The Stroke of Winter(11)

CHAPTER FIVE



After Jane and Jim had gone, Tess bundled up to take the dog outside for a walk. At first, he was reluctant to step through the doorway, thinking perhaps that he wouldn’t be allowed back inside. But Tess coaxed him, tugged a bit on the leash that Jim had brought with him, and soon the dog gingerly stepped across the threshold and into the night.

At first, he pulled and tugged at the leash, but then he settled into the rhythm of the walk, trotting at Tess’s side. They walked through the snowy streets, which by that time had all been plowed. Snowbanks were piled high on the curbs. She had never seen Wharton blanketed like this. It looked like a winter wonderland, a totally different town. Lights burned brightly from many of the houses, and Tess could see families around their own dinner tables or in their living rooms. It was a cozy feeling, watching the domestic tableaux through their windows.

It was still bone-chilling cold, but Tess was wearing her warmest jacket and boots. The cold nipping at her cheeks invigorated her, at least for the moment. As she turned the corner toward home, the dog began pulling her toward the door, visibly relieved to be going back inside.

In the kitchen, Tess peeled off her parka, pulled off her boots, and grabbed a towel to wipe the dog’s snowy feet. He complied, politely lifting each paw in turn.

“I can’t just keep calling you ‘the dog,’” she said to him, his sweet face smiling. She petted his chilly fur. “When you came to me, you were nearly frozen. But that’s not a good name for a dog. How about Snowstorm?”

He wagged his tail. “Snowstorm,” she said again, scratching behind his ears. “Good boy, Snowstorm. Or, how about just Storm?” She smiled at him. “Yes, that suits you. Storm.”

She knew Jim would post photos of the dog in the store, on the store’s website, and on the town’s website. And if this dog had a family fretting about his safety, Tess hoped they’d see those photos. But deep down, she hoped he had found where he belonged.

As the night wore on, it was getting chilly in the house. One more cold night to get through—the furnace guy Jim had recommended was coming in the morning. Tess turned on the water, just to a trickle, in the kitchen and bathroom sinks to keep those pipes, which were on exterior walls, from freezing overnight. She opened the cabinet doors beneath both sinks and switched on the battery-powered space heaters, which she had fetched from the basement earlier in the day. They wouldn’t provide a lot of heat, but just enough, and were much safer than the electric variety, which always scared Tess as being a fire hazard.

She had to do what she could: frozen or burst pipes were no joke, and she didn’t want to be dealing with that in the morning or, worse yet, in the middle of the night.

Then she gathered some firewood from the woodpile out back into the canvas log carrier and lugged it upstairs to her bedroom, Storm close behind.

“All of this fuss just to keep warm. I feel like a pioneer woman,” she said to the dog. “Maybe I’ll make soap next. Start canning food.” She chuckled at her own weak attempt at humor.

In her bedroom, Tess started a fire in the fireplace, and the warm glow lit up the darkness. After changing into her pajamas, she snuggled under the covers and settled in to watch the news. She had turned on her heating blanket before Jim and Jane arrived, so her bed was toasty, even if the air in her room was still ice cold.

As she reached for the remote, Storm jumped up onto the bed and, after turning in a circle a few times, curled into a ball and put his fluffy tail over his nose.

“I guess it’s a one-dog night around here,” Tess said, referring to the expression that people sometimes used to denote how cold it would be outside: one-dog, two-dog, or three-dog night. She reached for the remote and flipped on the television.

Halfway through the weather segment—More cold and snow on the way, awesome! Tess groaned—the dog’s head popped up, his ears on high alert. He let out a low growl and a few soft barks.

He must have heard it, Tess thought. The scratching. So, she wasn’t the only one.

He jumped off the bed and stood at the closed door, growling low in his throat.

“Do you want to go check it out?” she asked him as she slipped out of bed.

Tess turned on the light and opened the door. The dog hurried through it. She followed close behind. Sure enough, Storm stopped at the shuttered door at the end of the hallway and began barking loud and long, scratching at the door. Tess wasn’t sure what to do, but she knew one thing. There really was something behind that door. She hadn’t been imagining it. There was no other explanation for why Storm was barking. She hoped it wasn’t a raccoon.

But then, the commotion stopped as quickly as it had started. Storm fell silent, cocked his head, and listened at the door. He stayed that way, on high alert, listening carefully for several minutes. Then he looked up at Tess, as if to say, It’s gone. With that, he turned and began trotting down the hallway toward the bedroom, but Tess noticed he didn’t go all the way inside. He turned back toward Tess and waited for her.

“I’m coming,” she said, shivering in her nightgown in the chilly hall.

Back in her room, she added a couple of logs to the fire, and it crackled to life. Storm was already back on his perch on the bed, curled up but watching her intently. She closed the bedroom door against the chill of the hallway and, just thinking of it, headed to the en suite bathroom and rolled up a towel to place under the door. She wanted to keep the heat from her fireplace in her room and keep whatever was behind that closed door out there.