Baby It's Cold Outside (5 page)

“Shh, you’re bleeding.” He crouched beside her as she put her hand to her forehead. He caught it. “No, wait, you have glass there.” He reached up, making a face, and she winced when he pulled a shard away. “I think there’s more, but we need to get you inside and clean it out.”

In the light from the house, and as he cupped his hand under her elbow to help her out, she recognized him.

“You! You were at the dance hall. Aren’t you a member of the band?”

“No.” His other hand closed around hers, and as he pulled her up, her legs—probably from the shock—gave out on her. She collapsed like an idiot back onto the seat.

“You’re really hurt.”

“I banged my knee on something.”

“Do you think you broke it?”

“No…I just—” But she ran her hand over her knee, wincing. Maybe she had broken it. She at least felt the beginnings of a goose egg.

“Aw, crumb.” He stood up, walked to the front of the car. “Your radiator grill is caved in, and both your running lights are crushed. Your fender is a goner. And one of your headlamps is also broken.”

Oh, she could hear her mother now.
Women shouldn’t drive cars.

She watched him as he moved the branches, inspected the wheels. The snow layered his eyelashes, wetting them. He had a square jaw, the hint of russet whiskers upon it, and dark eyes—maybe blue. He wore a fedora and a gray scarf at his neck, fancylike, as if he might be from Minneapolis, or perhaps Chicago. “You’re dug in pretty well. You’re not getting it out of here tonight, in this storm. We’ll need some leverage to pry it off the tree.”

Swell. “Are you sure it’s that bad?”

He returned and, in the glow of the house, looked genuinely sorry, the way his blue eyes darkened, the furrow of his brow. In a different time, on a different day, she might have been able to forgive him. “It’s that bad. I’m so sorry.”

“What are you doing here? Did you
follow
me?”

His expression stilled her.

“You
did
follow me.” She glanced at the house, back to the man. “Why…I don’t understand. Who are you?”

“I was—am—oh, boy. My name is Jake. Let’s just get you inside.” He reached for her but she slapped at his hand.

“I’m perfectly capable of walking, thank you.”

“I beg to differ. You’re holding your knee as if it might come off, and you’re bleeding from the head. I know that I am to blame for your predicament, so please relieve some of my guilt by allowing me to assist you into your house.”

Jake sounded…well, not from around Frost. “It’s not my house.”

“Oh. Right.” He leaned down, ran his arm under hers, around her back, then picked her up, cupping her under her legs.

“Oh!”

“I promise not to drop you.”

“That’s reassuring.”

But he had strong arms, and despite the fact that yes, she could probably crawl her way back to Dottie’s, an errant, even dangerous impulse inside made her sling her arms around his neck, praying he wouldn’t slip as he trudged up the hill. She took a breath then leaned into him, the snow cascading into the cuff of her jacket, melting against her skin, slicking down her back.

Okay, perhaps she needed the ride after all. Pain thundered through her in the throbbing of her knee, the heat on her forehead. And the car—oh, her father’s prized Plymouth.
I’m sorry, Daddy.

He reached the door and didn’t even knock, just opened it, stepping inside.

“I don’t think she wants us to—” She squirmed in his arms, seeing already Mrs. Morgan’s shock, hearing her voice.
Please… leave.

This wouldn’t be good.

“Hello? Anyone here?” He stamped his feet and the inner door to the kitchen opened as he barreled into the warm house.

“What on earth—who are you?”

Oh, she couldn’t look. But she couldn’t stop herself either as she peeked at Mrs. Morgan.

The woman held her soup ladle above her head as if she might use it as a weapon.

“It’s me, Violet.”

She blinked at the two of them, Violet, the man who held her, then lowered her ladle. “What are you— Put her down!”

“I need a chair for her. She’s been injured.”

“Injured? What on earth? Well, fine. Over there, at the table.”

Jake hooked his foot around a scrolled oak straight chair, and Mrs. Morgan grabbed it and pulled it out. “Land’s sakes, don’t break it.”

Jake set Violet down. “I need a towel and some ice.”

But Mrs. Morgan was staring at her in some sort of horrified trance. “What happened?”

Violet didn’t know where to start. And then, she didn’t have to. A terrific crack sounded in the yard, and then a wretched moan. She stared in horror out the window as the giant white pine teetered then fell across the length of the yard. It hit the stone wall, crumbling it, and crushed the Plymouth beneath its arms.

Mrs. Morgan turned back to her, clearly having caught the demise of her tree, still holding the ladle, murder on her face. “Well, I guess you’ll be staying.”

* * * * *

Gordy Lindholm didn’t live a life prone to panic. After forty-nine years of growing up on and running a farm, he’d seen cattle frozen to ice on the prairie and geese embedded in the bumpy surface of the marsh. After the Armistice Day blizzard nearly a decade ago, the eighty-mile-an-hour winds had ripped off the roof of his silo, and he’d lost nearly half his harvested crop. He’d been snowed in, iced in, and all but decimated in a twister back in ’24 that took out his neighbor’s barn.

Yet, when he heard the shot echo across Silver Lake, it made him pause in his trek back from the barn to the house, his hand on the guide wire he’d just strung.

He could make out Dottie’s lights from here, despite the blinding whiteout. The kitchen light glowed out into the night, along with the front porch light. Later, around eight, her upstairs bedroom light would flicker on, stay lit for an hour.

Once upon a time, he watched the darkened pane next door—Nelson’s window—too.

He never went to bed until her lights turned off. As if they were connected, a real family.

Naw, probably just a habit for an old, lonely man, was all.

Gordy listened for another report. Nothing in the howling wind, and he could dismiss it if he wanted. But an irritation niggled inside him that he couldn’t shake. Her living room light, for one, came on two hours later than usual. And what if she ran out of coal or wood? Had she remembered to fill up her milk jars at the creamery? Did she have provisions for the storm?

Gordy stood on his front porch, watching the swirl of the snow against the gaslight, then finally decided on a jaunt in the truck.

Couldn’t hurt to just venture out, take a drive along her front yard, catch a glimpse of her in the window. Probably, he could even pull right up into the driveway, leave the truck running, and peer in the door to the mudroom to check on the wood supply. The coal man had been around about a month ago, he thought.

As for the milk, he could leave a couple of fresh bottles on the doorstep—except they’d freeze. So maybe he’d ease open the door and slip them inside.

Even if she noticed, she wouldn’t get up to greet him, fetching the milk after he’d long gone. She knew the rules, had helped establish them, keep them. The rules gave them a tepid peace.

He threw on a red wool jacket over his coveralls and climbed into his old 1925 Chevy. It shuddered twice but wouldn’t turn over.

Gordy knew he should have probably replaced the carburetor, but the truck could run on moonshine if it had a mind.

Tonight, clearly, it didn’t take to going out in the sleet. Fine. He piled out of the truck, returned to the house, lit a lantern, and, out of habit, nearly called to Barnabas.

He missed the spaniel looking up at him from his old blanket before the hearth, where Gordy had let the fire die to embers while milking the Jerseys, letting the oil furnace take over. Until a year ago, the old dog would have gotten up, trotted over, despite his stiff joints.

Gordy missed him more than a man ought.

He wrapped the muffler around his mouth, his nose, then pulled on a wool cap, his leather mittens. If he took the shortcut through the narrow part of the lake-turned-slough, it might take him all of ten minutes to walk over, poke around, and return.

He left his porch light on as a beacon as he set out across the marsh, through the crispy, now icy grasses, like shiny knives skewering the slough. He held a lamp, the light puddling out before him as he trekked, finally setting foot on the dirt road. Only by experience did he recognize it, the darkness folding in behind him as he traced his path along the stone wall.

Turning, he could barely make out his porch light across the expanse, a mere stone’s throw on a summer day. He couldn’t take too long, or he’d be stranded for the night.

Well, stranded in Dottie’s barn, that is. Gordy couldn’t imagine her actually allowing him inside the house.

In the buffeting wind, he imagined he could hear Nelson, calling to him from the house.
“Mr. Lindholm, are we going hunting today?”

Of course, Dottie would be standing in the kitchen, just inside the window where she thought he couldn’t see her, while Nelson bounded out of the house, down to the road.

Gordy could admit that sometimes he walked into town just so Nelson might join him for a ways, tell him about school, or football, or even—and he hated himself for yearning for these—tidbits about Dottie, her life, her work.

Did she still think about him? Wonder why he hadn’t married? He listened for the answers in the nuances of Nelson’s stories.

“Darren Hudson’s family had beagles. I really want one, if I can talk Mom into it.”

Nelson’s voice found him in the cold, nudged up a smile. How could Gordy resist bundling up a puppy and leaving it on their back stoop? Nelson must have known, but perhaps that only added to Dottie’s dark looks.

The boy had simply needed a father. What was he to do?

Gordy let the memories tug him along the stone wall down to the entrance. He lifted his light to follow the path up.

The glow cast over the shaggy, broken debris of a tree across the drive, and for a second, Gordy thought he might be lost.

And then the slow, choking realization bled through him.

Nelson’s tree. The one Dottie planted that summer after Nelson’s birth. Nelson’s tree had fallen. He’d seen the decay in the low-hanging orange branches, even a few higher up that indicated disease, but never imagined it to be that weakened.

He’d heard not a gunshot but the crack of the tree.

Oh, Dottie. If only he’d pruned it, taken away the diseased, dying branches, it might have lived through the storm. He came close, brushed the snow off one of the springy, bristly arms. Glanced up to the house. The light in the kitchen still burned.

Did he see movement at the window? He couldn’t tell. Lifting the lamp, he skirted the tree, heading for the barn, but the glint of metal against the light stopped him. He swept the branches aside—a Plymouth lay trapped under its icy arms.

Someone had crashed into her tree.

He looked back up at the house. Someone who could be injured or…

He’d always feared that one of TJ’s old cronies might look Dottie up, land on her doorstep. The thought threaded into his brain sometimes, late at night, roused him to sit in his chair on the porch, or by the window.

Crazy old obsessed neighbor.

His last memory of TJ, however, even so many years ago, propelled Gordy up the driveway, toward the house. He’d simply sneak into the back room, take a gander inside.

Dottie couldn’t blame him for caring, right?

No, that’s exactly what she accused him of the last time she’d seen him. Easter Sunday, 1944. He’d begun attending the Presbyterian church in Canby shortly thereafter.

Still, this wasn’t about Nelson, or TJ, or even that night he’d begged her not to leave Frost in the passenger seat of TJ’s yellow roadster. People put aside old grievances during a storm, right?

He certainly would.

The light in the back room was on, and he eased open the door, intending to simply peer into the kitchen.

That’s when he saw the blood. A drop on the floor, another on the doorknob.

Blood could make him panic.

“Dottie!” He slammed open the kitchen door, not caring that he carried the storm in with him—the frigid air, the violent breezes, the ice on his boots and jacket. He barreled into the kitchen.

Dottie turned from the stove, her mouth open.

A man looked up from where he kneeled before a woman seated on a chair. She held a bulky towel to her head. “Mr. Lindholm. What are you doing here?”

“Violet?” Gordy had known her for ages, of course, but had rarely seen Violet Hart since her return from the war. Maybe at the grocery store a few times. “Who’s bleeding here?”

“Oh, for crying in the sink, what are
you
doing here, Gordon?” Dottie came to barricade herself between him and her guests. The man had found his feet—a young man, with armyshort dark brown hair, sharp eyes, a dapper suit.

He reminded Gordy a little of TJ, which did none of them any good.

“I…well, I saw the tree, Dottie.”

“You saw the tree? From your house?”

Okay, so— “I heard the tree go down. It sounded like a gunshot.” He ground his teeth. “I got worried, okay?”

She threw her hands up. “Gordon, you were just looking for an excuse to come over here and we both know it.”

He said nothing, desperately wishing he’d listened to his truck and the voices inside that screamed, “Bad idea!”

“Well, isn’t this a fine kettle of fish. As you can see, Violet Hart has demolished my—my tree…” Dottie said it with only the slightest hiccough, but she couldn’t hide anything from him, not after all these years. And the flash of pain in her eyes just might make him bleed too.
Oh, Dottie.
How he wanted to close the space between them, put his arms—

“And this gentleman here is to blame, apparently.”

“He was standing in the driveway, after following me here.” Violet removed the cloth, narrowed her eyes at the man, who couldn’t hide a flinch at her words.

“He followed you? From where?” Gordy must have taken a step toward the man, for he held up his hand.