The Winter People (24 page)

“Look, however you found us, this really isn’t a good time,” Ruthie said, following her into the living room.

Candace had tracked in snow on her boots, leaving great puddles across the old pine floor. It was a house rule to take your shoes off in the hall. Ruthie’s mother would have a conniption if she were here.

“Hello again,” Candace said, as Fawn peeked at her from around the corner. “If you don’t want to tell me your name, that’s okay. But how about your dolly, she must have a name, right?”

Fawn only stared. Her cheeks were flushed from her fever, and she’d been in the same dirty red overalls for days. Her hair was in tangles. Ruthie realized she looked like a feral child, a little girl raised by wolves.

“I have a boy about your age,” Candace said. “His name is Luke. Let me guess, you’re six, right?”

Fawn gave a tentative nod.

“My Luke—you know what his favorite thing in the world is? He has a stuffed platypus. Can you guess what he named it?”

Fawn shook her head.

“Spike,” Candace said, laughing a little.

Fawn laughed, too, stepping into the living room, coming to join Candace and Ruthie near the woodstove.

“Silly, huh?” asked Candace. “Who names a platypus Spike?”

“Where is he now?” Fawn asked. “Luke?”

Candace’s smile faded. “He’s with his father. We’re divorced, you see, and Luke’s father, he’s one of those men who always get their own way. Luke lives with him now.” Candace ran a hand through her hair. “But, with any luck, that will be changing soon. He hasn’t heard the last from me. It isn’t right, is it, keeping a boy from his own mother?”

Fawn gave her a sympathetic look. “This is Mimi,” she said, holding the doll up for inspection. “And my name is Fawn. I’m six and a half.”

“Six and a half is very big indeed. I can tell you’re a big girl. And very smart. So let me ask you, where do you think your mother has gone?”

Fawn thought a minute. “Away. Far away.”

“Fawn,” Ruthie interrupted, “why don’t you go up to your room?”

“You poor thing,” Candace said to Fawn, ignoring Ruthie completely. “It must be hard to have your mother gone like this. You really have no idea where she might be?”

Fawn shook her head, looked down at her doll.

“I know you found Tom and Bridget’s wallets somewhere in the house. Tell me, Fawn, did you find anything else with them?”

Fawn’s eyes shot up to Ruthie’s, her look a question:
Should we tell?

Ruthie gave the slightest little shake of her head, hoping it was enough. Ruthie didn’t know what the hidden wallets and gun meant, but she knew Buzz was right—they made it look like her mother might be involved in something dark, something criminal. She didn’t want Candace O’Rourke to know about any of that.

“There was nothing else,” Ruthie said, stepping forward.

But Candace continued to ignore Ruthie, keeping her eyes on Fawn.

“Sometimes big brothers and sisters and grown-ups, they don’t tell the truth. It doesn’t make them bad people—they’re just doing what they believe is right. But you, Fawn, you always tell the truth,
I can tell. Was there anything else with the wallets? Any papers? Anything at all?”

“I told you, there was nothing else!” Ruthie had had enough. “I’m sorry, but you need to leave now.”

“And
I’m
sorry, Ruthie, but I simply don’t believe you,” Candace said. She looked up from Fawn finally, and stared coldly at Ruthie.

“Do I need to call the police?” Ruthie asked.

Candace shook her head with evident disappointment. Keeping her eyes on Ruthie, she opened up her coat to reveal a holster strapped to her chest. She pulled a handgun out of it, slowly, almost awkwardly. The gun was smaller and more square than the one they’d found upstairs; this barrel was silver, the grip black. Candace was clearly not a pro at this, more like an actress with a prop she hadn’t had much practice with.

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” Candace said with a sigh. Shit.

Ruthie thought again of all her mother’s warnings throughout the years
—Never open the door
. She thought of Little Red Riding Hood being tricked by the wolf in Granny’s clothes.

Fawn’s eyes got huge. “Are you the police?” she asked.

Candace laughed. “Hardly. Look, I really hate guns. I do. And I’d
really
hate to have to use it,” she warned, turning to Ruthie, then back to Fawn. “So here’s what’s going to happen: You two are going to tell me everything you can about your parents and Tom and Bridget O’Rourke. You’re going to show me just where you found the wallets and everything else you found with them.”

Ruthie looked at Candace and at the gun, trying to keep a rising sense of panic under control. She didn’t think Candace would actually shoot them, at least not on purpose. But she was obviously a wacko—who knew what she was capable of? “If you hate guns so much, why did you bring it?” Fawn asked.

“Because I can’t leave here without getting what I came for. I really can’t. You need to understand that.” The gun dangled from her right hand, pointed toward the ground. She plucked at her hair with her left.

“What is it you’re looking for?” Ruthie asked.

Candace scowled at Ruthie. “Something Tom and Bridget had, and I think that your mother, wherever she is, has it right now. So I need you to start answering my questions. Okay?”

Neither of them spoke. Fawn looked petrified, and Ruthie’s mind wasn’t working fast enough. She was too busy staring at the gun.

“Please don’t make me point this at either one of you,” Candace said, raising the gun, her finger on the trigger. “So are you ready to cooperate? Because, really, I think we all want the same thing, right? We want to find your mother, don’t we?”

Fawn moved closer to Ruthie, snuggled right up against her. Candace waved the gun at them, pointing it first at Fawn, then at Ruthie. “Don’t we?” she repeated.

“Yes,” both girls sang out. “Yes.”

“Good.” Candace smiled and lowered the gun, looking relieved. “I can see you’re two smart girls. And now that we’re all on the same side, I think we’re really going to get somewhere. I really do.”

The snow moved in a furious whirlwind around the Jeep, flying through the air in ways Katherine had never seen. It came down from the sky and shot sideways, the wind blasting it against Katherine’s windshield and over the towering banks on the side of the road. It was as if nature itself was somehow against her getting to Sara’s house.

It was pure stupidity, driving around on such a night, but Katherine had come this far, was already on Beacon Hill Road. She crept along in low gear, clutching the steering wheel, and at last saw the lights of a house down on the right. It was hard to get a good look from the main road in the dark, especially through the blinding snow. Was that the right house? It could be. The driveway was long and hadn’t been plowed recently. But the lights burned bright. Behind the house, she saw the dark outline of a barn.

Just turn around and come back tomorrow, in the light of day, for Christ’s sake
. She tried to reason with herself, to talk some sense.

Katherine continued down the road, searching for another driveway, just in case there was another house. Half a mile later, she came to a pull-off on the right. There was a Blazer with Connecticut plates parked there, and footprints leading up a trail into the woods. That must be the path to the Devil’s Hand. It was a hell of a night for a hike. But maybe it was just kids out partying; she imagined them lying on their backs in the snow, passing a joint and a bottle, looking up into the sky, and imagining it was the end of the
world. A nuclear winter. Or that they were lost in space, frozen stars falling all around them.

It was something she and Gary might have done back in college—lying in the snow, hand in hand, imagining they were the only two living beings in the universe, astronauts tethered to one another and nothing else.

She did a poorly executed K-turn, nearly getting stuck in a snowbank, then headed back to what must be Sara’s house. As she got to the driveway, she leaned forward, squinting through the snow, trying to get a better look, to see more details, but it was no good.

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said aloud, driving on; it was the sensible, grown-up thing to do.

Five hundred feet from the driveway, she pulled over, turned off her headlights, and cut the engine.

Idiot. What do you think you’re doing?

She buttoned her coat and jumped out of the Jeep, her feet sinking in the snow. She’d try to get a look in the windows first; then, if she still thought this might be Alice’s house, she’d knock on the door and say she was having car trouble and ask to use a phone. She’d tell them she didn’t have a cell. She took the cell phone out of her purse and stuck it in the Jeep’s glove compartment, happy with herself for thinking of this detail. Then she locked the car with a mechanical chirp and headed back up the road toward the driveway.

No cars passed. There was no sound at all. The muffled silence of the snowy landscape seemed so unnatural, as if the world had been draped in cotton. The only things she heard were the wind and the sound of her own footsteps squeaking through the fluffy snow.

She pressed on, wanting—needing—to get a little closer. To see the house where a woman with a braid and two girls kept a garden. The house where Sara Harrison Shea had called her Gertie back to her.

Katherine trudged down the middle of the driveway, feet pushing through the snow like awkward canoes. The details of the house suddenly emerged from the darkness. This was it! She recognized it from the photos—a small farmhouse with three windows downstairs and three upstairs. A few brick steps leading up to the front
door, right in the center of the house. Woodsmoke poured out of the chimney.

She left the driveway and cut across the edge of the yard, staying in shadows. She had a lovely adrenaline buzz—here she was, doing something crazy, something almost criminal—trespassing, spying like a Peeping Tom.

Just one quick look, she promised herself. She imagined peeking in the window, immediately seeing the woman with the braid. Then she’d go straight to the door with her story of car trouble, find out if the woman’s name was Alice.

She ran the last few yards, bent over, keeping herself low and under the windows. She got beneath the middle window, the one to the right of the front door, and caught her breath.

Slowly, cautiously, she lifted her head, half imagining she’d look inside and even see Sara in a rocking chair, little Gertie on her lap.

What she saw instead made her clap her hand over her mouth, bite down on the thin, salty leather of her glove.

She was looking into a large living room with wide plank floors and throw rugs in muted earth tones. Against the wall was a large brick hearth with a woodstove burning.

A woman stood in front of it. She had blond hair and wore an ivory-colored sweater. In her right hand, she held a gun. She was waving the weapon at a small girl in red overalls who was clinging to an old rag doll. An older, dark-haired girl stood beside the little girl, her eyes frantic as she nodded in answer to whatever the woman had just said. The girls from the photograph—the ones helping their mother in the garden.

Katherine ducked back down, reached in her purse for her cell phone to call 911, but then remembered she’d left it back in the car.

“Shit!” she hissed in a low whisper.

She couldn’t leave these girls. Not like this. She had to do something.

She had the sudden sense that this was why she’d been led here, why she’d found Sara’s book in Gary’s toolbox and discovered the photos in the book she’d bought at the store. Why she’d gotten out of the Jeep in the dark blizzard against her better judgment. Some
force had drawn her to this place at this time so she could, for the first time in her life maybe, do something truly useful. Something truly great.

She thought of the weeks when she’d sat by Austin’s side—holding his hand in the hospital bed, feeding him bites of Jell-O, telling him silly stories—of how powerless she’d been, unable to save him, to stop this terrible thing that was coming. And then there was Gary. Crushed in a car wreck, and she hadn’t even been there—hadn’t even been given the chance to try to save him. (
Slow down
, she might have said.
The roads are icy
.)

Some things are out of our control. Sometimes terrible things happen and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop them.

But here she was, given a chance to make a difference.

She was going to save those girls.

“Our mom disappeared on New Year’s Day. She made dinner, put my sister to bed, made a cup of tea. When I got home later that night, she was gone,” Ruthie said.

Candace nodded, slipping the gun back into the holster now that the girls were cooperating.

“Do you know what happened to her?” Fawn asked, looking up at Candace, her huge brown eyes as pleading as Ruthie had ever seen them.

Candace ran a hand through her hair. “I’m not exactly sure, but I might have an idea.”

“Please,” Ruthie said. “If you know anything, tell us.”

Candace smiled. “Don’t worry, Ruthie, we’re going to find your mother—I’m not leaving here until I do. We need to start with you telling me everything you know about Tom and Bridget.”

Ruthie shook her head. “Next to nothing. We’d never heard of them until we found their wallets the other day.”

“So your mom never mentioned them?”

“Never,” Ruthie said.

“And how did you find the wallets?” Candace asked.

“Just like I told you. We were searching the house, hoping to find some clue about what happened to our mom.”

“You never called the police?”

“We thought about it, but no. Not yet. We knew that’s not what Mom would want. She hates the cops.”

Candace smiled. “Smart woman. So, tell me, where’d you find these wallets?”

Ruthie paused, thinking. “The hall closet. There’s a secret compartment behind the back wall.” She flashed Fawn a go-along-with-this look.

“Show me,” Candace said.

Ruthie led the way to the hall and opened the closet. The back panel was out, resting against the side, where they’d left it.