The Snow Angel (12 page)

“Hi,” he said, extending his hand as he approached. “I’m your new neighbor. The name’s Max Wever.”

The woman looked him up and down, and it seemed she was unimpressed by what she saw. “I’m looking for my daughter,” she said, forgoing any manners or introductions. “Have you seen a little brat about this tall?” She held her hand up at chest height, then rethought her assessment and lowered it a bit.

The yes was on the tip of his tongue, and it almost spilled right out. But at the last second a breeze swirled between them and Max caught a whiff of something so sickly sweet it was nauseating. All at once he knew that
the high color in the woman’s cheeks was not fear for her daughter’s well-being, it was the telltale rosacea of an alcoholic.

“You’re looking for your daughter?” Max repeated dumbly.

She glared at him. “I have to go to the grocery store,” the woman said slowly and loudly. She obviously thought he was hard of hearing. “I can’t exactly leave her home alone, can I?”

Max was alarmed at the thought of this woman driving. Especially with a child in the car. “Can’t it wait? Will your husband be home soon?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it can’t wait. And no, my husband won’t be home for another hour or so.”

“How old is your daughter?” Max asked.

“Eight.”

He could tell she was getting more and more agitated, and he was starting to dread the thought of the moment when the little girl’s hiding place would be discovered. Thinking fast he said, “Your daughter’s name is Rachel, right?”

She nodded.

“How about my wife and I keep an eye out for her? We can watch her while you’re gone.”

“I don’t even know you,” the woman said. But she smiled all the same. “You trustworthy?”

Max put a hand over his heart. “I’ll treat her like my own.”

“Fine.” The woman fluttered her fingers and turned to go. “When she turns up, you tell that little snot-nosed horror that she’s getting the spanking of her life when I get home. You tell her that.”

Max didn’t respond. He couldn’t. But the woman didn’t wait for an answer. He watched as she stumbled to the garage and got in her car. She backed out of the driveway without incident, but Max determined right then and there that the first thing he would do when she was out of sight was call the cops. His neighbor was obviously a menace.

On the way back to his own house, Max walked below the trees again. He wanted to say hello to Rachel, maybe to even coax her from her perch with the promise of lemonade. But when he found her between the branches, her eyes were squeezed shut tight. She looked like a wounded fairy in the tree with a twig stuck in her hair, a pixie of a thing with shallow wrinkles in her young forehead and the weight of the world on her narrow shoulders.

He wanted to reach up and pull her down. But he didn’t. The way that Rachel held herself told him that she wanted to be left alone.

December 24, 1:00
P.M.

T
he Christmas tree in the lobby of The Heritage Home is a fifteen-foot monstrosity. It took a team of four maintenance men an entire afternoon to set it up, and the better part of the following day was spent stringing lights and trimming the prickly evergreen. Mitch knows that he must have walked past it dozens of times, but as he wanders through the lobby on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he is gripped by the desire to bask in the glow of a thousand points of light. The day is dark already, the sky heavy with snow, and the tree in the
center of the warm room radiates comfort. Mitch could use a little comfort.

The scent of pine is heavy in the air, and the tree seems to tremble in anticipation. In reality, the soft waver of the branches is the result of ceiling fans turned on low, but there is something magical about the tree all the same. Mitch stands before it, looking everywhere at once. Trying to take it in. After a minute he notices that there is a little placard in a gilded frame that hangs eye level at the very center: Many of the decorations you see are from our guests’ family trees.

When Mitch reads the simple rhyme, he studies the hodgepodge of ornaments with renewed interest. There are antique baubles of paper-thin blown glass. And hand-painted Santas with plumes of cottony beards. But the decorations that cause him to linger, the ones that make his heart stumble, are the homemade offerings. They’re by far the best—the paper stars with gobs of glitter and fat, gluey fingerprints, and foil garlands with uneven edges cut by child-safe scissors. Scattered across the sweeping boughs of the tree, there are even a few ornaments that boast pictures of children. Little boys with freckles on their noses and gap-toothed grins. And girls like fallen angels, their halos tipping to one side as they brush mud off skinned knees.

Mitch pores over each face, trying to discern if she is
among them. Did she once labor over a papier-mâché manger for him? Did she smile as a Sunday school teacher snapped a Polaroid for the center of a finger-painted wreath? He can’t remember.

“Did you find yours?” Cooper asks from somewhere behind him.

Mitch absorbs the question with nothing more than a slight shake of his head.

“It’s one of the prettiest,” Cooper says. “At least, I think so.”

“Is it homemade?” Mitch wonders.

“Yes.” There is a smile in Cooper’s voice. “Let’s see if you can find it. It’s about as big as the palm of my hand, and it sparkles.”

It’s not much of a description, but something glitters at the edge of Mitch’s memory all the same. For just a second he can see it cradled in his hand, a gift that took his breath away. He scans the tree, his eyes skipping over ornaments in their haste to find the one that is his. The one that might lead him a step closer to her.

Mitch can’t picture the decoration, but he knows what it is not. He walks slowly around the tree, trailing his hand against the very edge of the needles as he disregards reindeers made out of pipe cleaners and exquisite Russian antiques. Just as his throat begins to tighten in defeat, he catches a glimpse of iridescence a bit above his head. He
reaches for the source of the soft glow and plucks it from between the branches.

“You found it,” Cooper says softly. “I knew you would.”

The ornament is light as air and almost as delicate. It is a single, hand-cut snowflake made from silver paper and glazed with thick shards of white glitter that sparkle like glass. It must have taken hours to plan each careful snip of the scissors, and even longer to carefully coat the slender spires in such delicate strands of glue. Mitch turns it over in his fingers, and as he does a few flakes of glitter whisper free and fall to the floor like snow.

“I’m ruining it,” he says, and is surprised to feel panic clutch at his chest.

“No, you’re not.” Cooper comes to stand beside him. “It’s well-worn and well-loved. You’ve had it for over twenty years.”

“Twenty years? Has it been that long?”

“She’s a grown woman now.”

Mitch twirls the snowflake by the silver string attached to the tip as he spins this information around in his mind. Twenty years? She’s grown up without him. He’s lost so much time … Suddenly, he has a thought. He looks up at Cooper almost hungrily. “Will she come? For Christmas, I mean?”

Cooper’s eyes shift to the tree. “I don’t know, Mitch. Maybe.”

“Does she visit me?” Mitch is too confused to be wary. For all he knows she comes every week and he exhausts her with his constant questions. Maybe his own faulty memory is driving a wedge between them that he doesn’t even know about. “Have I just forgotten her?”

“You haven’t forgotten her,” Cooper says, ignoring Mitch’s first question. “You mix things up sometimes, but I guarantee you: You have not forgotten your daughter. Not for a single day.”

“Can I call her?” Raw hope is written across Mitch’s face. “Maybe if I call and invite her, she’ll come.”

Cooper seems to consider this for a moment, but before Mitch can get too excited, Cooper puts a steadying hand on his arm. “Why don’t you write her a letter? Sometimes the best way to express how we feel is to put our thoughts down on paper.”

“But …” Mitch fumbles, disappointed.

“I’ll help you.” Cooper smiles encouragingly. “You can dictate and I’ll write. I have very nice handwriting. It’s almost legible.”

Mitch sighs. “Mine isn’t?”

“Not really.”

“What will I say?”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”

Feeling like a bit of a thief, Mitch takes the paper snowflake with him as he follows Cooper into the atrium. The
open space has cleared out a bit; many of the residents are taking a much-needed rest after lunch. But Mitch isn’t tired. In fact, his fingers vibrate with energy, and it’s all he can do not to race over to the table where Cooper is obviously headed. For the first time in a long time, he feels like he has a purpose. Something he must do. A letter is a brilliant idea. He wonders why he never thought of it before.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Cooper says, indicating a table near the window. “I’ll go get some paper and a pen. Would you like a cup of tea?”

For once, Mitch doesn’t have to wonder at his own preferences. “Coffee,” he says definitively. “Black.”

Cooper grins. It was a trick question. “Of course. Be back in a few.”

The chairs at the table are plush, but Mitch doesn’t feel like sitting. Instead, he wanders the length of the atrium, watching the snow fall just outside the glass. It’s been accumulating for hours now, and the world is blurred with white. Mitch is surprised by a sudden longing to play in it, to run outside and throw himself against the snow and watch as the flakes dance like stars around him. He’d like to lie in it, facing the sky, and let the muted light settle around him like a blanket.

But of course he can’t do that. They would think he was even crazier than they already do. Maybe they would lock him in his room, or fit him with one of those strait-jackets
that he can, for some unfathomable reason, see so clearly. How can he know what a straitjacket is, but not be able to recall his grown-up daughter’s face? Life is cruel, Mitch decides.

And yet, it’s beautiful, too.

He knows that life is beautiful because he holds the evidence in his hand. In spite of the indistinct haze of guilt that he feels whenever he thinks of his past, Mitch knows he must have done something right. Something good. Nothing else could merit the priceless gift he holds in his hand. When he looks at the snowflake, the care with which it was constructed, he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that for a while at least the girl who wielded the scissors loved him.

“Did I fail you completely?” he asks the little snowflake. It seems like a tiny piece of his daughter, a glimmering extension of the child she once was. But the paper doesn’t answer. It merely sheds a few more flakes of glitter.

Mitch presses the snowflake against the cool pane of glass before him and lets his gaze drift to his own watermark reflection. He still has a full head of hair, but it’s so white it disappears in the fringe of snow. His eyes are milky, too, soft and lined like overripe fruit. I’ve gone to seed, he thinks. I don’t know how to be old.

It’s an excuse, and Mitch knows it. Just like all the other ones. I didn’t know how to be a father. I didn’t know how
to raise a daughter. I didn’t know how to make it better, how to stand between my wife and the little girl that she terrorized for all those fragile years.

And yet, even as Mitch thinks these things, as he comes to grips with the fact that he failed, he is shaken by the fierce realization that he’s not gone yet. Maybe it’s not too late.

“I’m going to tell you everything I felt. Everything I should have said,” Mitch says. He cradles the snowflake in his hands, touching each fragile tip with the soft pad of his fingers. “I just pray it’s not too late.”

As he turns the ornament over and over, Mitch notices something for the very first time. It’s a smudge of dark along one narrow spire on the back side of the decoration. Even before he squints at the mark, he knows that the streak of ink is a message of sorts, something she left behind. Maybe it’s her name scrawled in a childish hand. Or maybe a Bible verse, something that will jog his memory.

Mitch has to bring the snowflake almost to his nose to make out the minuscule inscription. And then he has to read it four times before it sinks in. It feels like a cipher, a secret code that was written just for him. Just for this moment.

I remember.

“I remember, too,” Mitch whispers.

October 16

T
he Kempers family lived in a picture-perfect little house situated in what most people in Everton referred to as the “old” part of town. In some places, the original brick roads peeked through concrete that had been poured over top, and ancient trees created a canopy that intertwined above lazy streets. I loved the collection of storybook houses with dormer windows and dizzyingly steep roofs. Every home boasted a unique characteristic, from wrought-iron shutters that were a century old to picket fences painted a bright and cheery white.

Sarah’s home was distinct because of the exquisite garden that filled the entire front yard. Her flowers started at the overflowing window boxes beneath her dining room window, and extended all the way to the edge of the sidewalk. And beyond, I noticed, as I stepped over a browning black-eyed Susan that had sprouted from a crack in the cement. It was too late in the season for her, and yet she clung to life. Apparently Sarah’s green thumb could not be contained by something as silly as a slab of poured concrete.

Even though I was on a mission, I couldn’t help but smile as I mounted the steps to Sarah’s front door. Her fall mums were bursts of brilliant color that seemed to match her personality: bold, vibrant, and unapologetic. But when Sarah swung the door open before I could ring the bell, I had to rethink my final assessment of her. She didn’t look unapologetic. She looked absolutely heartsick.