A gorgeous fawn-colored Saab sat in the driveway, its tracks the only sign that marred the new snow. Amy parked the squad car behind it and got out. Still below zero, breathing in the cold air made her cough. Before she had even taken a step the front door was flung open and a blond-haired woman stuck her head out.
“Thank god, you’re here. I can’t get him out of the snow.” The woman was crying and her hands were red.
Amy knew how hard it could be to lose a pet. She walked up the front step. “Let’s see what you have here.”
The woman was shivering, her skin was pale and her lips were turning white. Amy could tell she was going into shock. “Let’s get you in the house. You need to put a coat on.”
The woman babbled, “I didn’t know what to do. I tried to uncover him, but it’s so cold. I think he’s frozen stiff.”
“What kind of dog is it?”
The woman looked at Amy in astonishment and said, “It’s no dog. He’s my husband.”
New Year’s Day: 10 am
Since he was old enough to sit at the kitchen table, he could remember this same red and white gingham tablecloth covering it. John Gordon sat in the kitchen, watching his 80-year-old mother pouring him a cup of her weak coffee, running his finger on the checkerboard pattern.
He couldn’t quite imagine a world without his mother—Edna Wheeler Gordon. Not that they had always been close, but no matter how far he had gone, spun out from her, she had always seemed the center of the universe.
His father had died when he was ten; he was killed when a tractor tipped over on him. After the funeral John’s mother had told him that he had to be the man of the house. His sister Beth had only been five, too young to help out much. Together, he and his mother had run the farm for over twenty years.
If only he hadn’t taken that job in Oklahoma this fall, but they had needed the money. Farming wasn’t what it used to be and, in the winter months, he often needed to supplement their income. He should have known that his mother wasn’t up to being on her own anymore. But he had asked Beth to keep a close eye on her and had thought that would be all the help she needed.
He watched Edna move slowly back across the kitchen floor and set the old coffeemaker down on the stove. Her knee was bothering her again, but she insisted she didn’t want that blasted surgery.
“Why bother fixing something that I hardly use anymore? I’m not going to be around much longer,” she’d say.
He hated to think of her alone in this house, but she was as stubborn as they come and she said the only way they’d get her out of here was to carry her feet first.
Edna walked back across the floor and sank into the chair across from him with a sigh, soft like air escaping from a pillow. Her body looked like a pillow, stuffed into the faded house dress she was wearing with an old sweater thrown over the top.
“Shit, you’re still angry,” she said.
“Mom, I’m not mad at you.”
“I thought you’d be happy about it. I really did. I know I’m nothing but a burden to you and I thought this would take care of your problems.” She turned her head down and her hands wrung themselves in her lap.
Edna had told him she wanted to surprise him. She thought that he would be happy that she had sold the farm and for such a tidy sum. But he knew it was only about half the going value of the place, 200 acres of land right on the bluff edge. Any developer
would jump at the chance.
The fact that it was Dan Walker who bought it out from under him burned even more. Stupid schmo that he was, he had thought they were friends. John had spent the tail end of the summer building a sauna in the basement of that house Dan called a “cabin,” and they had shared many a brewski. Dan’s wife Sherri would stir up some dinner while he and Dan would smoke a cigar and look out at Lake Pepin. The view was almost as good as the one from the edge of his farmland.
Edna had signed away the land with the proviso that she be allowed to stay on in the farm until she died. Wouldn’t be long now.
John looked up at his mother’s face, weathered from years in the sun, tending the family garden, sometimes even driving the tractor. Her hair had gone completely white and her eyes shone bluer than ever.
He had been so mad when he came home for Christmas and learned what she had done. He had never yelled at his mother before, but he had not been able to contain himself.
Edna had been sitting in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. He had taken the cast-iron frying pan and thrown it against the wall, breaking her old blue vase. Looking up at her, he realized he should never have left her alone. Her brain was starting to muddle. He could tell, talking to her on the phone, that she was forgetting things and mixing up others.
When his mother died, the land that he had been born on and had sweated over for fifty years would be gone. He wasn’t sure there was anything he could do about it, but he was going to try to get it back.
He held his mother’s hand and whispered, “Sorry, so sorry.”
New Year’s Day: 10:00
C
laire couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Amy had told her and she still hadn’t been able to take it in. All the way on the drive over, she had wrestled with what she might find. Now she stared down at the frozen man curled into a fetal position—how we came into the world was the way we left it—one hand reaching out, fingers blistered, his skin waxy blue, his hair turned white with frost. The vulnerability of his pose made Claire’s eyes water. Or the cold.
Only once before had Claire seen a man frozen to death. That had been during the coldest winter she had lived through, 1996. In February, when the temperature had dropped to 30 below with a windchill of minus 50, the governor had closed the state. No one was to go any place, except for cops. She had been on regular patrol and taken the call.
A neighbor, taking garbage out, had found the old man curled up against a wall in the alley. At least he had been wearing a coat. Somehow that made him seem not quite as vulnerable.
Remembering her lessons on hypothermia, Claire bent down, took off a glove, and put her fingers on Daniel Walker’s neck. If there was a pulse there, it was too low and slow for her to tell. But it was still possible that there was life in this man.
She knew that people could survive in a deep freeze for hours, even days. The cold would have shut down his metabolism. The lungs would need less oxygen and the heart would pump less frequently. As the brain cooled off, it needed less oxygen to survive. Cardiologists even used chilling to get a patient ready for heart surgery, her pharmacist sister Bridget had told her.
So Claire knelt down in the snow and placed her head on his bare chest. She thought she heard something. A tick. A twig snapping. It might just be her own heart beating. She pushed in closer and listened again.
Yes, a slow, slight thud was coming from deep in the man’s chest. A liquid thump which meant he lived.
She stood and yelled at Amy, “Get a blanket. We’ve got to get him inside. Call for an ambulance.”
Claire took off her mittens, put her bare hands on his chest and rubbed in slow circles. Whatever life was left in him, she wanted to keep stoking. Maybe even just the warmth of human touch would keep him hanging on.
A minute later, Amy slammed out the door with a large down comforter filling her arms. “This was what I could find.”
“Lay it out on the ground next to him. We have to move him very slowly. Any jarring at all will cause a heart attack. We don’t want that.”
They tucked the edge of the comforter under his body in the snow and then gently rolled him onto his other side, which moved most of his body onto the quilt. “Wrap it over him and then grab that end tight.” Claire turned and yelled at Dan’s wife, who was standing in the doorway. “Keep the door open. We’re bringing him in.”
Lifting him up in the comforter, they carried him slung between them. Claire backed up carefully as Amy directed her toward the door. “Slow and easy,” she said as much to herself as to Amy.
Once through the door, they set him down on the floor.
“How about the sauna?” Amy suggested.
For a moment that sounded like a good idea to Claire, as much for herself as for the frozen man, but then she remembered more of what she knew about hypothermic victims. “That intense heat would be too much for him.”
“We could turn it on low,” the wife said.
“I’d rather not risk it. There’s a weird phenomena known as rewarming shock. That’s what a lot of people with hypothermia die from. They need to be rewarmed very slowly. Let’s just keep the comforter on him.”
“Is there anything we can do?” his wife asked as she sank to the floor next to Walker.
“Put your hands on his chest. Let him know you’re there. Give him some of your warmth.”
New Year’s Day: 10:16 am
Meg ran her finger down the kitchen window, melting the hoarfrost that had gathered around the edges. She loved the patterns it formed, like miniature ice floes, like snow flowers. Whorls and twirls that shimmered in the pale sunlight.
“What’s up with you today?”
Meg jumped. She hadn’t heard Rich come in the room. “I don’t know. Don’t feel like doing much of anything. Too cold.”
He had a million layers of clothes on, his fur-lined hat with the flaps hanging down, his leather-mitten choppers, a dirty
down coat. The front of his dark hair had turned even grayer with frost from his breath. “The first day of the year and you don’t know what you’re going to do? Not a good start. Have you made any resolutions?”
“I might be swearing off boys.”
Rich stripped down to his lined blue jeans and flannel shirt. He rubbed his hands together and grabbed the coffee pot. “Good idea. I highly recommend it. Are you going to make an exception for Curt?”
“No. He’s the reason.”
Rich sat down across from her at the table and poured himself a cup of coffee. “What’s the problem?”
“Oh, nothing.” Meg held out her cup and he filled it with coffee.
Rich stared out the window, cradling his coffee cup. “I’m worried about the septic. This damn cold. We don’t have a lot of snow cover and the frost line could drop down far enough to freeze the lines.”
Meg didn’t really want to talk about their septic system. “Rich, are boys always jerks?”
Rich turned his head toward her and nodded. “Most of the time. Especially at that age.”
“Curt’s been hanging around with Andy Palmquist and he just seems different. All he wants to do is play those dumb games.”
“What games?”
“You know, he’s more interested in playing video games with Andy than watching a movie with me. I hate those violent, shoot ’em up games.”
Rich took a sip of coffee. “That doesn’t sound like Curt. From what I’ve heard, that Andy’s a bad egg.”
“I know. He gives me the creeps. He always looks like he’s up to something. And he’s always hanging around Curt. Like last night, I just wanted to go for a walk, with just Curt. Right at midnight, outside, the two of us. Something special. But he didn’t want to. Said it was too cold.”
“It was too cold.”
“You know what I mean. Just for a few minutes. I didn’t want to be with everyone else at midnight.”
“Sometimes guys don’t think like that.”
“I guess.”
“Let him know how you feel.”
Meg remembered how it had been when she and Curt had started going out. He could read her mind. He always knew what she wanted. It had been kinda scary. “I don’t want to have to tell him. He used to just know these things.”
“He’s not a mind reader.”
“I want it to be like before, when we could sit and talk for hours. I don’t feel like Curt has any time for me anymore. Like last night, all he wanted to do was play Wii with Andy. I mean, it’s fun. I like doing it too, but not the whole night. Then when Andy takes off, it’s like the night’s over for Curt. He’s bummed. Just wants to go home.”
“Sometimes you can’t leave it to chance. You have to be very clear with guys. Tell him what you want.”
“I guess.”
“Like your mom last night. She asked me to marry her.”
“For real?” Meg squealed.
Rich gave his cute crooked smile and nodded.
Meg imagined her mother in a big white wedding dress. She would be beautiful. Meg could see herself in the perfect bridesmaid’s dress with Curt by her side. “When’s the wedding? I’ve been waiting forever. It’s about time.”
“Not so fast. I told her I’d have to think about it.”
“Not really. You’re just teasing, right?”
“Hey, I’ve waited years. She can wait a few days for my answer.”
Meg ran around the table and hugged Rich from behind. “Can I be your best girl?”
“You are my best girl.”
New Year’s Day: 11 am
Something shattered inside of Amy as she sat watching the EMTs carry a bundled Daniel Walker into the ambulance. Gary and Ted lifted the sling carrying the swaddled body gently into the back of the vehicle. What if Claire hadn’t come to check out the scene? What if Amy had just left him buried in the snow, thinking he was dead?
“Gently, gently. I know you know this, but,” Claire said, not wanting to step on any toes, “in cases of hypothermia, anything drastic can trigger cardiac arrest.”
Amy stood by the front door and watched, thinking, I would have let him die. I didn’t check him closely enough. I assumed. His death would have been all my fault. I might never even have known that he had still been alive. For some reason, that her mistake might have gone unnoticed made it all the more horrific.
Claire came up next to her and said, “I’ll take Sherri. I don’t want her left alone, especially not in the house right now. We’ll need to come back here no matter what happens.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“No way to know right now. We’ll treat the house as a crime scene until we know otherwise.”
Amy would have left him in the snow to die. She would have been responsible for his death. When she had watched Claire lean over the frozen man and put her head to his chest, she had held her breath, thinking, what if he were still alive? How could that even be possible?
Amy followed behind the ambulance as it screamed down the ice-covered roads, all she could think was what would have happened if Claire hadn’t come.