Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [37]
“I just had one or two questions for him,” Warren says, beginning to melt on the welcome mat. “I wanted to get over here before the storm does its worst.”
For a moment I can’t speak.
“Where is he?” Warren asks, studying me.
“Um . . . he had to go into the woods to find his ax,” I say. “He left it in the woods. He wanted to find it before it gets buried in the snow.”
I feel dizzy. The lie is huge. Magnificent.
“Really,” Warren says. He opens his coat and shakes it out, a winged bird.
From the back hallway, through the kitchen, I have a view of the den, the couch, and the ugly red-and-black crocheted throw.
“Wicked out there,” Warren says.
A pink mohair sweater with mother-of-pearl buttons is lying against the pillows. It is spread open, as if a woman had just risen from it.
Warren wipes his feet a dozen times on the mat. “Could I get a glass of water?” he asks, looking over at the coats on the hooks.
“Um. Sure,” I say.
He walks with me to the kitchen. He glances up the stairs as he goes. “I’ve got snow tires, but even so,” he says.
In the kitchen he studies the dishes in the dish drainer. I fetch a glass from the cabinet, fill it from the tap, and hand it to him. I can smell spearmint on his breath. I try not to look at his scar.
“We found a flashlight,” he says. “Wanted to know if it was your father’s or if it belonged to the guy.”
“It’s probably my father’s,” I say quickly. “We lost one in the snow that night.”
“Thought it might be,” Warren says, looking over my head toward the den. “You put your tree up yet?”
“We’ll do it Christmas Eve,” I say.
Warren takes a long swallow. “How old are you again?” he asks.
“Twelve,” I say.
I hear the back door open. “Dad,” I say, looking just past the detective.
I am dead.
“What’s going on?” my father asks. The vertical lines on his forehead are pronounced.
“Came to see if you lost a flashlight the night you found the baby,” Warren says. “You find your ax?”
My father says nothing.
“Remember, Dad, how you said you were going into the woods to find your ax?” I say, meeting his eyes.
“We found a flashlight,” Warren says. “Nicky said you lost one that night.”
“I did.”
“What brand?”
“Don’t know. Black with a yellow switch.”
“Yeah, the same,” Warren says.
I let a hand fall to just below my waist. I shut my eyes and wince slightly, the way I’ve seen the girls at school do, as if waiting for a cramp to pass.
“So you guys getting ready for Christmas?”
My father unzips his jacket.
“We got our tree up already,” Warren says, taking a sip of water. “One of my boys—the eight-year-old; he’s autistic—likes having it up.”
My father nods.
“There’s a specialist in Concord,” Warren says. “Supposed to be the best in New Hampshire. It’s why we moved into the city.”
I hear a slight creak along the upstairs hallway. I glance at Warren to see if he has heard it, too.
From a hook I snatch a rag and begin to skate with the cloth, drying the floor, the way my father is always trying to get me to do.
“Still, though,” Warren is saying, “hard on my wife, hard on Mary. Tommy, that’s my son, he doesn’t like being touched.”
A murmur from my father. A pause and then another string of words. I skate my way to the bottom of the stairs and glance up. Charlotte, her face creased with sleep, is on the upstairs landing.
“We’ve got a clan coming,” Warren is saying. “We’ll have nineteen, twenty anyway, for Christmas Eve.”
With a quick glance to see that Warren isn’t looking, I shake my head once, an emphatic No.
“Mary and her sister will do up three hundred pierogies,” Warren is saying. “My wife’s Polish.”
I pick up the rag and reach forward to wipe a step. Silently I beg Charlotte to understand.
Her head tilts then, and I see the way her eyes begin to listen, the moment that she registers the foreign voice. She holds her arms out like a ballerina, and I think for a moment she might fly off the top step. Pirouetting on her toes, she retreats from the landing.
Very carefully, I step away from the stairs. I let out a long breath.
Through the window I can see that