Snow flew up behind us as Dad pulled into the research cabin’s long driveway. “Here we are.” He opened my door and helped me down.
Dad knocked, and we heard a faint, “Come in!”
Dad threw open the front door, stomping off his boots in the mudroom and blowing on his freezing fingers. We hung up our coats and went through the inner door. Helen was stirring a pot on the stove, and cinnamon-apple steam wafted our way. Andrew was sitting in the living room with a textbook and a notebook. Sometimes he pretended to do math or English, but mostly, he just helped his mom and called it homeschool.
“Hallelujah! You saved me from the quadratic equation.” He leapt off the couch.
I hadn’t expected such an enthusiastic greeting. In fact, I hadn’t expected a greeting at all. I sat on a kitchen stool and watched Andrew, trying to decide how to bring up a hike to the shack.
Helen poured Dad and me mugs of cider. I blew on the steam and followed Helen to the file-covered kitchen table.
“I’ve gathered enough data on the behavior of black bears in this area,” Helen began. “I already told you my first research idea, to identify nursing sows that will take an orphaned cub into their dens. DNR agents spend hundreds of hours rehabilitating and relocating orphaned cubs. They want to radio collar trusted bears in the summer and watch over their dens in the winter.”
I picked up a file, so dense with text I couldn’t possibly skim it and gather any information. Andrew sat next to me, so I pretended to browse the file anyway.
“What’s the other idea?” I asked Helen.
“Another scientist has findings that match mine, that bluff charges aren’t aggressive acts. Right now, bears can be labeled category two and removed from their habitat if they huff and blow and stomp their front paws. But my findings show that behavior is just bluster. The bears just want to be left alone, and are trying to scare intruders enough so they’ll leave.”
Dad flipped through one file after another. “How can I help?”
“Meredith wants you to give both questions an unbiased look. She knows I feel strongly about both of these issues and wants me to run my research by you before I write a proposal.”
I felt Andrew’s eyes on me as I sipped my cider again. Even though he had uninvited me to his house and had acted like I ruined Thanksgiving, I had to talk to him. Patch was in danger.
“I wonder,” I said, compromising with a half-look at Andrew, “if we could hike back out past Patch’s den. I mean, we know the family in the woods isn’t dangerous or anything.”
“Are you kids willing?” Helen swept her hand over the folders piled on the table. “I can’t find time to hike out there, and I worry about Patch.”
Finally — a bit of good luck. “Sure.”
“I’d like that,” Andrew said.
He’d like that? I couldn’t keep up with Andrew these days. Was he angry with me or not? Was I angry with him? “Ruth said she’d like to come, too,” I added. “Oh, yeah. Okay,” Andrew said.
Helen gathered the files into a box. “I know it’s a lot, Matthew. You don’t have to read it all. Just see if there’s reasonable cause for more research.”
I took a last sip of my cider and washed my cup. “Thanks for the cider, Helen.”
“Sadie.” Andrew caught my elbow. “So, you’ll come tomorrow then? You and Ruth, I mean.”
I looked at Andrew’s face for the first time since I had walked in that day. His expression took me completely by surprise. He hurried back to his homework on the couch, but not before I saw his unspoken question. Are we okay?
For some reason that I totally didn’t understand, Andrew was nervous.
Chapter 14
Shotgun
Sunday afternoon was bitter cold, much too cold for snow to fall. An icy shell had formed over the snow. Helen waved us off as we snow-shoed away from the research cabin. She needed to finish writing a grant proposal.
Along the way, neither Ruth, Andrew, nor I spoke. Our scarves were wrapped around our faces so air made contact with the least possible amount of skin. Still, I wished I had worn my ski goggles, making my protective layer complete.
Andrew glanced my way every once in a while, still wearing the odd expression from yesterday. I wished he wouldn’t. Ever since that look first crossed his face, a little winged being had moved into the area around my heart, flitting and fluttering and fanning to life the hope about Andrew and the advent calendar. The map grew, piece by piece, every morning, and I couldn’t help wondering what I would find at the end of the search. Stop it, Sadie. Just stop.
I hardly paid attention to the passing forest as we wove through pine trees, across the wind-swept meadow, and finally slipped back into the shelter of the trees. Soon, the cabin would emerge from the trees. What then? Would we tramp up to the front door and peek in the window?
“Wait.” I reached for the others, realizing I was breathless from cold. “We need a plan. I want to talk to the little girl without her parents.”
Ruth shivered and rubbed her jacket sleeves. “We could invite her to go for a hike with us? Like we want to make friends, now that everyone knows about one another?”
I looked at Andrew. “Would that be strange? She’s so much younger than us.”
“We can try,” Andrew said. “At least we’ll have an excuse to knock on the door. We should make some noise, too, so we don’t startle them.”
We started laughing and joking as we hiked, and when the cabin came into sight, Ruth shouted, “We’re here!”
Other than the smoke coming from the chimney, the shack showed no other signs of life as we walked up to the door. Andrew knocked and no one answered. After waiting all week, I couldn’t stand to go home with no answers. The story about someone buying the shack for this family didn’t match up with the little girl’s fear. No matter how much Helen or Dad told me not to worry, I couldn’t help it. I motioned to the doorknob, silently asking if we should try the door.
Ruth shook her head violently. “What if they’re in there?”
Andrew whispered, “Then we’ll give them fair warning.” He knocked again and said loudly, “That’s funny. Smoke is rising from the chimney. Maybe I should open the door and take a look. Wouldn’t want the cabin to burn down …”
His words had the desired effect. The door creaked slowly open, and the little girl’s green eyes locked with mine.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Mom and Dad will be home any second.”
“We came to talk to you.” I tried to look past her into the shack.
The girl pushed the door closed. “This is our house and no one can take it from us.”
Andrew blocked the door from closing with his foot. “We hiked a long way to see you.”
I gave Andrew a warning look. The girl was young, and I could see we were scaring her. “I’m sorry we sent our parents out here to check on you, but we were worried. This shack isn’t a proper house for a family. We just thought — “
The little girl frowned and looked behind her. “Nothing’s wrong with our house.”
Andrew took the opportunity to push the door open enough so we could see inside. “Why don’t you let us see, then?”
I scanned the room and understood what Dad had meant about the fixed-up shack. A crackling fire in a wood stove filled the room with warmth and lit up the cozy jumble of furniture — a corduroy couch, a quilt-topped bed, a round table with four chairs that someone had topped with a vase of pine sprigs. A cabinet on wheels that looked like it had once served as a kitchen island leaned against a wall next to an industrial-size water dispenser. The little girl watched us take in the room. The baby was sleeping in a car seat next to the fire. Diapers hung above the fireplace. Even though the furniture looked like it belonged in a garage sale, the little room looked cared for. A smell of orange cleaner mixed with wood smoke and pine.
“But this isn’t a home.” Ruth looked as confused as I felt. “And you shouldn’t be alone here with a baby.�
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“Our house is perfect. And when my parents find the bear — “ The little girl covered her mouth.
I glanced at Andrew and then said to the little girl, “You didn’t tell them about the bear?”
The little girl glared at me, but didn’t say anything. I thought back to our conversation in the woods. Maybe she had only heard us talking about Patch, and that was what she had meant by her threat. I hadn’t heard the rustling until we were at least half a mile from the den. If her parents were still looking for the bear, Patch was safe for now. And I wasn’t even sure I could find the den if I didn’t know exactly what to look for, so maybe the girl’s parents wouldn’t find Patch. I could hope anyway.
The baby fussed and the girl picked her up. “My parents will be home any second.”
“If they find the bear, what will happen?” Andrew asked.
“It’s a treasure hunt,” the little girl said, as though these exact words had been used to explain the situation to her. “If we find the bear, we can live here, together, forever and ever.”
“Who told you—” Andrew’s question stopped as voices neared, not close enough for us to be seen yet, but too close for comfort.
Ruth, Andrew, and I caught one another’s eyes and made an instant decision. We bolted toward the bushes furthest from the voices, fighting our snowshoes as we climbed the hillside and dove behind an outhouse. Seconds later, the little girl’s parents hiked down the opposite snowbank to the cabin. Fortunately, they were too deep in conversation to notice our tracks.
“Do you really think that was a bear den?” The woman pulled off her hat and shook snow out of her long hair. “Not just another dark hole in the snow?”
“I’ll go back with my shotgun later,” the man said. “I didn’t want to move any closer without protection. He said the bear was dangerous.”
The door closed behind them, and Andrew, Ruth, and I stood for a moment, silent.
“They might not have found her,” Ruth said.
“I have to go look for tracks.” Andrew stood up and tightened his snowshoes.
I caught the back of his jacket. “But what if we just lead them to her?”
“If he’s headed to Patch’s den with a shotgun, Sadie, I want to be there to meet him. He can’t shoot a hibernating bear if there are witnesses. The DNR would be all over him.”
“Maybe they didn’t find her,” Ruth said again. “We’ll hide our tracks the best we can, but I agree with Andrew. We have to know.”
I followed, my hands fluttering like birds that couldn’t find a place to rest. Every time I caught them and tried to hold them together, they launched into motion again with minds of their own. Please, let Patch be safe.
We took a wide, rambling path to the den, using pine branches to muss the snow both where we had walked and also where we had not walked. Finally, we came to Patch’s hillside, and we scanned the snow for tracks. Nothing.
“Stay here.” Andrew cut a wide circle around the hillside, looking for footprints, checking for broken branches or leaves swept clean of snow.
He finally walked back, shaking his head. “No one has been here.”
“Let’s make a mess,” Ruth said. “We’ll track up the snow and totally confuse them.”
Andrew and I nodded and we all took off, leaving trails leading to nowhere in every direction, mussing our prints so it appeared we had been trying to cover our tracks. Finally, after about an hour, we turned back for home.
The hike back was long and even colder than the hike out to the shack. None of us said much until we reached the bushes that edged the research cabin’s property line.
Andrew, who was a few yards ahead, stopped and turned back to us.
“You want to look at glass for ornaments, right? Let’s go talk in the garage.”
One bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling in the research cabin’s garage, casting dim light over a jumble of boxes and bins. Andrew led me and Ruth past stacks of empty bins to cardboard boxes filled with glass bottles and jars. Since the cabin had no recycling service, Helen and Andrew saved bottles until they had a truckload of them and then took them into town.
Andrew unwound his scarf and took off his gloves so he could rub his red cheeks. “I don’t know how you’re going to make these ornaments. But we have plenty of glass.”
I opened a box full of green, brownish red, clear, and even a few blue bottles. “Perfect.”
“Who would have promised that family the shack if they find the bear?” Andrew asked.
“The land company?” Ruth blew into her hands. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Could it be Jim?” I sat down on a box. Everything was impossible and so terribly wrong. The little girl, hopeful and desperate, believing an old shack could be a home. Patch, in danger of being shot in her den. Jim, sure Patch was dangerous, willing to go to huge lengths to kill her.
“Maybe,” Andrew said. “But no one has found Patch yet, and that’s a good sign. Maybe we just wait it out. Soon the big snowstorms will come, and it will be even harder to find the den.”
“Oh! Frankie,” Ruth said. “Maybe we can get answers from her. You think she knows?”
Andrew flipped around to stare at us. “Frankie?”
“She’s back. And something weird is up with her.” Ruth sat down on the box next to me. “Her friends are all mad at her, and she keeps hanging out with us.”
“Because she’s trying to find Patch?” Andrew asked.
Andrew’s question made anger rush to my cheeks unexpectedly. “Frankie and her dad are not the same person. Maybe she just …”
“Just what?” Andrew asked, when I didn’t finish my sentence.
I couldn’t look at him. “Maybe she just needs a friend.”
Chapter 15
Listening is Love
“We’ve talked a lot about noticing God in our everyday lives.” Doug rubbed his hands together then leaned forward, hands on knees. I had seen him do this enough to know that he was truly excited about whatever would come next.
Andrew sat between Ruth and me. Tension stretched tight between the three of us. We avoided the touchy subjects, not mentioning the family in the woods, Frankie, or Patch.
Doug continued, “So now I think we’re ready to push our conversation deeper. To challenge ourselves. It’s perfect timing really, in this season when gift giving is so important. What does God want to give us? What ought we give to God?”
Claudia’s hand shot up. “Pure hearts. God wants us to not sin.”
I folded my fingers together in my lap and stared down at my hands. Perfect. On the first night Andrew shows up, Claudia brings up sin. The word sounded so simple and clean-edged slipping from Claudia’s mouth, like a perfectly packed moving box taped tightly shut. Sin, a category completely defined by this word. Either something fit inside the sin box or it didn’t.
No one spoke for a long moment. Ruth squirmed next to me. I knew she wanted to say something, and also that she would choose walking barefoot in the snow on a minus ten degree day over saying something. No one liked to take Claudia on, because Claudia felt comfortable with thick brush stroke answers. Grey areas confused her, made her lash out. Claudia wanted clear definition. What was right? What was wrong? I didn’t blame her, really. Life would be a lot simpler if there were some easy formula. I had no idea what would be in a sin box if I tried to categorize, and I preferred Claudia’s tightly taped box to my own, with odd-shaped items sticking out every which way so the box was impossible to close.
I could almost hear Ruth’s inward sigh as she finally cleared her throat. “But we do sin. Everyone sins. If we go around trying not to do something, knowing we’ll fail over and over again, thinking God wants us to be this person we can never be, how is that helpful?”
“So we shouldn’t even try to be good?” Claudia snapped, predictably.
Doug nodded his head slowly. “This is a good conversation. Claudia, you point out that God desires our pure hearts. Ruth, you remind
us that God knows our hearts aren’t completely pure, can never be completely pure. If we return to what we know — God shows up in the tiniest of moments, God is with us in joy and sadness, God loves us — we find traces of an answer. God doesn’t want us to torture ourselves over our imperfection. Yet, he wants us to do our best too.”
“Like football,” Ted chimed in, causing everyone to groan. “No really. Even though we know we’ll never run the perfect play—the other guys will always be in the way—we practice for perfection. Otherwise, we’d be a team of losers.”
Doug laughed. “I never thought of it that way, Ted, but I agree with you. This is why I love talking with you guys. I learn so much. We’ll discuss these questions in the upcoming weeks. What does God want to give us? What ought we to give him? Millions of sermons have been written on the subject, and I’m sure tons of answers leap to your minds. But I want you to watch. Notice God in your own lives. Maybe by finding answers in our own lives, we’ll be able to make the less tangible answers, such as giving God a pure heart, more real for ourselves.”
We broke into our groups, and I finally dared looking up at Andrew. He didn’t look too freaked out. I remembered Thanksgiving, how Helen had suggested we pray. I had never talked to Andrew about God, and I had no idea if he believed in anything or not. I always assumed people didn’t, maybe because my family didn’t, but the more I hung out at youth group the more I wondered. People thought about God a lot more than I realized. And not just people who went to church. Normal people, even Mom, thought about God, especially when people needed help. If people believed in God when they needed help, then they must believe in him all the time. Maybe they just needed to pay more attention. My mind felt over full. I hugged my legs to my chest.
“Andrew looked up fused glass online with us today,” Ruth said to Georgia and Nick, our other two group mates. Georgia and Nick were both Jasper’s age, fifth graders, pretty much willing to do whatever we asked. Georgia had long white-blond hair and was almost painfully shy. Nick was constantly fidgeting, doodling with one hand while constantly changing position. “Andrew wants to help with the project.”
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