Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [17]
“You went inside,” my father says.
“I was looking for you to tell you about the girl. I drove all the way up your road, and I wasn’t going to leave without seeing if you were in. You make nice stuff, by the way.”
My father is silent, refusing to be drawn in by the compliment.
“The baby’s doing fine,” Warren says.
My father bangs a snowshoe against a mound of hardpacked snow.
“We’re on the same side here, Mr. Dillon,” Warren says.
“What side would that be?”
“You found the baby and saved her life,” Warren says, shooting a cigarette from a pack of Camels. He lights it with a lighter. “You smoke?” he asks.
My father shakes his head, even though he does.
“Then I find the guy who did it,” Warren says. “That’s how it works. We’re a team.”
“We’re not a team,” my father says.
“I called down to Westchester,” Warren says, “and spoke to a guy named Thibodeau. You remember Thibodeau?”
Even I remember Thibodeau. Officer Thibodeau came to our house the morning after the accident with the news we already knew. My father shouted at him to get off our goddamn steps.
“A terrible thing,” Warren says. “I probably would have done the same as you—moved away, reinvented my life. Don’t know where I’d have gone, though. Maybe Canada, maybe the city. Anonymity in the city.”
I have the orange tape wrapped around my mittens. I give it another tug.
“I got two boys, eight and ten,” Warren says.
“Let’s go, Nicky,” my father says.
“I want this guy,” Warren says.
“I think we’re done here,” my father says.
The detective drops the barely smoked butt onto the snow. He pulls his gloves out of his pocket and puts them on.
“No one’s done here,” Warren says.
When we return to the house, my father calls Dr. Gibson. I hang around in the den so that I can hear him in the kitchen.
“I just wondered how the baby was doing,” I hear my father say into the phone.
“That’s good, right?” my father says.
“Where is she now?” he asks.
“She’ll be there how long? . . .
“Does she have a name yet? . . .
“Baby Doris,” my father repeats. He sounds surprised, taken aback. “You say she’ll go into foster care? . . .
“It seems so —”
Dr. Gibson must make a comment about foster care and adoption, because my father says, “Yes, cold.”
I can hear my father pouring himself a cup of coffee. “When the system doesn’t work, what happens? . . .
“She’d be prosecuted, though. . . .
“Thanks,” my father says. “I just wanted to know that the baby was okay.”
My father hangs up the phone. I move into the kitchen. He’s sipping the lukewarm coffee and looking out the kitchen window. “Hey,” he says when he hears me.
“She’s all right?” I ask.
“She’s fine.”
“They’ve named her Baby Doris?”
“Apparently.” He sets the mug down. “Going to Sweetser’s,” he says. “Want to come?”
I don’t have to be asked twice to accompany my father on a trip to town.
My father holds the door for me when we enter the hardware store. Mr. Sweetser looks up from the paper he has spread across the counter next to the register. “Our local hero,” he says.
“You heard,” my father says.
“Front page. See for yourself.”
My father and I make our way to the counter. In a newspaper known for its high-school sports news, Sunday comics, and coupons, I can see a headline that reads INFANT FOUND IN SNOW. Below that is another, smaller headline: Local Carpenter Finds Baby Alive in Bloody Sleeping Bag. I bend closer to the counter and read the paper with my father. The reporter has largely got the story right. There is mention of the motel, the Volvo, and the navy peacoat. There is no mention of me.
“Got your name spelled wrong,” Sweetser says.
“Yeah, I saw that,” my father says.
Dylan. It happens all the time.
“You want me to cut it out for you?”
My father shakes his head.
“So what happened?” Sweetser asks.
My father unzips his jacket. The store is heated by a fickle woodstove in the corner that makes the temperature fluctuate between ninety degrees and sixty. Today it feels like eighty. “Nicky and I were taking a walk when we heard a cry,” my father says. “We thought it might be an animal