Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [31]
The door opens and the woman’s head pokes through. She looks at my father and then at me. “Can I speak to you?” she asks.
I point to myself, a question on my face.
“Yes, please,” she says.
I walk to the door.
“Do you have a Kotex?” she whispers.
A Kotex, I am thinking. Oh God, a Kotex.
“No,” I say, chagrined.
“None?” She seems surprised.
“No.”
She tilts her head. “How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
I have a pad that the school nurse gave each of the seventh-grade girls at the beginning of the school year just in case, but it’s in my locker. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I truly am. I’m more than sorry—I’m mortified.
The woman looks out the window at the falling snow. “It’s bad out there, isn’t it?”
I offer up the flannel pajamas.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“Pajamas,” I say. “They’re too big for me. The waist is elastic.”
Her arms slide through the gap, and I see that her legs are naked. She glances out the window again. “Maybe there’s something?” she adds as she shuts the door.
I return to the kitchen and lean against the red counter. How am I ever going to manage this? I wonder. I close my eyes and think a minute.
“Dad?” I say finally. “I need to go to Remy’s.” My tone is slightly defiant, anticipating an argument.
“Remy’s,” my father says, stubbing out his cigarette in a saucer he keeps for the purpose.
“I have to get something.”
“What?”
I shrug.
“Something for you or something for her?” he asks.
“Something for her,” I say.
“What is it?”
“Something for her,” I repeat.
My father gets up and walks to the window again. He examines the snow, gauging depth and speed. The tracks of his truck and the blue car are nearly covered now.
“It’s important,” I add.
“There’s nothing else that will do?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“You’re sure?” he says.
Yes, there might be a cloth or a towel that would do, but I have never before been given such a mission, and I am determined not to fail this woman. “Please, Dad,” I say.
“I’ll go,” he says. “You stay here.” But as he says this, I can see him reconsidering. He doesn’t want me in the house alone with the woman.
“Never mind,” he says. “You’ll come with me.”
We dress in silence for the snow. I tap on the door and tell the woman we’re going to the store and that we’ll be right back. We climb into the truck, and my father starts the engine. He steps out and scrapes the snow from the windshield and the windows. I tell myself it isn’t so bad out, but it is: the snow is falling fast and thick.
Our road, unplowed, is slippery beneath the wheels of the truck. My father drives with concentration, and we don’t speak.
I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am—that we just left a strange woman in our house, a woman who may have tried to murder her baby. Murder her baby. I cannot make the phrase sit still in my head. Since we moved to New Hampshire, nothing ever happens to my father and me; hardly anyone ever drives up the long hill. But in the past nine days, we’ve had three sets of visitors: Detective Warren, Steve and Virginia, and now a woman whose name we still do not know.
We pass the school and the church and the village green. At the corner of Strople and Maine, the rear wheels of the truck begin to float across the street. My father takes his hands off the steering wheel, and after what feels like many seconds, we come to a stop. My father puts the truck in gear and pulls into our lane. I’m praying that we don’t hit something, because if we do it will be all my fault.
Up ahead I can see both Remy’s and Sweetser’s, but my father makes a sudden turn into the post office. I guess he wants to check his mail. Instead of stopping at the post office, however, he pulls behind that building to another building that houses both the police station and the town clerk’s office.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my eyes widening.
My father doesn’t answer me. He parks the truck, turns the engine off, and opens his door.
“Dad?” I ask.
I watch my father walk toward the police station. I open my door and hop out. Did he intend to come here all along? Did he agree to go to the