Snow Day

by Shannon Stacey, Jennifer Greene

  Sounds surrounded them. Laughter. Groans. Cries. Yearning moans.

  Scents intensified her awareness. The pumpkin and lemon candles. Dust. The shampoo he’d always used, nothing sweet, just a scent she always knew as his. His skin, healthy, warm sweat.

  And then there were the textures. His textures. The callouses on his hands. The tough muscle in his upper arms and shoulders, smooth, taut, unyielding. His chest hair, just enough to splay through her hands, to feel that crisp hair fold around her fingers. The throb of his Adam’s apple. The wet-satin of his lips. The impossibly hard, warm, sleek feel of him...right before he stroked, tested and then entered her on a single long, sweet plunge.

  She closed her eyes on a gasp of breath. They’d been so young before. There’d been need and desire and excitement, but nothing like this. This was the two of them melding together. Playing off each other’s yearning. Coaxing each other’s vulnerability.

  Skin against skin, heartbeat against heartbeat.... She came first, let loose a soar of a cry.

  Then Red.

  And then all she was conscious of, for a long time, was the warmth and weight of him, the precious stroke of his hand, the tenderness in his gaze. He moved, only to shift the bulk of his weight, and to pull something around her so she wasn’t cold. She didn’t move at all. Couldn’t imagine wanting to move again in this lifetime.

  The lemon candle went out. The pumpkin burned down halfway. Shadows played on the wall; slow, soft shadows, of his hand stroking her back, her cheek.

  “I hate to admit this,” he said finally, “but I’m falling asleep.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I don’t want to sleep. It’s just that I’ve been up so many hours that—”

  “Red. Close your eyes. Let go. There’s no reason you can’t sleep right here.”

  “But I want to talk to you. Not to waste time sleeping. Whitney—I didn’t tell you about losing the scholarship and all that past history to make you feel sorry for me.”

  “Tough. I feel terribly sorry for you. And I’m extra sorry about you losing your dad.”

  “I remember when you lost yours. When you first moved into your grandparents’ place. I didn’t know who you were, but I remember seeing you. Sitting on the rocks over the beach. Just looking at the ocean. So beautiful. So impossibly sad.”

  “I adored my dad. But I could never please him. When he died...it was like I’d lost any chance to finally do something that he’d be proud of me for. I mean, I never doubted that he loved me...” Maybe she should have expected it, that being with Red would bring old memories to the surface. She’d probably said the exact same things to him years ago.

  “But he was a fisherman. Rough and tumble, in a way you could never be.” Red brushed the side of her cheek. “But I always thought you were wrong about him, Whitney. I think he loved you for yourself.”

  “I know he loved me. He just never felt a connection. When I came home with a report card, top in my class, he gave me a big hug. When Jane soloed on a sailboat, he threw her a party.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t his fault. He just kind of saw me as an alien.”

  “Well, hell. I always thought you were an alien, too.”

  Her eyes widened, and then she thwacked him solidly with a couch pillow. His grin was full of devilment. It was the thing he’d always done. Make her able to laugh at herself. Shake her out of her serious side.

  “Hey,” he said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I missed you, Snow White.”

  She froze. Not because of the cold. Not because she minded his teasing. But because, back in high school, he’d turned that tag kids used to call her behind her back into something endearing, cherishing. The kids thought she was a prude. Too goody-goody to have any real fun.

  “When you first asked me out,” she said slowly, “I was more than surprised. All the girls chased you. You had a reputation for going out with any girl you wanted. And I had a reputation for never giving in. I always figured the kids must have laid a pretty big bet for you to ask me out.”

  “Yup, they did.” He admitted it, meeting her eyes, then added quietly, “But I didn’t take it, Whitney. In fact, I threw a punch to the guy who suggested the bet.”

  “You never told me that.” He’d never told her a lot of things, she thought, and suddenly felt a stab of hurt. It was awful, what he’d been through his freshman year.

  But she could have been there for him. That was their plan—to go to the same university, to stick together, the two of them, together forever. A romantic, stupid plan, maybe. A plan that might not have worked. But he was the one who’d shut it off, the spring before. Not her.

  “What?” he asked suddenly. “What are you thinking?”

  She shrugged, tried to make her voice light and easy. “We’re talking as if it were all yesterday. As if we were still two green-behind-the-ears kids who were wildly in love.”

  “I was wildly in love with you.” He must have seen skepticism in her eyes, because he tensed, lifted a hand as if to touch her cheek.

  His pager went off. She heard it, knew he had, too.

  “You don’t believe me?” he asked. “Whitney? You had to know how much I loved you—”

  His pager buzzed again. Darn it, it wasn’t as if either of them could forget they were in a blizzard. Whitney knew his being part of the emergency team had to take priority. People’s lives could be at stake.

  He started to say something else to her, but when the pager went off for a third time, he made an exasperated sound and lurched off the couch. Buck naked, he stalked over to his parka, dove in the pockets for the device. He half turned, as he took in the message, giving her a view of his delectably tight butt. When he turned back, though, she already knew he was leaving.

  “I have to go.” His voice was a low growl.

  “You haven’t had any sleep.”

  “Mr. Verdan took out his snowblower. Thought he’d tackle the first couple of layers while the wind wasn’t blowing so bad. Something happened. He’s trapped in the blades.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “The three on the closest team are all called in. Doesn’t matter if anyone’s off shift or not. Chances are the storm’ll be over in another twenty-four hours—except for the cleanup. Hell. Where are my damned socks?”

  He was pulling on clothes fast and furiously. Missing buttons. The sweatshirt askew. And the socks, of course, were right where he’d hurled them off the couch.

  She pulled an afghan around her shoulders, started helping him, scared up his mittens, then his snow hood. Her heart wanted to curl up in a fetal position and do a coma thing for a while. He was so right about the storm being over in another twenty-four hours. Blizzards and tornadoes, no matter how horrible, never lasted forever.

  She’d be leaving then.

  She had no excuse in the universe to see him again.

  When he opened the door, he was still grumbling and swearing under his breath. The cold poured in on a blast of icy air, but he still turned back, turned to her, smacked a bruising-hard kiss on her mouth. “I’ll be back. As soon as I possibly can.”

  And then he was gone.

  It was as if someone stole her sunshine. Her smile faded the instant the door closed, and over the next couple hours, she pulled on clothes, straightened everything, cleaned up as best she could. By the time she curled back on the couch, hoping to sleep, her mind refused to stop racing, her heart beating to an anxious treadmill.

  Regrets? None, she told herself. Only...it was just like before. She’d felt close to Red, closer than she’d felt with anyone, ever. Loving him couldn’t possibly be wrong. But he’d left her life before, and she had no reason to believe it would be different this time. What he called “love” seemed to be terribly different from how she defined it.

 
She’d punched the couch pillow several times, turned and turned again, refixed all the blankets and covers...and when her eyes finally closed, she heard a yipping sound.

  The sound seemed to be coming from the kitchen.

  This time she didn’t waste time opening her eyes. She’d bought into that nonsense last time, but now she knew better. It was an old, creaky house. The wind could make sounds that appeared human or animal. Nothing new. Nothing interesting. If she were going to be afraid of something, it’d be her feelings for Red—not fear of imaginary critters in a snowstorm.

  Until she heard three more yips.

  She yanked off the covers, thinking this was all Red’s fault. She wasn’t sure how he was responsible, but he was. She grabbed a flashlight, stalked out of the cozy warm living room to the freezing cold hall, stomped into the kitchen.

  She spotted them immediately—the two grimy intruders huddled on the floor behind the table. Or sort of behind. Their heads and faces showed in the light. One—a midsize copper-and-white mutt—was wagging his tail hard enough to knock down mountains. Clearly he didn’t mind being found. But the little one—it had to be April. The missing child. She was wrapped up in gunny sacks, the kind potatoes or onions were stored in sometimes, with dirt streaks tracking her tears, her blond hair hanging in tangles under a filthy hat. She was shivering so hard that her features were blurred.

  “Holy camoly.” She herded them both out of their hiding place, out into the hall, into the living room close by the heater. So many things needed doing that she could barely figure out which was first. Warmth. Water. Food. Reassurance. And Whitney needed answers to a zillion questions.

  Yes, the little girl was April Shuster. “But I didn’t know it was snowing that hard. I wasn’t looking around at first. And then I did, and everything was a whiteout. I couldn’t see the street. I couldn’t see anything. But then Copper...” Clearly her name for the mutt. “Copper found me, and I found him, so we stayed together.”

  “Honey, you’ve been out since Sunday night? Two nights?”

  April nodded. Even though Whitney had immediately wrapped her in covers, her teeth were still chattering. Red had left her a Thermos of coffee, and she urged the child to take a sip. Maybe coffee was the worst choice, but at least the liquid was warm. Whitney scrabbled through her supplies, searching for bread, peanut butter, water bottles.

  “We’re really hungry, though. We’ve been eating peaches. And pears. And beans. But we’re sick of those. And Copper doesn’t like any of them.”

  “Peaches?”

  “Yeah. In jars. You know. Like when you can stuff in the summer.”

  Whitney did know. The picture started to come together. They’d hidden in the fruit cellar. And after her grandfather died, apparently no one remembered to make sure the fruit cellar was cleared out. The gunny sacks might not be fancy, but they would have at least added layers on top of her hat and jacket.

  “But April—how did you get in the house here?” The girl was still gobbling the peanut butter, the dog was gobbling the second sandwich. Whitney made a third, then took one of her wet towels from the package and started a serious swipe of April’s little face.

  “I just opened the back door. I guess I could have done it before. But I just assumed it was locked. And I didn’t know if it was okay. But Copper and me, we really, really, really got hungry. And maybe we were getting a little scared.”

  The door was unlocked. All this time the door was unlocked.

  “Whitney?”

  “What, honey?” With the first layer of grime off, she found big blue eyes. Chapped lips. A heart-shaped face.

  “Copper and me. We had to go to the bathroom in the fruit cellar. Because it was too cold outside. We couldn’t help it.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem.”

  “But I also broke one of the jars. There’s broken glass near the ladder stairs.” Her face was still lifted so Whitney could keep cleaning it. “I didn’t mean to break it. There was this tool to open jars on the top shelf. But I didn’t do it right the first time. And I dropped the jar.”

  “There’s another no sweat, April. I could care less about a broken jar. I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”

  “I was really cold, though. My dad says fruit cellars in the ground never get as cold as freezing, if they’re made right. So maybe it wasn’t freezing, but it was freezing. Even with all the stuff I had on and all the sacks I made beds and blankets out of and even with Copper sleeping next to me, I was still cold.”

  “I’ll bet you were.” It could have been so much worse, Whitney knew. She started cleaning the little girl’s hands. “We have to find a way to tell your dad and mom that you’re here and safe.”

  The sweet smile disappeared. “They won’t care if I’m gone.”

  “Oh?”

  “All they talk about is divorce, divorce, divorce. And all they care about is fighting. They fight all the time about who’s meaner, who’s the worst person.” April sighed. “I feel like a towel.”

  “A towel?”

  “You know. Like something in the bathroom that’s just always there. But nothing anyone cares about. I don’t matter to them anymore.”

  “April, I’m positive that you do. They’ve been looking high and low for you. They’ve got the whole town searching.”

  “Maybe. But if I really mattered to them, they’d be together like they used to be. They’d be a mom and dad like they were.”

  “Maybe they can’t do that.”

  “They can. They don’t want to. But I go to dad’s place and he doesn’t have the right kind of peanut butter. And he doesn’t get me to school on time. And I go back to mom’s, like Sunday before school? And she wasn’t even there and I didn’t know where she was. That was the thing. No one knew where I was. Nobody cared. So I left.”

  “Did you have a plan for where you were going?”

  “I had two plans. I’m not dumb, you know. The first plan was to go to the library. Because there’s a sign there that says it’s a safe place. And in the kids’ section there are bean bags and couches where you can lie down if you want.”

  “And the other place?”

  “I was going to go to Christina’s house.”

  “She’s your best friend?”

  “Well, yeah. Otherwise why would I go there if I didn’t know her?”

  “How far to Christina’s house?”

  “A ways. Her mom and dad moved to Bangor a couple months ago. Bangor is a little ways from here.”

  “Yes, I’d say so.” Whitney watched the little girl’s eyelids start fluttering. She was exhausted, but she didn’t want to stop talking. After lapping up a bowl of water and two peanut butter sandwiches, the dog had crashed in a coma at her feet. April, though, snuggled into the covers, and even when her eyes closed, she still kept on.

  “We used to have fun all the time. We’d go to movies sometimes. And we’d skate in the winter, the three of us. Mom took me crabbing in the summer. Dad’d take me to the library. But now Mom has to work, so I have to go to a babysitter after school, like I’m a baby. And when she gets home, she’s too tired to do anything. And I’m supposed to see my dad only at these certain times. It doesn’t matter if I want to play with a friend that Saturday. It’s Dad time. And I want to be with my dad, but not when it’s like going to the doctor. You know. Where you have to make an appointment and then you go there, and you still have to wait because he’s busy.”

  Whitney wanted to listen—and she desperately wanted to contact Red, or anyone, to let them know April was with her. The child was talking with her eyes closed—and still had her eyes closed when Whitney guided her to the bathroom, then back to the nest on the couch.

  “Here’s the thing,” April said as Whitney pulled off her shoes and started zipping her into the sleeping
bag. “They tell me all the time they love me. But that’s not how it is. When they’re fighting, I could sleep on the kitchen table and they wouldn’t notice. I could eat all the ice cream. I could fall on my bike and be really hurt. I try to be good. I try and try. It doesn’t matter.”

  She let out a deep sigh...and was gone, out like a light. Whitney finished tucking her in, feeling a heart full of empathy. Their situation wasn’t identical. April was hurt by her family having so much on their minds that they stopped seeing her.

  But Whitney remembered feeling invisible—remembered trying so hard to be a good girl, to do the right things. Yet she could never seem to measure up to what people wanted from her.

  It was why Red dropping her had hurt so much. She mattered to him. She’d been so sure. She’d never thought he would drop her like a hot potato and never look back.

  Her heart flashed back to making love with him, just hours ago, in downright uncomfortable conditions—not pretty, romantic circumstances. Yet he’d made her feel treasured. Cherished. Uniquely wanted, by him. With him. With each other.

  What was she supposed to believe? What she felt in her heart? Or what she rationally knew he’d done to her in the past?

  And darn it, she had no time to think about this right now. She had to find a way to let April’s parents know that their daughter was safe. It hadn’t mattered before that her cell phone was dead—if there was no other way, she could chip the ice off the rental car, hope the car started and try recharging her phone that way. But there had to be other things she could try.

  She scrounged around the house, found empty cabinets, a naked linen closet, but finally, on a shelf in the laundry room, an old red stadium blanket. She yanked on a jacket, hat and gloves, and grabbed a hammer and tacks. Her first step outside, the wind slapped her face so sharply it stung her eyes. She couldn’t last long out here, and she was sure no carpenter. She did what she could—a messy, uneven job—but she managed to hammer the red blanket to the frame on the door.