The Winter People(58)
“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.”
Katherine
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.