Dead of Winter

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Jiffy! Your coat!” the driver calls after him.

  “I forgot it at school, Mr. Johansen!”

  “Then you run straight home, you hear me? It’s too nasty out there to lag.”

  The bus pulls away, its dispatched passengers chattering excitedly the way kids do when a school day is unexpectedly curtailed. He remembers that.

  He remembers a lot of things. Everything.

  He watches through narrowed eyes as the vast majority of the group branches off to the right at the fork, scattering toward houses there.

  Only one—a shivering, yet visibly ebullient Jiffy—walks alone toward Cottage Row.

  * * *

  Bella is still high atop the ladder when Hugo’s whistling and hammering is joined by the antique clock chiming in the hall.

  Uh-oh—noon?

  Her sock-clad foot slips from the rung. The ladder pitches wildly, threatening to toss her headfirst onto the nearest object—a marble table draped in an old, paint-stained sheet—before it rights itself.

  Shaken by her near miss, she hurriedly descends to the drop cloth–covered floor. Lost in thought about stolen treasures and murdered corpses, she’d forgotten all about meeting Jiffy at the bus. She’ll head out now. If she doesn’t find him safely at home, she’ll keep going down to the gate and wait.

  She shudders at her reflection in the vast hall mirror. She’s covered in dust, with a clump of white gunk in her ponytail, which pokes out from beneath her backward baseball cap. If shampoo doesn’t get it out, she’ll have to grab the nail scissors and treat herself to a hasty hack job. A few spackle-hardened strands are a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of renovating the Valley View Manor to its former magnificence.

  Hurrying to the coat tree, she lifts Max’s backpack, packed and ready for school, to grab the insulated hooded parka beneath it. She pulls it on and looks to the mat for the boots she left there this morning after she shoveled the walk.

  At least, she thought she did. Either her tired brain was playing tricks on her, or Nadine is, because the boots are nowhere to be seen. Bella heads upstairs to find them, pausing to open her son’s bedroom door a crack.

  Max is not the kind of boy who spends his waking hours idly.

  She expects to find him drowsy and flipping through a picture book or playing with Legos or even the handheld video game he’s not allowed to have in bed.

  Instead, he’s just lying there, staring up at the ceiling, with Spidey curled up asleep beside him. Chance has moved over to the windowsill, fixated on the snow outside in the way she used to watch the gulls last summer when Max tossed them stale bread.

  “Max? You awake?”

  “Yep.”

  “Feeling better?”

  “Nope.” It comes out dope, and she remembers he’s past due another dose of decongestant.

  She steps into the room, pausing to give Chance a little pat. Ordinarily, when she hasn’t eaten in a few hours, the mere sound of Bella’s voice triggers her to come running. Today Chance doesn’t even turn her head, ignoring the hand that feeds her.

  Bella turns to Max. His fingertips are pressed against his temples.

  “Is it your head, sweetie?”

  “Yes.”

  She touches his forehead. “No fever. It hurts?”

  “Not outside. Inside.”

  She reaches for the medicine she left on the nightstand. “That’s sinus pressure. You’re all clogged up. This will help the pain go away.”

  “No, not like that. It’s not hurting . . . it just feels bad.”

  “How does it feel bad?”

  “My thoughts just hurt inside my head.”

  “Did something happen to make you feel bad?”

  “Not yet.”

  He looks toward the window. Chilled, Bella follows his gaze.

  Chance still hasn’t moved. From where she’s sitting, there’s a view of the backyard and the lake.

  With a shaky hand, Bella pours purple liquid into the little plastic cup and hands it to her son. He dutifully swallows.

  “Are you worried about something? Want to tell me about it?”

  “No.”

  “No, you’re not worried? Or no, you don’t want to tell me?”

  “I don’t know.” He hands back the cup and lies down, turning his head to the side. “I just want to go back to sleep.”

  She wants to say something else, ask something else.

  He’s got a cold. Of course he’s feeling lousy, inside and out. It has nothing to do with . . .

  Anything.

  “Odelia sent soup if you’re hungry,” she tells him.

  “What kind?”

  “Lime and Ginger Pho.”

  “Does it taste like chicken noodle?”

  “I’m sure it’s delicious, but if you want chicken noodle, I’ll make it for you. Anything you want.”

  He shakes his head and snuggles into the pillow. “I’m not hungry.”

  Bella kisses his cheek and walks back over to the window. Again, she rests a hand on Chance’s furry back. The feline doesn’t respond, tail twitching, intent on the action beyond the glass.

  Through the white squall, Bella can see Calla out by the lake. She’s talking to an agitated Misty Starr, who appears to be frantically searching the churning blue-black water for something . . .

  Or someone.

  Chapter Eight

  “Jiffy!” Misty howls above the wind. “Where are you? Jiffy!”

  She closes her eyes, shutting out the desolate tundra, begging her guides to show her where her child is now. But all she sees in her mind’s eye is the same ferocious white storm that surrounds her.

  While Misty was tied up in a futile effort to channel Spirit for her client, the school had sent an early dismissal notice.

  Priscilla had finally left in a bit of a huff. Misty, no wealthier than she’d been an hour before, watched glumly through the window as she brushed snow from her car and saw her dodge something . . .

  A snowball?

  For a moment, Misty thought one of her own guides might have tossed it—slightly satisfying payback for the wasted time.

  Then she’d seen that it was one of the Miller twins. They’re a few years older than Jiffy and live across the Dale.

  Why, oh why, hadn’t she gone to find out why he was home from school already? Why had she assumed the kid was playing hooky?

  At least fifteen, maybe twenty minutes had gone by as she prepared for her escape to the laundromat. It wasn’t until she grabbed her car keys and phone that Misty had spotted the text and found out about early dismissal.

  Jiffy should have been home by then. By now.

  If only she’d canceled Priscilla’s appointment or curtailed it when she should have. Why did she have to keep trying—or pretending to try? Had she really thought the woman would fork over enough money to cover the rent when Virgil showed up?

  Now she’s being punished for her greed. For thinking she could evade the landlord and her problems. For not making sure her son got safely off the bus.

  Oh, the bus.

  Is it possible that the vision had nothing to do with Jiffy? Maybe it was just some random image.

  But why those passengers?

  And why that driver?

  Her father’s spirit never touches in with her. Why was she seeing him now with her son?

  “Please,” she whispers. “Please let him be okay.”

  She feels a hand on her shoulder. Calla Delaney. She’d come running out of Odelia’s house a minute ago when Misty came back here to check the lake.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Opening her eyes again, Misty snaps, “What do you think? I can’t find my son.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “When he left for school this morning.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’s still there. It’s barely noon and—”

  “They let the kids go because of the storm. He isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere!”

  Th
inking of the man in the lake—the one Priscilla said was murdered, not drowned—she combs the shoreline for a sign of Jiffy.

  Something is terribly wrong.

  She knows it with the same certainty she knew he was in trouble two other times in his short life. Once, before he was even born, when she knew something was wrong long before her obstetrician discovered that the cord was wrapped twice around her baby’s neck. And again, when Spirit told her to check on Jiffy, and she found him choking on a jawbreaker. She was lucky she’d been there to give him the Heimlich.

  If only she’d been there this time, when . . .

  What happened? What could have happened?

  “Please,” she whispers, staring at the water. “Please let him be okay.”

  She can’t bear to think of him out there in the lake, and she’s almost certain that he isn’t. But there must be a reason her guides drew her here.

  “Jiffy!” she shouts into the emptiness. “Jiiiii-fffffy!”

  * * *

  Bella closes Max’s bedroom door behind her, hurries down the hall, and shrieks as Yuri Moroskov’s killer leaps out at her.

  No. It’s just Hugo, poking out of one of the guest rooms.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Everything okay?”

  “I thought you were in the basement!”

  “I came up here to see if that ceiling fan is working yet. It isn’t.”

  “But . . . it’s not ceiling fan weather.”

  “I need to troubleshoot this line before I can get on with the rest. Going somewhere?” he adds, seeing her coat.

  “I just have to run outside for a few minutes. Can you keep an ear out for Max?”

  “No problem.”

  Bella’s worst fears chase her back downstairs, where she takes another quick look around for her boots before jamming her feet into a pair of sneakers.

  Opening the back door, she finds the steps buried in a downy drift. She hesitates only a second before wading in. The knee-deep snow soaks her legs and cakes inside her sneakers as she makes her way toward Calla and Misty.

  Jiffy’s mother is wearing pink sweat pants and yellow rubber rain boots. The rest of her is wrapped in a crocheted poncho. Her curly, straw-colored hair looks as though it wasn’t neatly combed even before it became matted with snow.

  “Have you seen him?” she calls, spotting Bella.

  “Jiffy?” she asks, praying it’s a wrong guess. Maybe she’s looking for Rudolph Valentino, John Lennon, or one of the other recognizable—even to Bella—spirits reportedly spotted around the Dale lately.

  At Calla’s slight nod, Bella musters optimism. “Maybe the bus is delayed. I’m sure the roads are treacherous, so they’re probably crawling along. You can call the school and—”

  “I tried to call the school! No answer.”

  “Well, maybe—”

  “The bus already came.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because a kid tried to hit my client with a snowball!”

  “By accident,” Calla quickly explains. “It was the Miller twins. They told Misty that Jiffy got off the bus with them, but they don’t know where he went from there.”

  Why, oh why, hadn’t Bella gone outside at eleven thirty? She should have set a reminder on her phone or—

  “Jiffy has a phone,” she remembers. “Have you called it?”

  “Of course I’ve called it! He’s not answering.”

  “Maybe he has it silenced. Did you text him?”

  “He can’t read!” Misty, the mother who gave a six-year-old a cell phone, gapes as if Bella is the crazy one here. “I mean, he can read ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ and whatever the heck he’s learning in kindergarten, but . . .”

  “You mean first grade,” Bella corrects her, though perhaps not as gently as she’d intended.

  “What?”

  “Your son! He’s in first grade, not kindergarten.”

  “I know that! Geez! I’m his mother!”

  A mother who doesn’t keep a close enough eye on her child. Bella bites her tongue to keep from saying it.

  Misty shoves strands of soggy hair out of her eyes. The wind whips it right back into them. “Sorry,” she mutters. “I’m just, like, so worried.”

  And you’re just, like, so young.

  “It’s okay. I’d be going crazy if I were you.” Wrong thing to say. “But I’m sure he’s fine.” Also wrong. She isn’t sure of that at all. “Maybe his phone battery is dead.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Does it have a locator on it?”

  “I have no idea. My husband is the one who got it for him, and I can’t get a hold of him right now either.”

  “Maybe Jiffy’s with your husband,” Bella says. “He’s been so excited that he’s coming home for Christmas, so maybe his dad decided to surprise—”

  “Trust me, he didn’t.” Misty’s tone is curt, her expression desolate.

  Bella casts a fearful glance at the black and choppy lake, its opposite shore obscured behind a veil of white. She turns back toward the street, hoping to see Jiffy riding his scooter through the storm. There’s only a plow truck beeping and scraping along, yellow lights flashing.

  “Do you really think he would have come out here in this weather, though?” she asks Misty. “I mean, I don’t see any footprints, so . . .”

  If they were here, they’d long since have been blown over. Bella’s trail from the house is already nearly obliterated.

  Yet she goes on, “This is his first real snowstorm. He was probably so excited that he stopped to play in it like the other kids. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time he got sidetracked on the way home.”

  “No, but this is different, because of . . . yesterday.”

  “I know,” Bella says, “but you can’t dwell on that.”

  “Wait, dwell on what?”

  She and Calla exchange a glance. It’s hard to imagine Yuri Moroskov’s demise could have escaped her in a town this size.

  “Just . . . in the lake, yesterday . . .” Calla falters and looks at Bella.

  “There was . . . the police were . . .”

  Misty dismisses them with impatience. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a vision I had yesterday.”

  “About the school bus?” Bella asks, remembering, and Misty’s jaw drops.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I saw your client—the one who drives the Mustang, right? She mentioned you’d had a premonition. What was it, exactly?”

  “Spirit warned that something might happen to Jiffy on the way home from school. I saw a bus. He was on it. There were other kids . . . they’d all passed.” Misty presses both hands to her mouth.

  At a loss for words, Bella looks around, expecting to spot a great horned owl on a branch overhead. Nothing but a bruise-colored sky and bare ginkgo branches creaking in the wind.

  They listen to the silence for a long time until Misty breaks it again.

  “I don’t like the lake.”

  Calla and Bella exchange a worried glance.

  “What do you mean?” Bella asks, and she shrugs.

  “I always like it, but not today.”

  The simple explanation makes perfect sense. Not in a good way.

  Misty cups her hands to her mouth and shouts again for her son. They listen for a reply, hearing nothing in the hush but wind and the distant rumble of a plow.

  Bella touches Misty’s arm. “I bet he’s home by now. He’s probably soaked and chilled to the bone and ready for hot chocolate.”

  “Bella’s right,” Calla agrees, though not wholeheartedly. “Let’s go check. I’m sure he’s wondering where you are.”

  “He isn’t there. If he was, I’d feel it here.” Misty thumps the spot beneath her left collarbone.

  Bella thinks of Max, who had a “bad feeling,” though he didn’t tell her what it was about.

  Odelia claims everyone has innate psychic ability. She says that children, too young to have learned skeptic
ism, are more likely than adults to embrace it.

  Bella would embrace it if she believed it. She’s reasonably certain that no one in the entire history of the world has ever longed to connect with a lost loved one as much as she does with her late husband.

  And that attitude will never get you anywhere, a disapproving voice—her own—tells her. Everyone experiences their share of heartache.

  There’s no way she’d trade places with Misty Starr right now.

  “Have you checked with any of the other kids who got off the bus with the Miller kids?” she asks.

  “No. I don’t really know them.”

  “I do. I’ll make some calls if we don’t find him waiting inside. Come on.” Calla thrusts her hands deep into her jacket pockets, shoulders hunched against the icy wind as she turns away from the lake.

  Bella walks with them around to the front of Valley View. Across the lane, a stand of ancient maple tree trunks are dotted with lopsided smiley faces, courtesy of ill-aimed snowballs.

  She wants to think Jiffy did it, but Misty tells her it was the Miller twins, aiming for the trees when they hit Priscilla. Hugging herself, Misty starts toward her house, head bent against the cold. Calla hurries to catch up to her.

  Bella calls after them, “Let me know when you find him.”

  When—not if.

  Jiffy has to be someplace around here. He always is.

  Bella makes her way up the snowy stair slope and hesitates, wondering if she should get back inside to Max. But he’s sleeping, and Hugo is puttering around working. He’s grandfatherly and familiar.

  She grabs the shovel she left propped on the porch. Her sneakered feet and lower legs are cold and wet, her bare hands numb even clenched inside her pockets.

  If Jiffy lost track of time, he won’t stay outside indefinitely. Sooner or later, he’ll be uncomfortable enough to go inside and warm up.

  But what if he can’t find inside?

  Visibility is lousy. Bella turns toward Pandora Feeney’s place a mere hundred yards across the way.

  The cottage—like its owner—was the bane of Odelia’s existence even before Pandora installed a vast Christmas light display.

  “She copied my paint colors right down to the trim,” Odelia had grumbled to Bella.