Snow Day

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Snow Day Page 11

by Shannon Stacey, Jennifer Greene


  “We all got a report of what she was wearing, but I wondered if you’d tell me in more detail. Or if you had a picture. And if you could give me something—mittens, a sweater. When the storm lightens up, we’ll add dogs to the search.”

  “I could have been home ages before. Once I got groceries, I dropped some off at my neighbor’s. We had a glass of wine, talked for a while. I had no reason in the universe to think she was home alone! I’d never have left her alone!”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” Red said, although truthfully he didn’t much know her from Adam.

  She stalked to a closet, pulled out mittens and a scarf, but never stopped talking. “She should have been with him—her father! The thing was, I got home well before nine thirty, but I couldn’t have known she was here, that she’d gone to bed. We always go to bed early on Sunday night because school’s on Monday.”

  “I know, ma’am. I live here. These mittens and scarf’ll help us all—”

  She interrupted again. “Her boots are pink with white fur around the top. She got a purple down jacket with a white belt for Christmas. There’s no way she’d be wearing anything but that, she loves it. She has a white hat with purple pom-poms. But her mittens are here.” She motioned to the mittens she’d just given him. Tears filled her eyes. “She doesn’t have her mittens. She left them here when her father picked her up. And it’s freezing out there!”

  Tears started spilling like a faucet set on gush. Frantic, terrified tears. Hell, he hated it when a woman cried like that. “We’re going to find her,” he promised.

  He checked that she had food and ample fuel for the lanterns, discovered she’d started up a small generator, so checked she had enough propane for that, too.

  “It’s so cold out there. Too cold—”

  “Yup, it is. But she wouldn’t still be walking. Once it got bad, she’d have holed up somewhere. Maybe a neighbor or another mother who had no way to call you once the power went down. No one kidnaps a kid in a blizzard, so there’s no reason to worry about something like that. She probably had the good sense to seek shelter. Soon as we can do a complete house-to-house search, we’ll probably find her safe and sound.”

  “You think?”

  “I really think.”

  “I didn’t even know she was missing until I walked into her room. I just wanted to look out her east window, see the storm from that direction, and that’s when I saw her bed had been slept in, that the suitcase she took to her father’s was on the floor. So she’d gone to sleep and then gotten up. I don’t understand what she was thinking, why she would have left in the night like that.”

  “I don’t understand it, either, Mrs. Shuster, but we’re going to find her.”

  “Promise. I need you to promise.”

  He promised a bunch of things before he was able to get out of there. He’d have been comfortable giving her a hug, but he didn’t feel he really knew her that well. It was just a tough visit, that was all. No way around it. She was petrified. What mom wouldn’t be, in her shoes?

  Now that he’d collected a few of April’s belongings to take back to the sheriff’s, he was free for a few hours. Good thing. Betsy’s cab had heat, air, Sirius, wireless phone and computer connections—everything a guy could need to spend long hours with her. But negotiating the storm with her was still exhausting.

  Being with Mrs. Shuster only underlined where he was going next. Back to Whitney’s. Whatever had broken up the Shuster marriage had clearly torn up three lives. Divorces were like that.

  Breakups were like that.

  All these years, it bit in his craw that he’d never told Whitney why he’d broken up with her—and seeing her sharply reminded him of everything he’d thrown away. He wasn’t sure if he’d been right or wrong ten years ago.

  But now, if fate had been kind enough to throw Whitney in his path again, for damn sure he didn’t want to blow it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHITNEY FEARED HER watch must be broken. She shook it, turned a flashlight on it, but the time refused to change. Her watch seemed to think it was 3:30 in the afternoon.

  Could she really have slept all day?

  She swung her legs over the side of the couch. From a crack in the curtains, she could see the storm reigning like an angry queen—the sky was still a dark, gloomy charcoal, the wind screaming and rattling anything it could beat up. Inside, the view was more comforting.

  Her grandmother had decorated the place before Whitney was born, so nothing was remotely new. Tables were early American maple, couches and chairs done up in a faded colonial print. Gram had called the couch a chesterfield. When Whitney was a little girl, she’d thought the look was corny, but now it felt as comfortable as old slippers.

  She stood up, wishing desperately for three things. Coffee. A bathroom. And food.

  Coffee wasn’t going to happen. The bathroom issues weren’t going to be easy, but she’d brought the right supplies. It wasn’t as if she’d never been stranded in a storm before.

  Once she’d cleaned up, she pulled on fresh clothes—silk long johns, old black cords, a blue alpaca sweater, big wool socks. She dug in her bag for a brush, but a glance at her purse mirror revealed what she already knew. It was a bad hair day. Actually, it was a bad hair life. The pale blond color was okay, and she had lots of it, but it was all fine as silk, straight, no way to beg, borrow, steal or threaten it into something fancy. On the other hand, it sure didn’t matter here.

  She scrounged in her duffels for food supplies. Nothing special. Trail mix that she’d embellished with extra raisins and M&M’s. Bread, peanut butter, guava and grape jelly. Dry cereal. Water bottles, pop bottles. Tediously repetitive, but little silverware was required, and after all, she’d only planned on being gone twenty-four hours. As she closed the door to the manic storm with a boot, that twenty-four hours seemed a little optimistic.

  It didn’t look as if she were getting out of here any time soon.

  Once she’d packed in some food, she decided she might as well head up to the attic. Maybe she’d find the “sacred” box and maybe she wouldn’t—but at least the chore would keep her mind off Red.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Red could head for Whitney’s, the temperature had dropped, which was both good news and bad news. Snow was hurling down instead of icy sleet now, accumulating several inches since his visit to the Shuster house, but beneath all the fresh white, it was slick as a slide. Visibility was a joke. The headlights barely illuminated a few feet ahead. The rest of the world was a whiteout.

  It was a night to make a man realize just how alone he was.

  He pulled into Whitney’s drive and left Betsy running—she had a fresh fill of fuel, and there was no way to plug her in here. He heaped his arms with goodies, opened the cab to a hell-blast of cold and, in spite of the god-awful temperatures, whistled en route to her door.

  He rapped. Once. Twice. When there was no answer, he poked his head in. “Whitney? It’s me, Red.”

  He thought he heard a sound, but wasn’t sure. He plopped down the groceries and wine, yanked off his parka and stove gloves. “Whitney?” he said, louder now.

  “Here! I could use some help!”

  Her voice was both muffled and distant. He fished the LED light from his pocket and took off. Past the French doors to the living room was a totally dark, biting cold hallway. Memories flew through his mind faster than speed dial. He’d first kissed Whitney in that living room, stole kisses and touches in every nook and cranny of the house—which was never easy. Her mom was regularly absentee, but her little sister loved to spy on Snow White—and then tell. And her grandfather always gave him The Look. Gramps seemed to think all teenage boys had only one thing on their minds. Which Red most definitely had.

  The point, though, was that he’d been highly motivated to know the entire layout
of the house. It didn’t matter how dark the hall was; he hustled past the kitchen, bath and master bedroom, to the narrow stairs leading up. On the second floor, typical of a home built in that era, were two big bedrooms with a bath in between.

  As he chugged up the stairs two at a time, he remembered the first day he met her, right after they’d moved to her grandfather’s place. She was sitting on a cliff overlooking the ocean, crying her eyes out over her dad.

  “Red? I’m up here in—”

  “Yeah,” he called back. “In your old room.” It was an easy guess, the instant he reached the doorway. His flashlight immediately highlighted the open closet doors...and on the carpet, lying on its side, an old aluminum ladder.

  When he shined the beam up, there she was. All blue eyes and pale gold hair, framed in the attic opening.

  “I don’t want to hear a single word about how stupid I was to let the ladder drop.”

  “That never crossed my mind.”

  “And I wasn’t waiting for you to come rescue me. I know you said you’d stop by later today, but you could have been tied up with anything in this blizzard.”

  All kinds of problems had come up. But he didn’t waste time mentioning that wild horses wouldn’t have kept him away, no matter how whipped-tired he was. “Let’s get you down from there. Are you hurt?”

  “No. Just cold. And bored. And exasperated. I can’t believe I was so stupid as to kick the ladder over. I went up here to find the box, and I did. Only when I tried to carry it and climb down, everything was off-balance, and down went the ladder. I was thinking about jumping down. It’s just that I couldn’t avoid landing on the rungs. It’s not that far a fall, but...”

  “But you could have been hurt.” She could easily have broken or sprained something, and then been stuck lying in the dark and the cold. The thought was enough to put hair on his chest. And he already had hair on his chest. Swiftly, he righted the ladder. “I’ll get your box, but you come down first.”

  “I’d rather you took the box—”

  He could hear a quiver in her voice. Not nerves. Cold. “You first. And for the record, I brought a hot dinner.”

  “Oh. That sounds wonderful. I’m really hungry, but...”

  Trust her to be up there, cold and miserable, and yet still arguing. “How big is the box and how heavy?”

  “That’s just it. It’s a wooden chest kind of thing. Not that heavy, but definitely bulky and awkward.”

  “Okay. I don’t want to hear any more. If I got pictures in my head of you carrying something there’s no way you could handle on a ladder, then I’d probably start swearing. I’d be that mad. Even thinking about it is making me crabbier by the minute. So if you just climb down, you can hustle in the living room where it’s nice and warm. You can open the bottle of Bordeaux. And the Tuckers were cooking steak over the fire when I visited there, so I’ve also got a steak sandwich for you, rare—”

  Her voice interrupted, sounding weak. “How rare?”

  “Not still on the hoof. But close.”

  Her head disappeared and she turned around. Even wearing bulky clothes, her lithe, slim shape was more than evident. Cute butt. Long legs. The splash of blond silk on her dark sweater. He supported the creaky ladder with both hands, which meant that she naturally brushed against his body on the last steps down.

  When she spooned right against his pelvis, she hesitated, went suddenly still as a statue. For him, the sudden sexual awareness was sharper than needles...which was not really a surprise. But until then, he had no idea if she still felt the crazy, wild desire that once ransomed both their lives. It was telling, he thought, that as soon as their bodies touched, she started spilling out words.

  “I tend to eat lots of fruit and vegetables. You know. Doing the old, boring health food thing. Which means I haven’t had steak in a blue moon. Much less a rare steak. Much less a rare steak sandwich.”

  “No kidding?” Regretfully, he had to let her go when she reached the ground. She was probably looking for an excuse to bolt away from him. “The sandwich is in the living room, in one of those stay-hot containers. You’ll see it. I’ll bring your box from the attic.”

  That was easier said than done, but he managed, put the thin LED flashlight between his teeth, used it to locate the oddly shaped wooden box. The attic looked pretty much like everybody’s attic. Broken rocking chair, a shadeless lamp, shelves and boxes of what-alls that no one wanted to throw away, a lot of dust and draping spider webs. Whitney’s box was only easy to find because she’d pulled it close to the attic opening.

  He could lift it. One-handed. Awkward or not, it wasn’t five minutes before he hauled the infamous box into the living room. There—a feast for sore eyes—was the girl he’d fallen hook, line and sinker for way back when. She was sitting cross-legged on the couch, the way she always used to sit. And she was shoveling down the steak sandwich as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

  He set down the box, then plunked down beside her and grabbed a napkin from the cooler—just in case a little drool seeped from her mouth.

  She tried to say something, and of course, couldn’t.

  “You know, no one’s going to steal the rest of your sandwich. You don’t have to inhale it. You can take your time.”

  She offered him a delicate finger gesture. Something she’d never have done in high school. Damnation, if he wasn’t falling in love all over again. “You want some wine? Oh. I see you didn’t open it. No time, right? Once you saw the steak sandwich, that was all she wrote. Try to remember to breathe in between bites, okay?”

  He got another finger gesture. This time he laughed. In the bottom of the cooler was a corkscrew. A handful of paper cups had been stashed in there, too. Blizzards were no time to worry about dishes.

  There was a second steak sandwich in there, but he figured he’d wait, make sure she didn’t want another one. He wouldn’t want to get between Whitney and her food.

  “Don’t try and talk. You’ll get hiccups.” Another glare from her, but she was still chowing down. Once he popped the cork and poured two paper cups, he offered her one. A couth kind of guy would undoubtedly have let the wine breathe, but he’d never managed to be very high-brow.

  “While you can’t talk, I might as well. At least until you get bored with my blizzard stories.” He rooted for more stuff in the bottom of the cooler. Found sugar cookies, chips. “We still haven’t found the little girl, but the whole town’s alerted to search for her. Hey, north of town, you remember the castle people used to call Lands End? I heard someone wanted to buy it, turn it into some kind of pricey resort.”

  She started to speak, but he offered her a cookie. She had two hands full of food then, not counting the wine on the coffee table, which probably meant he had the floor indefinitely. “I’m living in the family house. You know. Where I grew up, where I never planned to live in a thousand years. And for sure, it’s no place for a single guy. Three stories to keep up, for Pete’s sake. But I can’t beat the view. Damn, but I love the ocean....”

  She raised a hand, as if wanting to ask him a question, but her mouth was full, so he guessed she was asking him to fill in the blanks.

  “If you’re asking me what happened, my dad died. A heart attack out of the blue. My mom and two sisters wanted to leave Tucker’s Point as fast as they could pack, headed for Portland. They just all wanted more of a city life. Mom always claimed the big old house was a monster to clean. I never expected to live there, but when push came to shove, it was either sell it to strangers or have one of us care enough to keep it.”

  “Red.” She’d swallowed, emptied the paper cup and lifted it for a refill. “I don’t understand. When did you come back to Tucker’s Point? Was it when your dad died?”

  He shook his head. “No. My dad was alive and thriving when I came home. I left college a few months into my freshman
year.” And, yeah, he knew that could raise hurtful questions for her.

  For an instant she stopped eating and just looked at him with a stunned expression. Not as if he wanted to pursue it, but he figured if there was any chance of clearing the air of old hurts, it had to start with him. “When I left school, I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do. My dad always made a good living in construction, but I never thought I could get into it. He challenged me to think differently. He’d start arguments about how to do things, goaded me into telling him how I could do it better. Before I knew it, I took on some jobs, added some equipment. The bank still owns me. But I’m a lot more solvent than I was those first couple years.”

  “Wait.” She stopped gulping down cookies, which wasn’t a good sign. “I don’t understand. Why did you drop out of school? Come home? What happened to football and basketball and your athletic scholarships?”

  He poured another round of wine. Dixie cup volumes hadn’t dented the bottle so far, but he had to hope she was as terrible a drinker as she used to be. Back in high school, a few sips of beer and she’d be curled up, snoozing in the passenger seat of his rusted-out Camaro. Someone—well, Russ Trumboldt, to be precise—called her a cheap date, meaning to be funny, and damn if he hadn’t been forced to deck him. Nearly broke his hand. Got a reaming out from his coach.

  But that was old history.

  “I don’t mind telling you, but not tonight.” He leaned back. “I don’t want to monopolize the conversation—and it’s your turn. You did the Smith College thing. Then moved to Philadelphia. That’s about all I know. Oh. Big job, someone said.”

  She hesitated, her attention clearly not on herself. She was looking at him. Looking at him differently. Looking at him...personally. Candlelight glowed behind her. The pale light struck him as an oasis on a dark night that stretched forever. This was their world.

 

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