Dead of Winter

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Think of it as an homage.”

  “I think of it as an abomination.”

  Pandora’s house is hard to miss now that it screams “Hallelujah” with flashing LEDs plugged in around the clock.

  “Across the pond, we call them ‘fairy lights,’” she told Bella and Odelia, after summoning them to admire her handiwork the weekend after Thanksgiving. “Spot on, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d say you must have obnoxious, big-arse fairies across the pond,” Odelia muttered.

  In this whiteout, Bella can make out only a faint blur at Pandora’s. Jiffy might have gotten disoriented and headed in the wrong direction. He could be wandering, lost in the storm.

  “Jiffy!” she shouts. “Jiffy!”

  He wouldn’t hear her over the wind, even if he were nearby. Calla and Misty don’t seem to, and they’re still in her sightline just a few doors down.

  She watches for him as she clears the steps and a path to the street. Still no sign. Wherever he is, he’s just fine, she assures herself, pushing the last bit of snow off the steps and propping the shovel against the door again. Of course he is, because . . .

  Because he just has to be, and that’s that. Because the doom and gloom are behind her and Max at last. Because . . .

  Because the Dale is home, and Odelia made soup, and the old light strings still work.

  Because the puppies lived, and Drew is caring for them and cares for Bella, too, and Max, and . . .

  Because it’s Christmastime, and they’re going to celebrate this year, and—

  You better watch out . . . you better not cry . . .

  Hearing the whistling nearby, Bella looks toward the electrician’s van, parked across the street. “Hugo? Hugo?”

  No reply, and no break in the whistling.

  He sees you when you’re sleeping . . .

  Blowing on her raw red hands, she looks up at the Christmas bulbs she’d strung along the porch eaves. She should go grab the extension cord and light them. At least her guests will be greeted by a welcoming exterior before they set foot into the less than festive interior.

  Yes, and if Jiffy really is out there in the storm, the lights might help guide him home like . . .

  Like Rudolph’s nose?

  Like the star guiding the wise men to the stable?

  “A star, a star . . .”

  Humming “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” she steps inside and kicks off her sodden sneakers by the door. No time to finish the parlor now. She’ll find her hardware store purchases from yesterday, run back out to plug in the lights, then take a quick hot shower and—

  She cries out, spotting a figure standing on the stairs.

  “Sorry!”

  Hugo again. Thank goodness.

  “You’re jumpy today,” he observes. “I don’t blame you. Finally got that ceiling fan working.”

  “I thought you were outside.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because I heard you whistling by the van, and—”

  “Whistling? Me?” Hugo laughs as he descends the stairs, shaking his bald head. “Never have, never will. My brother teased me about it when we were kids, but my mother said it was just the way my mouth was shaped.”

  “So you’re saying you weren’t whistling ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ a minute ago?”

  “Wasn’t, and can’t. Can’t roll my tongue either, see?”

  She gapes at him as he sticks it out. If he wasn’t whistling, then who was?

  No time to answer that troubling question now, Bella decides, finding the new extension cord in a bag she’d left on the registration desk.

  “What’s that for?” Hugo asks.

  “Lights on the porch. The cord didn’t reach the socket. I’m going to run back out and plug them in.”

  Hugo looks down at her wet socks, then at his own work boots, and he holds out a hand, palm up. “Give it here, Mrs. Jordan. I’ll take care of that for you.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Least I can do for the cookies.”

  “What cookies?”

  He grins. “The cookies you’re going to bake me for plugging in your Christmas lights. I’m still dreaming about those snickerdoodles you made last week.”

  It must be nice, Bella thinks as she watches him amble out onto the porch, not to feel stressed and overwhelmed by every day’s obligations. What’s it like to live in Hugo’s world, with ceiling fans that can wait till summer and Christmas gift-wrapping that can’t but will get done anyway?

  He’s back too quickly, still holding the cord and shaking his gray head. “Where’d you get those old lights?”

  “They came with the house.”

  “If I were you, I’d go out and buy myself some new ones.”

  “I wish that was in my budget this month, but it’s not.”

  “Well, you’d better be careful with these, or the whole place is going to go up in smoke. Geez, that would be a real shame,” he adds in his understated way.

  A real shame? That would be a disaster.

  “They were working yesterday. What’s wrong?”

  “I plugged in one string, and nothing happened. They were all dead.”

  “Dead! How can that be?”

  “You mean because there’s no such thing in Lily Dale?” he asks with a smirk.

  Ah, but there is.

  Yuri Moroskov, Leona Gatto, and so many others—dead. Gone.

  In the lake.

  “Plugged in another string,” Hugo is saying, “and it blew out. Got a nasty shock. Can’t say I’m surprised.”

  “But they were fine when I tried them.”

  “Not fine now. Want me to throw them away for you?”

  She ponders that. What is she going to tell Max? He was looking forward to decorations, and those old lights are their only options. If he sees them in the garbage can, he’ll be upset. She’ll wait to toss them until she can figure out how to replace them.

  “Just leave them for now, Hugo. But I’ll bake you a double batch of cookies if you’ll do me another favor?”

  “Name it.”

  “I need take a quick shower, and I have guests on their way. Just keep an eye out for them and holler if they arrive, okay?”

  “Sure. In the meantime, I’ll change out those bulbs for you.” He points at the antique fixture high overhead, hanging from a plaster medallion, where two of the four lights have been burnt out for months.

  “You don’t have to do that, Hugo. I’ll get to it. You’d need a ladder.”

  “I see one handy.” He nods at her spackly mess in the parlor. “Go take your shower.”

  Upstairs, she smiles as she turns on the tap, thinking about all the friends she’s made in Lily Dale. Sam would be glad to know so many people are looking out for her and Max.

  He does know, if you believe the locals.

  Her smile fades as she thinks of Jiffy out there in the storm, Misty’s premonition, the body in the lake, and the great horned owl.

  Chapter Nine

  Staring into the bathroom mirror, Bella runs a blow-dryer over her damp hair. She sees only Misty Starr’s frozen, straggly strands and the dread in her eyes.

  How many times in the last six months has Bella criticized her parenting skills? She can justify her concern for the largely unsupervised Jiffy, but today, seeing the vulnerability in the woman’s face . . .

  She turns off the dryer, tightens the belt on her robe, and hurries back down the hall to the Rose Room.

  When she first crossed the threshold six months ago, she thought she could have designed the space herself—charming antique decor, vintage architectural details, splashy reddish-pink color scheme, even the quirky layout with a window nook, angled wall, and gabled ceiling.

  She couldn’t help but compare it to the monochromatic rectangular guest room she’d expected to inhabit for the summer or beyond. She may have made peace with her mother-in-law, but Millicent’s sleek condo in a Chicago skyscraper would nev
er have felt like home. Not like the Rose Room and Valley View do, and did, from that first night.

  She checks her cell phone, left charging on the bedside table. No texts or messages. That doesn’t mean Jiffy’s not home by now, Bella assures herself as she throws on jeans and a sweater. Calla probably just forgot to let her know, and it’s not as if Misty Starr is going to pick up the phone to share the news.

  When this is resolved, she’ll invite Misty and Jiffy over to dinner. She probably should have done it long before now since the boys are inseparable. She can’t imagine that she and Jiffy’s mom will ever become the best of friends, but they can at least get to know each other better.

  She texts Calla, Is he back?

  When Calla doesn’t immediately reply, Bella leaves her phone on the charger and looks in on Max. He’s asleep with his arms around a snoozing Spidey, whose paws clasp Max’s sleeve. She expects to see Chance still keeping vigil over the landscape below, but there’s no sign of her.

  Bella lifts the comforter to see if she’s under the bed, one of her favorite hiding spots. Nothing there but dust bunnies and a stray sock. Grabbing it, she tosses it into the hamper beneath the window and looks out at the yard and lake.

  Was Chance aware, as she roosted in this vantage point, that something was amiss? Bella may not believe in everything her Spiritualist friends do, but even she wouldn’t argue against animal instinct. Or maternal instinct, for that matter.

  “If you can accept the idea that cats and mothers are intuitive,” Odelia had once said, “then why is it so hard for you to take it a step further?”

  “It’s not exactly a step, Odelia.”

  More like a leap across a yawning chasm.

  They’d dropped the subject that day, but the conversation pops into Bella’s head whenever she experiences something inexplicable . . . like the phantom whistler.

  Back downstairs, she finds the foyer brightly lit, all four bulbs intact. The ladder is back in the parlor with the electrician atop it, sanding the ceiling.

  “Hugo! What are you doing?”

  “Lending a hand. Yours are full.”

  “But you don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s a nice change of pace, and I want to make those cookies worth your while.”

  Before she can protest, the front door opens, and a pair of women blow into the house on a gust of snow and laughter. Both are wearing floor-length faux fur coats, furry Eskimo boots, and Santa hats. They tug two enormous wheeled suitcases over the threshold and introduce themselves as Lauri and Dawn.

  “But some people still call us Fire and Ice,” Lauri tells Bella. She’s the shorter of the two with a perky smile and red hair falling past her shoulders. “Those were our nicknames when we worked at Ponderosa together back in high school.”

  “I’m sure you can guess which is which,” Dawn adds. Her hair is ash blond and cut above her shoulders in a similarly layered style.

  “You must be Ice. Speaking of ice, how was your trip?”

  “Slippery. We were in a whiteout pretty much the whole time after we left Buffalo,” Dawn says cheerfully, “but we’re used to it, so no biggie, right, Laur?”

  “Not for us, but we passed a lot of accidents. Nothing serious. People just don’t know how to drive in this.”

  “Right,” Dawn agrees. “They try to go too fast and end up in a ditch. Like that little green car that came flying past us on the road in.”

  “It was blue.”

  “It was green!”

  “Blue-green,” Lauri says with a shrug.

  “Speaking of colors, Bella, as soon as we came up the street, I said my girls would love the lavender paint, right, Laur?”

  “She did. And I said, ‘I know, it’s just too cute!’” Lauri gives a vigorous nod, her hat’s white pom-pom bouncing around her shoulders. “Lisa was right. This place is so us!”

  Lisa Koellner is a friend of theirs who had spent the night at Valley View last summer. As she checked out, she’d told Bella, “This place is super cute. I’m going to send everyone I know here!”

  “To Lily Dale?”

  “To Valley View!” she said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t call Lily Dale super cute.”

  Bella wouldn’t necessarily call Valley View super cute either, but she’s grateful for the business.

  A whirlwind of conversation yields that both women grew up together and are married. Dawn has three daughters. Lauri has one and a son. He and Dawn’s twins are eighteen, and both their older girls are twenty-one. They ask in turn about Bella’s family.

  “I have a son. He’s six.”

  “That’s such a great age, isn’t it, Dawn?”

  “Six is a-dor-able!”

  Sometimes, Bella thinks, it’s even super cute.

  And super vulnerable. Jiffy, momentarily forgotten, somersaults back into her mind.

  She reaches to close the door, but Lauri stops her. “We still have to go get the rest of our stuff.”

  “Let’s go now,” Dawn says, “before the car is plowed in like the ones down the road.”

  They disappear out the door.

  Bella eyes their oversized luggage. They’re only staying two nights. How much more stuff can there be?

  “Well, they seem like a couple of festive gals. Just what the doctor ordered for you, Mrs. Jordan,” Hugo pronounces from the ladder in the parlor.

  She’d forgotten all about him.

  “You need to stop sanding, Hugo. Please. I’ll finish it later or tomorrow. I know you’re used to driving in this, but I’ll feel awful if you don’t get home before the roads are even more dangerous.”

  “My truck has gotten me home through a lot worse.”

  “But you’re parked at the edge of the road. Next time the plow comes by, your truck is going to be buried like those cars they were just talking about.”

  She imagines an enormous truck pushing a mountain of dirty snow up ice-slicked Cottage Row, heedless of objects in its path. What if a little boy had slipped and fallen on his way home from the bus? He could have lost consciousness or broken a limb. If the truck came along and didn’t spot him in the whiteout . . .

  The front door blasts open, curtailing her ugly speculation.

  Lauri and Dawn are back. This time, they have a large framed poster, a plastic tub labeled craft supplies, and a large canvas tote bag. It’s overstuffed, with a few items poking out the top: a board game, a bottle of top-shelf gin, and two pairs of white ice skates tied with fuzzy pink pom-poms and little silver bells.

  Dawn follows Bella’s gaze. “We like to keep busy when we do girls’ weekends.”

  “And have fun,” Lauri adds. “Do you like to play games?”

  “Games? You mean like Scrabble?”

  She and Sam had been avid players. When Max’s birth impaired their social life, they’d kept a Scrabble board on the coffee table and played every night. Then Max had started toddling, tiny hands grasping for the tiles, and that was the end of Scrabble.

  Until Drew Bailey showed up at her door with the Scrabble set one night last week.

  She’d wanted to ask how he knew, but of course, he couldn’t have known. She’d never told anyone about Sam and Scrabble. Yet oddly, she’d been thinking about it just that evening, imagining what she and Sam might have been doing on a blustery Saturday night like that one.

  “Scrabble’s fun, too,” Lauri tells her now. “But did you ever play Catch Phrase? That’s what we brought.”

  “I love Catch Phrase.” That comes from Hugo in the doorway, denim overalls and bald head covered in dusty spackle. “My grandkids got it last Christmas.”

  “Awesome! You’ll have to play with us. We brought the eighties’ music version. That’s actually the whole reason we’re here.”

  “To play Catch Phrase?” Bella asks.

  “No! Because of him.” Dawn turns the poster around, revealing a close-up of a shaggy-haired, bare-chested electric guitarist in black leather pants.

  “Hey, Sean Von Vogel
!” Hugo says.

  “Yes! You know him?”

  “Sure do. Saw him in concert at least half a dozen times.”

  “We’re super fans,” Lauri tells him. “We were front and center at the show in Buffalo last month.”

  “Last month?” Bella echoes. “But isn’t Sean Von Vogel dead?”

  “Von Vogel is the name of the band, too. They still tour without Sean. It’s so sad.”

  “Speaking of so sad and Buffalo, did anyone catch the Sabres game last night?” Hugo asks.

  Dawn shakes her head. “Don’t remind me. My husband was hyperventilating.”

  Feeling lost, yet relieved for the distraction, Bella asks what happened.

  Hugo cringes. “Blowout. They lost to the Maple Leafs eleven to nothing.”

  “How is that score even possible?” Lauri asks.

  “I’d have said it isn’t, but I saw it with my own eyes. Hopefully the Bills will do better tonight against the Dolphins.”

  “They’ll squish the fish!” Dawn predicts.

  “Let’s hope so. The wife has my to-do list waiting, and the game starts at eight, so if you really don’t mind my calling it a day, Bella . . .”

  “Not at all.”

  “Nice meeting you ladies.”

  “You, too! You’ll have to come back for gin and tonics and Catch Phrase while we’re here,” Dawn calls after him as he heads down to the basement to pack up his tools. “So nice to meet a fellow Von Vogel super fan, isn’t it, Laur?”

  “Yes! Especially on the ten-year anniversary.”

  “Of what?” Bella asks.

  “The day the music died.”

  “Well,” Lauri says, “ten years tomorrow since the day the music died.”

  “Wasn’t that back in the fifties? Buddy Holly’s plane crash?” Bella had heard all about that from Odelia, who claims that Buddy, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper visit her regularly.

  “That was way before our time. For our generation, the music died when we lost Sean Von Vogel, right, Dawn?”

  “Right. It was the worst day of our lives.”

  Sean Von Vogel had been killed during a solo performance on a custom-built glass stage protruding high over Antelope River Canyon, Bella learned. The band’s signature song had featured a sustained high C. When he’d hit it, the amplified note had fractured the glass, and he’d fallen to his death.