Baby It's Cold Outside

by Susan May Warren

  Jake got up. “Sure, kid,” he said and grabbed the pot off the stove. He spooned more into the bowl and met Violet’s eyes.

  She could nearly reach out and take a hold of his relief. Carry it with her. She hadn’t realized how afraid they’d all been that Arnie could die. Or, that he might have taken off in the middle of the night for home.

  Dottie and Gordy had hauled the toys into the family room and set up the railroad track there. No one wanted to lose him again.

  “Can I go home today?” Arnie said between bites.

  “The wind’s gusting pretty hard out there. And it’s hard to see what we’re facing. How far do you live?” Violet asked.

  “Out past Gundersons’, where the road T’s, and then a jog up from there.”

  Violet guessed about three miles from town. What was he doing walking home? “Where’s your mama? Why didn’t she pick you up after school?”

  He shoved another spoonful into his mouth. “She works at the mill, on the late shift on Thursdays. But I’ll bet she’s home by now.”

  Violet met Dottie’s gaze. Probably not. “Gordy, I think your mama would want you to stay with us until the storm blows over. We’ll get you home as soon as we can.”

  He put the bowl down, considered her with those fetching brown eyes. “But tonight’s Christmas Eve. How will Santa know where to find me?”

  Dottie touched his hand. “Oh, don’t worry. Santa always knows where to find good little boys.”

  Violet frowned as Arnie’s head tucked down into his chest. “I’m not a good boy.”

  “Arnie, why would you say that?”

  His eyes flitted over to Dottie, then back. “’Cause I daydream.”

  Dottie hid a smile, catching Violet’s gaze. “Is that so?”

  “I had to stay after school and write ‘I will not daydream in class’ on Mrs. Olafson’s blackboard.”

  “Oh,” Dottie said. “That is fairly serious.”

  Arnie bit his lower lip.

  “But I think that can be solved. See, daydreaming is allowed here at Storm House. You can be anyone you want to be. Make up an entirely new life, if you want.” Dottie looked at Violet, raised an eyebrow. “Right?”

  Violet looked away. She noticed Jake playing with his spoon.

  “In fact, at Storm House, you can even pretend you live here, that it’s your house,” Gordy said. “Like a secret house where only you belong.”

  “It’s my house?”

  Gordy nodded. “But you have to dream it up to make it come true. Can you do that?”

  Arnie nodded, but his smile dimmed as his gaze fell again on Dottie. “But what about Santa? We don’t have a tree, or stockings, or…will he still come?”

  “You let the grown-ups take care of that, Arnie,” Jake said. “Santa will be here in the morning, I promise. Right, Gordy? Dottie?” He looked at Violet.

  “Right,” she said. Right?

  Arnie slid off his chair, scampering into the parlor. The puttering sound of an engine derailing seemed to put a smile on Dottie’s face. She glanced at Gordy.

  Who looked at Jake. “And how are we supposed to give this child a merry Christmas?”

  “We do have a big fir tree outside in the yard.”

  Gordy raised an eyebrow.

  “And a generator, for our lights.”

  “It doesn’t work,” Dottie said.

  Why did Jake look at her? Or maybe Violet just imagined it.

  “And a feast in the cupboards.”

  “Son, are you ill?” Dottie said.

  “Gordy, let’s see if we can figure a way out of here and fetch that tree, not to mention more firewood. Violet, why don’t you and Dottie scrounge up more decorations?”

  Jake pushed himself up from the table. “We have work to do, people, if we want Santa to show up tonight.”

  He gathered up his bowl and set it in the sink then marched out of the room.

  “What was that?” Dottie said, staring after him. “He can’t possibly think I’m going to make Christmas dinner out of a couple cans of ham?”

  Violet saw Gordy’s hand land on Dottie’s, squeezing it. “If anyone has the imagination to pull it off, you do, Dottie.” He winked at her and followed Jake out.

  “Is it something they ate? Maybe gas is leaking through the house?” Dottie said.

  Violet heard footsteps on the stairs. They weren’t going to climb out the bathroom window, were they?

  Dottie must have read her face.

  “In the blizzard of 1940, I was snowed in, just like now. Gordy and Nelson were holed up at his place. He knew I was worried sick, so as soon as the wind died enough for them to get across the pond, they hiked over. The drifts had piled up to the second floor, and Nelson climbed the drift to the bathroom window.”

  “They’re going to kill themselves.”

  “Gordy knows what he’s doing.” Dottie bussed the bowls, dropping them into the sink. “Let’s head up to the attic, see if we can find some decorations.”

  Violet delivered her bowl to the sink then followed Dottie up the stairs. “You stay here, Arnie, okay?”

  Arnie had built himself a fortress with the sofa cushions, the radio, a table, and one of the bedroom quilts.

  Dottie pulled down the attic stairs from the ceiling then climbed up. Even with the daylight sneaking in the cracks, the place needed light. Violet climbed down and returned with a candle.

  Dottie had dragged a box near the stairway, now began pulling out ornaments wrapped in paper. An acorn hanging from a thread, and a painted glass ball. “Nelson gave me these—gifts from his classroom.”

  She unwrapped more. A tin man and a lion. “The Wizard of Oz. Did you see the movie? We took the train to Minneapolis to see it. And then it finally came to Frost.”

  “I was terrified of the witch,” Violet said.

  “We all were. If Nelson had been any younger, I suspect he would have slipped into my bed in the middle of the night. But he was fifteen, so he pretended well.”

  Dottie tucked the ornaments back in the box then set it aside and dug further, opening another box, pulling out a stocking, the name NELSON knitted into the top. The next one read MOTHER.

  Violet had seen them both when she’d unpacked that box earlier.

  Behind it came the tree skirt, made of felt and displaying the nativity scene including the three wise men. Dottie folded it on her lap, ran her hand over it.

  “Silly to hang on to all these things. I know he’s not coming back.”

  “It doesn’t mean you can’t remember him,” Violet said. “Just because Nelson’s gone doesn’t mean your life is over. Or erased.” She looked in the box, pulled out a pair of knitted socks. “These are cute.”

  “He wore those when he was a baby. I’ll never forget those big blue eyes. He couldn’t crawl yet, so he did this sort of rocking scoot around the house, after me. I’ll never forget my father, yelping when he caught Nelson chewing on his toes.”

  “Where was your mother?”

  “She died in childbirth when I was eight, along with my newborn brother. My father never quite recovered. He wanted to fill this house with children.” She made a face. “I’m not sure he ever forgave me, either, for not giving him a crowd of grandchildren.” She added the stockings to the pile. Then she pulled out a little red bunting. Held it to her nose. “He loved Nelson, though.”

  “Everyone loved Nelson.”

  Dottie’s eyes glistened. “They did, didn’t they? It was like, when Nelson came along, the town of Frost forgave me for my sins.”

  “It’s hardly a sin to follow your heart.”

  “But what about breaking another’s?” She shook her head. “Not a person didn’t know that Gordy changed after I left. I always waited for him to marry, but—”

  “But he never stopped loving you.”

  Emotion raked across Dottie’s face, despite her casual shrug.

  “Just like God never stopped loving you.”

  Dottie drew in a
quick breath then took everything and piled it back in the box. “God stopped loving me the day Nelson died.”

  Oh, Dottie. Violet kept her voice soft. “Dottie, God’s love isn’t measured by His blessings. Think about it—what about when there is suffering? Darkness? Storms? Does God love you less?”

  Dottie’s face hardened.

  “I know it seems easier to say God doesn’t love you when terrible things happen. But the truth is, God’s love isn’t measured by the good—or bad—things that happen to us. God loves us, period. He already loved us completely when He sent His Son into our dark, painful, sinful world. We were His enemies, Dottie, and He loved us, even then. I guarantee you are not His enemy now. So, the fact is, He still loves you, even though He took away Nelson. And, He’s been trying to comfort you—”

  “How?”

  “By giving you a man who loved your son as much as you did! Gordy. God didn’t leave you bereft. And, you can never erase the twenty-one years you spent with Nelson.” She reached inside the box, pulling out the stocking. She pressed it into Dottie’s hand. “You can’t erase your son.”

  Dottie stared at the stocking, back at Violet. “I don’t want to erase him. Sometimes, I just can’t bear to remember him.”

  Violet’s voice gentled. “But, don’t you see? You can, Dottie. You just did. And we’re here to share him with you.” She folded her hand on Dottie’s. “Your Storm House Family.”

  Dottie ran her finger under her eye. “I knew it was a bad idea to let you into my house.”

  “I rescued you from the cellar.”

  Dottie managed a semblance of a smile. “Help me bring these boxes down.”

  Violet climbed down the stairs and took the boxes from Dottie as she handed them down.

  “Just a moment,” Dottie said, and disappeared into the recesses of the attic. When she returned, she lowered down a large, glass star.

  “I don’t suppose you could figure out a way to light this up, could you?” Dottie said, grinning. She climbed down then closed the attic door.

  “Dottie—”

  “I think you need to stop hiding who you are. Christmas needs you, Sergeant.”

  “You’re not being fair.”

  “And you’re not being honest.” Dottie hefted a box. “You can’t live your life pretending to be someone you’re not.” She winked at her. “Even in Storm House.”

  Violet carried the star down the staircase, following Dottie. She set it on one of the boxes.

  The doors to the dining room, where Gordy had abandoned the generator, remained closed.

  Upstairs, she heard thumping as the men attempted to escape their icy prison.

  Dottie headed to the kitchen, perhaps to make magic with ham.

  Violet took one look at Arnie, sprawled on the floor, plowing over a herd of little metal soldiers with a giant green wooden tractor, puttering noises emitting from his pursed lips, and headed through the doors to Santa’s workshop.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Gordy was simply too old to be climbing out of second-story windows and sliding down the rain pipe. He shook his head as Jake finished prying open the window. He’d taken a candle to where the ice piled up in the corners, enough so that finally they were able to wedge it open.

  Too old and too large. A slim, fit guy like Jake might be able to fit through there—

  “I’m going to need to you to lower me off the edge. I think I can drop from there into the snowbank.”

  “Really, Jake, I don’t know. This is different than when Nelson climbed up to the roof, the main difference being that I was on the ground. Pushing up.”

  Jake glanced over his shoulder at him, grinning. After two days, the man had grown on Gordy. Not quite the Dapper Dan he had pegged him as. Jake had substance behind his charisma. Maybe it was the fact that he wanted to hike out in the blistering wind-chill, drag in the tree, or a portion of it, to create a Christmas world for Arnie, had Gordy second-guessing his own assessment.

  In fact, Jake reminded him, more every hour, of Nelson. His ability to find a silver lining, the way he could tease and cajole Dottie into giving him his way, his thoughtfulness. Indeed, if Nelson had lived, he might have become a man very much like Jake.

  Although, with the wind shearing off the top layer of snow, casting it into the abyss beyond like a white whirling dervish, perhaps creeping out on the narrow roof might not be the ideal way to dredge up Christmas cheer. “You’re going to get me killed.”

  “It’s snow. It’s fluffy.”

  “It’s a long way down.”

  “Or, we could just stay here until spring.” Jake raised an eyebrow. “I’m in if you are.”

  Frankly, he didn’t care if he ever went home. Who, after all, did he have to go home to? His cow?

  No, he’d stay until the summer daisies arrived and the lilacs outside Dottie’s window came into bloom.

  Thank you, Santa.

  Her soft voice could turn his chest into a gooey, garbled mess. You’re welcome? “Not at all” is what he wanted to say.

  Dottie, I loved your boy like he was my own. Of course I gave him Christmas presents.

  But, more importantly, she’d known that Gordy had given Nelson the gifts and kept them anyway.

  He blinked back the moisture in his eyes—probably from the searing wind that sent the bathroom into a deep freeze.

  Why hadn’t he ever asked Dottie again to marry him? Their argument in the yard yesterday—was it only yesterday?—rushed back at him.

  “You should have married me.”

  “You should have asked.”

  “I did, Dottie.”

  “Was that what that was? Because it seemed more like a tumble in the hay, and a command, issued by a desperate boy.”

  She’d been right—it was a command by a desperate boy. Too desperate and too young, and not enough of a tender request for her hand in marriage.

  Maybe she still would have spurned him, but certainly after she’d returned, lonely, heartbroken, pregnant, alone, he could have asked again.

  His pride simply wouldn’t allow it.

  They’d returned downstairs for their jackets, hats, and boots while Dottie and Violet were hunting through the attic, and now Gordy buttoned up his jacket as Jake squeezed his way through the opening without a problem.

  The wind sounded like a locomotive howling, and while the blizzard seemed to have abated, the wind scooped up the snow, turned it into a cyclone. The wind-chill might be forty below, or more. Gordy could make out the barn, however, through the swirling snow, and the cake of accumulation on the roof. He’d have to take a shovel to it and the roof of the house after the storm blew over, or it might cave in.

  While Gordy was out in the cold, he should also find and dig out the cellar door, try to get inside and feed the coal furnace, stir heat back into the house.

  Jake crouched by the window entrance. “C’mon old man, it’s your turn.”

  “Keep your paws off me—”

  But Jake grabbed Gordy’s jacket as he wiggled his way out the window. Gordy closed the window behind him, his chest on fire.

  He still couldn’t shake the persistent ache in his lower back—probably from last night on the floor. But the cereal this morning had left him feeling nauseous also.

  Or, it could be the height. The bathroom window emerged onto the mudroom addition so that the roof extended wider from the house. Still, he imagined that one wrong step might sled him down the side and fling him into space.

  “I really do feel old,” he said as he inched his way down the side of the roof with Jake.

  More than that, this little excursion to the edge of eternity made him consider that he should ask Dottie for her hand again.

  Will you marry me?

  How difficult could those four words be?

  Perhaps as hard as I love you.

  The wind shook his perch and threatened to whisk his legs out from under him. As if proving his fears, Jake slipped, landed on his backside, and Gordy
grabbed at the scruff of his jacket as Jake’s legs dangled over the edge.

  Jake kicked his way back to the roof. “In my head, this was a better idea.”

  Gordy stifled a grin as he finally scooted to the edge of the roof. The snow drifted up over the house like a hand, covering the mudroom door and the front porch. Probably it also covered the back of the house.

  It occurred to him that they might have checked those windows first before hopping out on the roof.

  Still, now that he overlooked it, the drift seemed to nearly reach the second-story roof. He could just reach out his foot and—

  His stationary foot slipped, kicked out, and the force of it sent him skidding.

  And then he was airborne.

  He tried to wind his arms, to maneuver himself upright, but he landed—boof!—face up in the snowy drift, staring at the sky as he attempted to catch his breath. It had snuffed out, the wind stealing it with a howl.

  “Are you hurt?”

  He looked up. Jake peered over the roof at him.

  Five feet up. He’d barely fallen five feet, and he felt like he’d been run over by a horse. He sat up. “Get down here.”

  Jake pushed off and landed next to him, on his feet then falling down beside him. “I feel old too.”

  “Don’t talk to me.” Gordy scooted down the bank, landing on his feet, then plowed through the snow to the barn.

  While he fed the horse, Jake dug out a couple of shovels. He handed one to Gordy.

  Gordy noticed he was employing that strange breathing again—slow, in through the nose, out through the mouth. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “It’s just the cold. I have to slow my breathing, keep it steady. I’ll be fine.”

  “Do not die on me. I can’t carry your carcass back up that snowdrift.”

  Jake gave him a narrowed-eye look and Gordy smiled. Yes, the kid reminded him of Nelson.

  Ice covered the drift against the house, a thick layer of wind-polished snow that required chipping and not a little grunting until Gordy had worked up a thick layer of sweat dribbling down between his shoulder blades. His nose, however, he could barely feel, for the wind. A couple of times he stopped, trying to make out his farm, but the bullet-gray sky still hovered too low. That another storm might be in the making seemed possible.