The Winter People (18 page)

“I’ve been hoping I’d see you again!”

Katherine jumped.

It was redheaded Lou Lou from the café next door; she had bounded out of its doors and stood blocking Katherine’s path in the sidewalk, her silver-and-turquoise jewelry glinting. “Then I just looked through the window and there you were! I remembered!” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. She’d come out without a coat.

“Remembered?”

“Where I’d seen the woman with the braid before. Like I said, I never forget a face. She’s the egg lady!”

“The … egg lady?” Katherine repeated.

“Yes. I don’t know her name, but she’s at the farmers’ market every week. Sells those blue and green eggs. Easter-egg chickens—that’s what she calls the hens that lay them. She sells other stuff, too,
things she knits. Baby booties, socks, hats. I bought a scarf from her once. Tomorrow’s Saturday—you go to the farmers’ market and you’ll see her. You can’t miss her, really. She’s always wearing a sweater or shawl she’s knit in these bright, crazy color combinations. If you don’t see her, just ask—everyone knows the egg lady.”

Lou Lou slipped back into the café, leaving Katherine standing there, dumbstruck.

The egg lady
. Gary met the egg lady. Although it wasn’t her true name, it was a way to identify her, and already this woman was taking shape in Katherine’s imagination. She turned and practically ran back down the sidewalk, feet slipping, as she raced home.

A doll. She’d make a doll of the woman, the egg lady in miniature—an older woman with gray hair in a braid, wearing a brightly colored hand-knit sweater. She’d crochet a tiny sweater with fine yarn. She had a box of yarn and crochet hooks somewhere.

The
His Final Meal
box was all starting to come together, and Katherine’s mind hummed, her fingers twitched. She unlocked the door to her apartment, dumped her purse and the paper bag from the bookstore on the coffee table, peeled off her coat and gloves, headed over to her worktable, and started to cut pieces of wire that would form the armature for the tiny papier-mâché doll. When she was finished with the egg lady, she’d make a little Gary doll and put them sitting across from one another at a table in Lou Lou’s.

And maybe, just maybe, if she got down in front of the box, put her ear to the open doorway, and listened, she’d know what they might have said that day—understand what had brought Gary to West Hall.

No one was home at William O’Rourke’s house. Ruthie scribbled a note saying she was looking for Thomas and Bridget and left Buzz’s cell-phone number at the bottom. She stuck it in the mailbox and climbed back into the truck.

None of them spoke as they followed the GPS directions to Candace’s house. They were in a new part of town now, one where the houses were bigger and spread out farther and farther apart. The roads had grander-sounding names: Old Stagecoach Road, Westminster Avenue. There were neighborhood-watch signs, signs reminding you to drive slowly and keep an eye out for children. Tasteful Christmas lights still decorated many of the houses, and there were cheerful snowmen in huge yards.

Candace O’Rourke lived in a large white colonial with black shutters.

“Nice place,” Buzz said as he pulled into the long driveway. Ruthie hopped out of the truck and rang the doorbell. It played a little song. The house was silent. She pushed the doorbell again.

Just as Ruthie was about to give up and go back to the truck, the heavy wooden door was opened by a frazzled-looking woman in pink-and-black exercise clothes. She had blond hair that was stylishly cut but flattened on one side. Ruthie decided she must have woken the woman up from an afternoon nap.

“Yes?” the woman said, blinking sleepily at Ruthie.

The entryway behind her was bright and open, with white walls
and a terra-cotta-tiled floor. There was a neat row of silver coat-hooks on the left, with a bench below it.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but are you Candace O’Rourke?”

“Yes,” she said, looking wary.

“Uh, I know it’s probably a long shot, but I’m looking for some other O’Rourkes? Thomas and Bridget? They used to live out on Kendall Lane.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “And you are?” she asked, taking a step back.

“My name’s Ruthie. Ruthie Washburne.”

Candace stared at Ruthie a moment; then it was as if she suddenly woke up, her whole body coming to life. “Of course!” she said, smiling as if being reunited with a long-lost friend. “Of course you are. And I bet I know just why you’ve come.”

“Why I’ve come?” Ruthie said.

“Why don’t you tell me, dear? In your own words.”

Confused, Ruthie fumbled onward. “My parents, they were, um, they must have been friends of Thomas and Bridget. I found some old stuff of theirs with my parents’ things, and I thought …”

“Come inside,” the woman said. “Please.”

Ruthie stepped in, and the woman shut the door behind her. It was warm inside and smelled slightly musty.

She led Ruthie through the entryway and into a large, open living room with a leather sofa and two matching chairs. The Christmas tree in the corner, which went nearly up to the ceiling, was covered with glorious blue and silver ornaments. Ruthie had never seen such a beautiful Christmas tree. They’d always cut their own trees from the woods: scraggly evergreens decorated with a hodgepodge of homemade ornaments, strings of popcorn, and paper chains.

Candace O’Rourke took a seat on the huge leather couch and gestured for Ruthie to join her. Ruthie felt like she’d stepped into the middle of a glossy catalogue or house magazine: everything in this room was perfect. A kid lived here—the world’s luckiest and neatest kid. Fawn would flip if she could see all the toys: an old-fashioned rocking horse, a wooden kitchen set complete with real metal pots and pans, even a large wooden puppet theater set up in the corner. Everything seemed sleek and clean and organized. Unreal.

“Would you like a drink?” Candace asked. “Or something to eat?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ve got cookies.”

“No, thanks.”

Candace stood up. “I’ll just go get us some cookies. Maybe some tea. Do you want tea?”

“No, really, I’m good. I don’t need anything.”

“I’ll be right back, then.”

Ruthie sat perched on the edge of the couch, listening to Candace’s footsteps echo off down the hallway. She waited a minute, then stood up to look around. She went first to the Christmas tree and discovered, on closer inspection, that it was not so perfect after all. It had shed a lot of its needles, and was dry as a bone. Many of the ornaments were broken and had been put back together with tape and rubber bands. And the tree itself, Ruthie noticed now, was off kilter, leaning heavily to the left. The star that had been at the top was stuck in a branch below, like a bird fallen from its nest.

Seeing the tree up close gave Ruthie an uneasy feeling. Then she looked down at the toy kitchen and saw that there, in a tiny pot on the stove, was a real orange, shriveled and covered with mold.

She went over to the puppet theater and looked behind it to see a tangled pile of broken puppets: a king missing his crown, a headless frog, and a naked princess whose face had been colored with blue Magic Marker and who had a pencil jammed into her stomach like a yellow spear.

Ruthie turned and left the living room, heading back down the hall, away from the front door and toward where she guessed the kitchen must be. She heard the sound of cabinet doors being opened and closed. All along the walls of the hallway were picture hooks, but no pictures.

At last, she reached the kitchen, where Candace stood in front of a large gas range. The countertops were granite, the cabinets some dark wood polished to a shine. But something was wrong. There was nothing on the counters—no loaf of bread or bowl of fruit, no coffeemaker or toaster. The cabinets that Candace had left open were nearly empty—some crackers, a can of tuna, a box of Crystal Light.

“I know there are cookies here somewhere. Fig Newtons. They’re Luke’s favorite.”

“Luke?”

“My son,” she said, running a hand through her messy hair.

Ruthie thought of the puppet with the pencil through its belly and wasn’t sure she wanted to meet the kid who was responsible.

“He’s with his father,” Candace said, still playing with her hair, wrapping a strand around her index finger and giving it a tug. “We’re divorced, you see, and Randall has full custody now. He’s … Well, never mind about that. Let’s sit down, shall we?”

They sat at the large wooden table. It was covered with a film of dust.

“You said your parents were friends with Tom and Bridget?”

“Yeah.” Ruthie fiddled with the clasp on her bag, reached in to touch the wallets. “So you know them, right?” Ruthie’s heart started to beat faster. “Maybe you can help me? I know it’s crazy, but my mom, she kind of … vanished.”

“Vanished?” Candace bobbed forward.

Ruthie nodded vigorously. “Yeah. And while we were looking through her stuff to try to figure it out, we found these.” She pulled out the wallets, handed them over.

Candace took the wallets and opened them up with shaking hands. Her eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s been so long. Tom was—or is—my brother. He and his wife, they disappeared sixteen years ago. Along with their daughter.”

“Daughter?” Ruthie’s throat tightened.

“Wait here. Just a minute.”

Candace hurried from the room, the soles of her running shoes squeaking on the tile floor.

Ruthie’s sense of unease grew. A voice in the back of her mind hissed out a warning:
Leave this place. Run
.

She was standing up, hesitating, when Candace came back with a photo in a gold frame. “This is them,” she said, thrusting the framed picture at Ruthie.

Ruthie looked down at the now familiar face of Thomas, identical to his driver’s-license photo. The air felt thin and strange. The
room seemed to get smaller and darker. Ruthie took an extra gulp of air as she stared down at the photo.

Beside Thomas was a woman with tortoiseshell cat’s-eye glasses and curly hair.

The woman from Fitzgerald’s.

What do you choose, Dove?

Between the couple, a toddler with dark hair and eyes who had her hand clamped around her mother’s. She wore a burgundy velvet dress and matching headband. On her wrist was a tiny gold bracelet. Her hair was neat and combed, her cheeks were pink, and she wore a smile that said she was the happiest kid on the planet.

Ruthie couldn’t breathe.

“I’ve gotta go,” she whispered, stepping away on shaky legs and running from the kitchen, back down the hall with its empty picture hooks, to the huge paneled wooden front door.

“Wait,” Candace shouted after her. “You can’t go yet!”

But Ruthie was out the door, jogging to the truck. She hopped in and slammed the door. “Punch it,” she said, gasping for breath.

“What happened? Did she know something?” Buzz asked.

“The lady’s nuts. She can’t help us.”

She watched in the rearview mirror as Candace came down the driveway, chased after them on foot, flailing her arms, yelling, “There’s something you need to know!”

“What are you even looking for?” Buzz asked.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Ruthie told him.

It was just past eight, and they were back at home. Ruthie was tearing through bookcases, drawers, and shelves while Fawn and Buzz watched from the kitchen table, where they’d set themselves up with his laptop. Buzz was teaching Fawn how to play an alien-hunting game. Fawn was a quick learner and was using the arrow keys to guide her own spacecraft through the galaxy, shooting lasers with the
SHIFT
key.

“Oops! No, Fawn, the green aliens are the good guys. You don’t want to shoot them. They’re our allies. There’s a red one—blast it!”

Ruthie gave Buzz a warm smile. “Thank you,” Ruthie mouthed, and Buzz smiled back. She meant it. He’d taken the day off of work to drive her to Connecticut, and now here he was, still hanging out with them, entertaining Fawn.

Ruthie found the family’s one photo album and several shoeboxes full of pictures, and brought them all back to the table.

“Hit
F6
and you go to hyperspace,” Buzz said.

“What’s hyperspace?” Fawn asked.

“It’s where you go really fast. You can outrun just about anything.”

Ruthie flipped through the album, which began with baby pictures of Fawn, then moved forward: Fawn’s first steps, first tricycle, first lost tooth. Mom and Dad were there, too, along with Ruthie, but clearly Fawn was the star of the show. She flipped back to the
first page, showing Mom and Dad each holding Fawn as a newborn. She had a red, scrunched face, and her big wise-owl eyes were wide open, taking everything in. And there, in the bottom corner, was Ruthie—a scowling twelve-year-old with one of her mother’s famously bad home haircuts.

The only people in the photos were the four of them. Mom and Dad had no living relatives, so there was no grandma’s house to go to on Thanksgiving, no cousins to fight with at Christmas.

Ruthie dumped out the shoeboxes.

“Are you looking for pictures of the O’Rourkes?” Buzz asked, looking up from the computer. Fawn kept her eyes on the screen, fingers punching keys.

Ruthie didn’t answer. She flipped through photo after photo, pulling many of them from the drugstore envelopes they’d never been taken out of, passing over one blurry shot after another, passing badly framed pictures where the tops of the girls’ heads had been cut off. Here were the girls in front of misshapen Christmas trees, playing in the snow, digging in the garden, holding chickens. And some of a younger Ruthie: Here she was at ten, wearing a baseball cap on her first camping trip with Mom and Dad. Modeling a matching set of sweaters with Mom at fourteen. The two of them looked so odd together—Ruthie tall and skinny with dark hair and eyes, her mother short and round with bright-blue eyes and tangled gray hair. Here she was at eight, with the chemistry set she’d begged for at Christmas. Her father was beside her in this one, showing her a picture of the periodic table, explaining how everything on earth, everything in the universe, even—people, starfish, cement, bicycles, and far-off planets—was made up of a combination of these elements.