The Winter People(22)

Gary, who loved a good ghost story. Gary, who once teased her by saying, “You better hope you’re the one to die first, babe, ’cause if I do I’m gonna come back here and haunt your ass.”

She smiled now, thinking of it. She picked up the blue pack of American Spirits—the last of the carton she’d found in Gary’s studio. She hadn’t smoked since college, and was always hounding Gary to quit, always complaining of the smell on his clothes and hair. Now she found the smell of cigarette smoke comforting, and allowed herself one cigarette a day. Sometimes two. She shook one out of the pack and lit up, knowing it was a little early, not caring.

“What were you doing here, Gary?” she asked out loud, watching the smoke drift up; she secretly hoped that if she started building the next box, adding in details, the answers might come. “Who’s the woman with the braid? And where can I find her?”





Ruthie


“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty,” Ruthie shouted out, hands covering her face. She opened her eyes, stood up from the couch, and hollered, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Hide-and-seek was Fawn’s favorite game, and they’d been playing for nearly an hour now, starting just after they’d washed and put away the breakfast dishes. Ruthie thought it might help take Fawn’s mind off Mom’s being gone. She also decided that it was an efficient, even fun, way for them to search the house for clues. There were always two rules when they played hide-and-seek. The first was that Mom’s room, the basement, and outside were off limits. The second rule was that Fawn always hid. Ruthie was claustrophobic and couldn’t stand fitting herself into tight, dark places. Fawn loved hiding, and she was really good at it; a few times, Ruthie even had to shout that she gave up, so Fawn would come popping out of some unlikely place—the laundry hamper, the cabinet under the kitchen sink.

“Where can she be?” Ruthie asked loudly as she searched the living room. She peered behind the couch, then went into the front hall and looked in the closet. From there, she moved on to the kitchen, where she carefully checked each cupboard. Nothing. Surely Fawn couldn’t fit herself into one of the drawers? Ruthie checked anyway. “Have you turned into a little mouse and crawled somewhere I’ll never find you?” Ruthie called.

This was also part of the game, the constant silly banter that sometimes made Fawn giggle and give herself away.

For twenty minutes, Ruthie searched the house, looking in all of Fawn’s favorite places, but found no sign of her sister.

“Are you under Daddy’s desk? Nope. Have you turned into a speck of dust and blown away?”

Fawn wasn’t in any of the closets, under any bed or table, or lying in the bathtub with the shower curtain drawn around her. Ruthie even checked under the old claw-foot tub, remembering that once she’d found her sister crammed in there on her belly.

Usually when she couldn’t find her sister, Ruthie just got annoyed. Today she felt panic rising, growing stronger as she checked each empty hiding place.

What if Fawn really was gone? What if whatever happened to their mom had happened to her?

Stop it, she told herself. It’s only a game.

“Fawn?” Ruthie called out. “I give up! Game’s over! Come out!”

But Fawn did not appear. Ruthie went from room to room, calling out, listening intently for a giggle or a rustle, as a cold sweat gathered between her shoulder blades. She ended up back in the living room, right where she’d started, on her knees, looking behind the couch.

“Boo!”

Ruthie screamed. Fawn was right behind her.

“Where were you?” Ruthie asked, relief flooding through her.

“Hiding with Mimi.” The doll dangled limply from Fawn’s hand.

“Where?”

Fawn shrugged. “It’s a secret. Are we done playing now?”

“I’ve got a new game,” Ruthie said. “Come on.” She led her sister up the stairs to Mom’s room.

“What are we doing in here?” Fawn asked. Mom was big into “respecting each other’s private spaces,” which meant: don’t enter without knocking, and no snooping when no one was there. Ruthie couldn’t remember the last time she’d even set foot in her mother’s bedroom—back when her father was alive, maybe.

It was the largest bedroom in the house, but seemed larger still because of its sparseness: white walls with ancient cracks in the plaster; only a bed, a dresser, and one bedside table; no art on the walls; no clutter. Not even a stray sock on the old pine floors, just a couple of hand-loomed wool throw rugs on either side of the bed.

Her mother had the best view in the house, too, the window beside the bed looking north out across the yard and to the wooded hillside. In the fall and winter, when the leaves were off the trees, you could see all the way out to the Devil’s Hand, at the top of the hill. Ruthie stared out that way now, catching only a glimpse of rock peeking through the blanket of thick snow. Then, for a split second, she caught a glimpse of movement—a shadow sliding out from behind the rocks, and back. There, then gone. A trick of the light, she told herself, turning away.

“We’re playing a new game,” Ruthie told her little sister. Fawn’s eyes widened.

“What kind of game?”

“A searching game.”

“Like hide-and-seek?”