An Accidental Woman (10 page)

Unfortunately, that wasn't good enough. The questions started the instant Missy reached her side. “Where's Heather?”

Poppy held Missy's unzipped parka closed with one hand while she opened the other arm to Star. “She's in West Eames.”

“Why's she there?” Missy asked.

How much to say?
“There are things she has to do there.” Poppy smiled to make light of it and gestured more broadly for Star to come. “So I'm here picking you up.”

Missy wasn't that easily satisfied. “She said she'd be back.”

“When did she say that?”

“When she left this morning. But she didn't look good. She didn't look like she wanted to go anywhere.”

“Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do.”
Like be evasive with children,
Poppy thought, and in the next instant wailed a silent,
I am not good at this.
She tried another smile. It brought Star a bit closer. “I was thinking we could go home and make maple cookies.”

“Whose home?” Missy asked wisely.

“Yours,” Poppy said. Her own home might be better suited for working in a kitchen from a wheelchair, but she didn't dare take them there,
not with the phone lines blinking and Annie alternately discussing the day's events with the locals and diverting the press.

“Is Daddy there?” Missy asked.

Poppy made a show of nonchalantly considering that. “I . . . don't think he is yet.”

“He should be. He was supposed to be checking trees.”

Star had finally come within reach. Poppy drew her close to the chair as she asked Missy, “Checking trees for what?”

Missy sighed. “Fallen-down ones to chop. In the sugarbush. Is Heather gonna be back for dinner?”

More nonchalance. “I . . . actually, I don't think so.”

“When
is
she gonna be back?”

Ten days? Twenty days? Thirty days? How in the world do you explain this to a child?

I'm no good at this, no good at all,
Poppy thought again. She was starting to tremble. “Soon, I hope, but I'm real cold, Missy. Another minute and, forget the ten toes that I cannot feel, my wheels are gonna freeze. Let's get in the car. Want a ride, Star?”

Star's lower lip looked none too steady. Eyes sorrowful, she shook her head.

“Give Missy a hand back there, then,” she said and pushed at the wheels to start them turning. As soon as she and the girls were in the Blazer, she turned the heat on full force, and even then, it wasn't overly warm, which said something about the cold outside.

But the cold was the least of Poppy's worries as they headed out. Missy's questions didn't stop.

“What if Heather isn't home by morning?”

“Then your dad will help you get ready like he did this morning.”

“What if he can't? He leaves before Heather sometimes. What if we don't get breakfast, like we didn't today?”

“You did.” Poppy stopped, put her left blinker on, and waited for the trucks ahead of her to turn off the schoolhouse road onto the one that led through the center of town. “You got breakfast at
my
house.”

“Will you get it for us tomorrow?”

Pretending it was a game, Poppy sang gently, “I'll get it for you
any
day.” She reached the head of the line, but had to wait for Buck Kipling's rattletrap of a truck to pass. She had barely made the turn when she felt a small hand on her shoulder.

Star was there, saying in an even smaller voice, “Did Momma go away?”

“No, honey, she's just over in West Eames.”

“Is she gone for good?”

Put your seat belt on,
Poppy wanted to say, but Star seemed so frightened that Poppy couldn't make herself say it. Instead, driving with greater care, she tipped her head and touched her cheek to the child's hand. “She is not gone for good.”

“What if she never comes back?”

“She'll be back. She loves you.”

It was a minute before Star spoke again, and then it was more an aching sigh than anything else. “I want Momma.”

Poppy had never felt so helpless in her life. “I know you do, baby. I know you do.”

* * *

The general store was packed with people coming in from West Eames and those wanting to hear what they'd seen. Some stood talking in the aisles of the store, while others headed for the café. The greatest number of them congregated around the woodstove.

Grateful that no one paid him much heed, Griffin found Charlie at the cash register. Quickly he explained what he wanted to do. Charlie agreed, albeit with more caution than warmth.

“Is there a key?” Griffin asked.

Charlie shook his head. “Nope. Door's never locked.”

“What do I need to know?”

Hand on the till, Charlie considered that for a minute. “Wood's in a pile on the porch. If you need to chip a little at the pipes for water, use the ice chisel inside the door. Electricity, just throw the switch.”

It all sounded easy enough to Griffin, who, wary of pushing his luck by mixing with the townsfolk, stayed only long enough to buy coffee, bread, eggs, cheese, deli meat, and canned soup. At the last minute, he added a six pack of beer and several gallon jugs of water. Figuring that he would need something to help start the fire, he topped off the three large shopping bags with several of the newspapers that were for sale. Then he went back out to Buck's truck and, not trusting that the food wouldn't freeze in the steadily dropping temperature if he put it in the bed of the truck, stowed it in the cab. It took several tries before the engine came to life, but then he was on his way.

Heading out of town on the road that circled the lake, Griffin followed John's directions, going past quaintly named roads leading to coves that lined the shore. The bad news was that the closest access to Little Bear Island was at the far end of the lake from town, around myriad turns in the road, heading away from the lake and then back, making what would have been a five-minute drive had he been able to go directly more like a thirty-minute one. The good news was that Buck's truck held the road well—and that Griffin would have his own place for as long as he stayed, not to mention those brownie points he would score with Charlie once the guy had a chance to think about it.

Little Bear Road was perfectly marked with the same kind of well-kept sign that marked the rest of the roads in town.
Drive all the way down,
John had instructed,
then right out onto the lake.

Onto the lake?
Griffin had asked skeptically.
Can I do that?

Sure,
John replied.
We had some melt yesterday, but it's frozen back up today. There's trucks out to bobhouses all the time. No one's fallen in yet this year.

Needing to convince himself that he was up for the challenge, Griffin set his qualms aside, particularly when he saw that Little Bear Road was plowed. He turned in, putting on his headlights when the road plunged him into the darkness of a thick forest of trees that blocked out what was left of the day.

No sweat,
he told himself with a glance at his watch. He still had more more than an hour to get out there and get settled.
Piece a cake.

When the road ahead brightened and the lake came into view, he smiled. Seconds later, his smile faded when the plowed portion of the road abruptly ended and the truck got stuck. Praying that it was a momentary aberration, he shifted, backed up, shifted again, and went forward with greater force. He moved ahead just a bit before stopping again. This time, when he tried to back up, he couldn't do that either. No matter how he shifted, how he steered, what brilliant little tactic he thought he'd used, he couldn't budge the thing. All four tires of the truck were in snow nearly to their upper rims, which Griffin discovered when he climbed out of the cab and sank in well above the top of the hiking boots of which he was so proud. He looked ahead at another ten feet of unplowed snow, then at the lake. Its surface sat two feet lower than the land and was covered with just as much snow.

Not wanting to waste time, with the shadows on the lake growing longer as he watched, Griffin studied Little Bear Island. A quarter mile out, John had said. It didn't look far. He figured he could cover the distance easily enough on foot. He didn't have gloves—they were back in Princeton—but he'd had cold hands before. Cold hands wouldn't kill him.

So he pulled on his time-worn, good-luck Yankees cap and climbed out of the truck. Putting his overnight bag on one shoulder and his laptop bag and briefcase on the other, he took a shopping bag in each arm and set off.

The good news was that the ice held him easily. It didn't moan or crack or move, but showed every sign of being as thick as John had said it was. The bad news was that not only were his ears freezing, but his jeans didn't keep out the snow any better than his hiking boots did.

Mindful of the lowering sun, he slogged on. He knew there was ice under the snow, because he slipped on it from time to time. Fortunately, he was athletic enough to keep his balance.

If the temperature was falling, he didn't feel it. Lifting his feet high to cross through the snow, he built up a sweat in no time. This countered the wetness where the snow seeped through his clothes. Being warm,
though, didn't keep his thighs from screaming in protest. He wasn't used to goose-stepping. It couldn't be done with any kind of speed, particularly loaded down as he was. Worse, what had looked like a short distance from shore seemed to take forever to reach, and then there was the matter of his hands. Yes, he'd had cold hands before. But this was
cold.

Determinedly, he kept his eyes on the pine trees ahead, and he forced his legs to keep moving. He couldn't even see the cabin until he got close and rounded the island, but when he reached it, he felt a surge of pleasure. The cabin was made of logs, charming in its rusticity. It occupied the only clearing on the island, which, itself, was less than an acre.

He waded up to the front door. Firewood was piled immediately to its left, under a porch overhang that hadn't kept snow from blowing over it.

Eager for shelter—not to mention for a place to unburden his arms, which were aching mightily, and a fire to warm his hands, which stung painfully—he tried to open the front door. When it resisted, he set one of the brown bags on the woodpile and tried again. It wasn't until he had set the other bag down as well and put all of his strength into the push that the ice crusting the doorframe gave way. Snatching up the bags, he whisked them inside and closed the door.

Darkness. Cold. Mustiness.

Electricity,
Charlie had said cryptically,
just throw the switch.
The problem was finding the switch in the dark.