, and her slightly silvered hair was worn long.

“Nora,” she said. “Dick Granger said you know something about Greggy.” She turned and walked inside the house. I followed, startled by the lack of introduction or invitation. It was as if the need for greetings, an exchange of names and pleasantries, didn't even register. It didn't, I realized. This woman's grandson had disappeared and that meant only one thing was on her mind.

Despite a growing sense of urgency—I could picture the cops descending in a gray mass out of the mountains—the words wouldn't form quite yet. Luckily Mrs. Peterson seemed to realize her manner might've been abrupt.

“I'm Olivia, by the way,” she said. “And I'm sorry to all but drag you into my house, but the last month has been a nightmare. We've been given the runaround by everybody. I'm afraid I've lost all hint of social graces.”

She strode over to a couch in a cluttered sitting room, jerking her thumb toward a chair. We passed a big table, covered with papers, and several framed photographs of the boy at different ages. First, a baby cowlick, then corn silk hair that deepened over the years to that leonine mane. I recognized one of the later ones from Eileen's dungeon. There were other pictures too, of a woman with a spill of hair like golden syrup, whom I presumed to be the boy's mother.

“Yes,” I said, taking the seat and finding it difficult to breathe beneath a sudden weight. “I understand.”

Olivia's glance hardly seemed to take me in. She leaned over and flicked on a lamp. “I doubt that,” she said, but then looked again, a little more closely.

I met her gaze.

“Jesus,” she said. “I've become cruelly blunt. And unseeing. You've had your own share of trouble, haven't you?”

I swallowed, looking away. “My husband died last month.”

Olivia brought a still-smooth hand to her face. “I'm sorry. This is why we have social graces. To avoid moments like this.”

I almost laughed, but the impulse shriveled inside me.

And then Olivia frowned. “Your husband died,” she said, and all strength seemed to leave her body. She aged a decade before my eyes, shoulders sagging, face crumpling into folds. Even her hair seemed to wilt. “Are you saying that there's some connection between your husband's—between your husband and Greggy?”

She had given me the opening herself, found it, and invited me in. But somehow I couldn't take it. Protest rose like a froth to my lips. “No, Mrs. Peterson, I don't know that at all.” It was true, but only technically.

Olivia continued to stare at me with those keen eyes, the one part of her that hadn't seemed to lose its vigor under this new threat, and I felt compelled to go on.

“My husband—he killed himself.”

Olivia Peterson was the first person I'd ever said it to. I hadn't even told my story at the SOS meeting. She seemed to sense her position, averting her eyes, allowing time for the words to float away in the air, lose some of their terrible power.

“Come,” she said at last, and rose from the couch. “You poor thing.”

She led me into a vast white kitchen, pouring juice and setting a glass down on an island, then leaning into the fridge again. “I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of food.” She paused. “See? My social graces are returning. The truth is, I don't have
any
food. The neighbors brought some by for a while. Then I asked them to stop.”

“That's all right.” It took a lot to make me lose my appetite these days, but this had done it. I was kicking myself. Not only had I revealed the truth about Brendan to someone I didn't even know, but doing so had brought me further away from the purpose of my visit. How could I now tell this woman that her grandson was dead?

“Sorry if we got off on the wrong foot,” Olivia said, extending a hand to me over the countertop. She'd clearly chosen to accept my halfhearted reassurance for now. “You've been through the wringer yourself.”

I wiped condensation off my glass.

“To be honest, in addition to worried half out of my mind, I've also been superbly ticked off for the last month. The police have been no help at all. They think just because Greggy's gotten in some trouble in the past that he must have run away. Afraid of getting caught having done something. Or up to no good somewhere else.”

“What kind of trouble was he in?” I said after a moment.

“Oh, the usual. Driving without a license. Underage drinking, a possession charge or two. He's stolen some things.”

That sounded like just about every crime under the sun for a minor, and Olivia seemed unbothered by it, but I chose not to press her. Dugger's rhyme wafted in on a current of air.
Steal, kneel, make no deal
.

Olivia was watching me, as if reading my response. “Kid with no dad.” She shrugged. “A little recklessness is to be expected.”

I gathered my thoughts together. “But you don't believe he ran away?”

Olivia met me with a stare. “Greggy would never worry us like this. That's what I keep telling the police. His mother thought he might've gone back home to Colorado early, but that's ridiculous. He wouldn't have wanted to cut short his visit. He and I have always been close. Do you know he still visits every single Christmas?” She looked at me, then shook her head since, of course, I didn't know.

“But what he feels for me is nothing,” Olivia went on. “Compared to how devoted he is to his mother.” She paused. “Kat flew back to Tell Spring a week ago. But why wouldn't Greggy have told us if that's where he was going?”

Fragments still sorting themselves out, bits and pieces in my mind. “Tell Spring,” I repeated. “It's in Colorado.”

Olivia began to pace back and forth, paying no mind to my statement or the odd way in which I'd phrased it. “We've done everything!” she burst out. “I'm sure Dick told you about the searches, just in case Greggy is out there in the—in case he's still around.”

The muscles in her face trembled, a queer, palsy-like effect. She knew what it would mean if anyone found her grandson in the woods more than a month later.

“They won't do an Amber Alert. We even met with a child exploitation expert. He showed us how to make up fliers.” Olivia stalked over to a kitchen drawer, taking out a stack of papers and handing one to me.

Eileen had mounted this photograph in her basement, and Olivia had it framed in her sitting room. I wondered about the connection between the two women as I regarded those hazel eyes, that rumpled forelock of pure gold.

The boy's demographics were printed on the sheet, as were a phone number to call with information, and the final, stark pronouncement:

MSSING
SINCE
JANUARY
16
TH
.

“We posted them all over the place,” Olivia said. She had poured herself some juice; now she tossed it back like a shot of whiskey. “Kat took some home with her, but we mailed them, too. Made them look like real letters. Something important so everyone would open them up. That was a tip from the expert. Otherwise, he said, most of them go right in the trash.”

I shook my head along with her, two people recognizing how untouched was the rest of the world by our own personal tragedies.

Olivia left the room and I trailed her.

“We drew a circle around Cold Kettle,” she said, continuing to speak by rote. “Troy on one side, Montreal on the other, and we've been sending them to as many homes as possible.”

I nodded.

“We couldn't include Albany. It's taken weeks already.”

Wedeskyull lay in that circle, well north of Troy. But I hadn't received the letter as far as I knew. Had mine been one of the addresses missed? Or did Vern have influence over the mail? While in the context of things, it might've been the least of his misdeeds, the idea that something as unceasing as mail service could be made to go awry chilled me.

I spoke casually. “You sent them to Wedeskyull, right?”

“Sure,” she said. “I even went to visit someone in Wedeskyull. Just yesterday. A woman I thought might—” Then she broke off.

I nodded her on.

But Olivia had finally halted in her aimless wanderings. “I'm sure this is me forgetting my manners again, but weren't you supposed to be bringing me information? All you've done is ask questions.”

She was right. I couldn't think of a single other excuse or delaying tactic.

But at that moment I happened to glance at a large pier glass on the wall, and those disparate bits finally slammed into place, taking on form.

Tell Spring. Greggy. The sight in the mirror of my hair.