Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [32]
My father stops at the door and waits for me to catch up to him. He bends toward me. In a quiet voice that I know means business, he says, “Go back to the truck.”
“What are you doing?”
“This has nothing to do with you.”
“But you can’t . . . ,” I say, holding my hands out. “You just can’t.” Already I feel a sense of loyalty to a woman I don’t even know. I shake my head vigorously back and forth.
My father feels a nudge at his back. He steps aside so that the door can open. Peggy, the town clerk, pulls a scarf around her head. “Hi, Nicky,” she says, stepping outside.
I first met Peggy when I applied for a permit to sell raspberries at the end of our road. She charged me seven dollars.
Peggy smiles at my father. “You need me?” she asks.
“Actually I’m looking for Chief Boyd,” my father says.
“You just missed him,” she says. “He and Paul got called out to eighty-nine. An accident at the exit.” Peggy looks at the sky. “Is it urgent? I could raise him on the radio.”
I stare at my father.
“No,” he says after a few seconds. “No, that’s all right. I’ll give him a call.”
I let out a long breath.
“Well, you’ve certainly been in the news,” Peggy says, pulling on her gloves. “What a thing that must have been!” she says. “To find a baby.” She looks at me. “And you were with him, too!”
I nod.
“I’m off to Sweetser’s,” Peggy says. “Have to get some batteries and road salt before the storm gets worse. You want to wait inside? I won’t lock the door.”
“No, we’re fine,” my father says. “Thanks.”
“If I don’t see you later, have a good Christmas,” Peggy says.
My father and I walk to the truck. I climb into the cab. I know enough not to ask a single question, not to say a word.
At Remy’s my father slows to the curb. Through the whiteout and the steamed window, I can see the pale yellow light of a bulb above the register. My father hands me a ten-dollar bill. “Make it snappy,” he says.
The steps are poorly shoveled. A bell rings when I enter the store, needlessly announcing me. Marion sets her knitting down. “Nicky,” she says. “Sweetheart. You’re my hero, you know that? Haven’t seen you since you found the baby. Haven’t seen your dad either.”
“We’ve been kind of busy,” I say.
“Well, I guess so!”
Marion, a large redhead with a rubbery face, married her sister’s husband after an affair of biblical proportions that shocked even the most ardent proponents of New Hampshire’s highly unrealistic state motto, Live Free or Die. But that was years ago, and now the woman is a pillar of the community. Her husband, Jimmy, who was once the Regional’s star quarterback, weighs in at over three hundred pounds. One of Marion’s sons is at UNH; the other is at the state prison for armed robbery.
I have hardly ever seen Marion without knitting needles in her hands. Today she’s making something in red and yellow stripes. I hope it’s not for anyone over two years old. “So tell me all about it!” she says.
“Um,” I say, thinking.
“Something that wasn’t in the papers.”
I think another moment. “We wrapped her in flannel shirts and put her in a plastic laundry basket.”
“You did?” Marion says, seemingly happy with the detail. “Were you just completely freaked out?”
“Pretty much,” I say.
Marion picks up her knitting. “You went to the hospital, too?”
“I did.”
“Did you get to stay with the baby?”
“We visited for a minute.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“We don’t really know,” I say.
Marion loses her rubbery smile. “It’s sad,” she says.
“Well, we did find her,” I say, not yet willing to relinquish the role of heroine.
“No, I mean sad for the person who did it,” she says. “There must have been a terrible reason.”
I think about how the person who did it is in our bathroom at home right this minute.
“You finish the hat for your dad?”
“Yes,” I say, inching closer to the aisles.
“How did it