These Silent Woods: A Novel(47)

She folds her arms across her chest. “You don’t know that.”

“Of course I do.” We saw her leave. Two days later, a foot of snow.

“But it wouldn’t hurt to go back down there. Just to be sure.”

“The only thing I need to be sure of is that you’re going to let this thing go.”

“But—”

“Drop it,” I hiss. “Don’t bring it up again. You hear me?”

She makes her bear face then bursts out of the room, stomping past Marie and right out the front door.

Marie looks at me. “Everything all right?”

I shrug. “You know how it is. Kids.”

She steps toward the door, tucking her gloves into her jacket. “I’m heading out.”

“I’m right behind you.”

I get dressed. Long johns and jeans and thick wool socks that are thinning in the heels. Jacket, hat, scarf, gloves. For the second time this morning, I step onto the porch, the snow still falling but lighter now, the flakes sailing down, slow and gentle. Footprints everywhere, my own, covered in a layer of snow already, and also two sets of smaller ones, but no sight of Finch and Marie. I follow the prints around the side of the house. Nothing. Look to the woods. Swing back to the front of the house. Heart beating fast now.

“Finch?”

Smack. Something hard hits me square in the face. Knocks me back a step. Cold cold cold, and I nearly lose my balance.

“Gotcha!”

Laughter that flits up and up.

I wipe my face with the sleeve of my jacket. A snowball. Marie shuffles closer, wading through the snow in my pants. “That’s for copping a feel,” she says, looking up at me.

“I didn’t—”

“Close enough,” she says, pointing at me with her gloved finger. She signals to Finch. “Fire away!”

From the ditch at the edge of the yard, Finch pops up and launches another snowball that hits me in the chest. Marie plucks a snowball from her pocket and hits me again in the head. She runs toward Finch and ducks into the ditch.

“Two against one. No fair!” I squat and ball some snow and hurl it at Finch. Miss, which gets her laughing. Make another one, fling it at Marie, hit her on the head, the ball crumbling down over her beanie.

On and on the morning goes, the hours flitting past. Snowballs and snow angels and sledding up and down the little dip just beyond the yard: a short run, nothing too thrilling but fun all the same, especially since it’s Finch’s first time on a sled, ever. We take turns, the three of us, sometimes doubling up, sometimes headfirst. We build a ramp for one of the runs. Heap the snow up and pack it down so that the sled lifts off and then slams down hard and sometimes, whoever is riding topples over. I haven’t laughed so much in years.

The whole morning, I don’t think of Cindy at all, not once. I keep an eye on the woods—instinct—but I don’t worry. I don’t fret about Scotland, either, although when Finch and Marie go in for lunch, I wonder if he is watching with his spotting scope and so I turn in the direction where he says he lives, take off my glove, and flip him the bird, just in case.



* * *



So of course he shows up, later that afternoon, when I’m shoveling a path to the outhouse again. Slogs right into the yard on a pair of snowshoes that look like they’re about a hundred years old, only this time in the snow’s silence I heard the swish swish of him coming through the snow. Saw him from way off, first time ever he didn’t catch me off guard and send my heart shooting into my throat.

“You have a guest,” he says, gesturing toward Marie’s car.

“Jake’s sister, Marie.”

“You holding her captive?” He laughs, his voice filling the deep silence of the woods.

“The snow.”

He spits to the side. “I saw the car coming down the road last night. I was fixing to head down here, but then I determined you could handle it. Told myself if you needed my help, you have the flare.”

I shovel the spot where Scotland spit, the tobacco a brown spot in the snow. “That’s right. If I ever need you, I have the flare.” I’m hoping he’ll take a hint: quit showing up here and meddling in our business. Quit watching us. Given how the past eight years have gone, I doubt he gets the message.

He pulls a chunk of ice from the roof of the outhouse. “I saw the two of you unloading her vehicle and figured it must be someone Jake sent. With your supplies and hers, you ought to be well stocked for quite some time.”

“Jake’s dead.”

Scotland closes his eyes and folds his gloved hands across his abdomen. Takes a deep breath and tilts his head to the sky. “He’s with the Lord now. No longer suffering this world and its heartaches.”

“Or he’s just dead.”

He shakes his head. “No, Cooper. It’s not like that. This world, it’ll tear the guts right out of you. As you well know. But this isn’t all there is.” He clears his throat then tilts his head to the sky and begins to sing: “‘Come Thou Fount of every blessing, Tune my heart to sing Thy grace…’”

Warm from the shoveling, I unzip my jacket. That haunting, smooth singing voice of his. How can it be so irritating and so heartbreaking, all at once?

“Just wish you could see it, that’s all.” He packs a snowball in his bare hands. “Does Marie know?”