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By Root 356 0

our knees, a skill my father and I have mastered but which seems to confound Charlotte. Her chicken skids across her plate, and her salad lies in bits on her lap. She picks the lettuce leaves off with delicate fingers. My father eats with determination, his face set in a mask. He will not acknowledge Charlotte’s presence beyond the absolutely necessary. I eat, torn between rapt attention for Charlotte and growing impatience with my father. Charlotte, defeated by dinner, eats little and seems the most uncomfortable of the three of us, her eyes barely rising from her plate, each swallow an effort. Color rises to and recedes from her face as if she were periodically flooded by waves of shame. I think that she will bolt from her seat. My father’s rigidity silences me as well. We dine to the sounds of the wind outside, and once or twice the lights flicker, reminding us that we could lose the power at any minute. After two winters in New Hampshire, my father and I have a sizable stash of candlesticks, half-burned candles, and flashlights at the ready. I like losing the power, because my father and I move into the den with its fireplace for the duration of the storm. We sleep in sleeping bags, and our ingenuity is tested in the areas of amusing ourselves and preparing meals. These episodes are cozy and warm, and I am always a little dismayed when the power—in the form of lights you’d forgotten had been left burning—comes back on with all the charm of a police spotlight.

“We’re definitely going to lose our power,” I say. “Charlotte and I can sleep in here. In sleeping bags.”

My father gives me a frosty look.

“I’ll be fine upstairs,” Charlotte says.

“No you won’t,” I say. “There won’t be any heat. The only heat will be from the fireplace. This one here.”

My father rises from his seat and carries his tray out to the kitchen. Charlotte sets down her knife and fork, clearly grateful to be done with the charade. She lays her head against the chair back and shuts her eyes. I stand and take her tray and mine and follow my father. He and I share dish duty—I one night, he the other—and I’m pretty sure it’s my night. But he’s already begun the chore.

“You’re being horrible,” I say.

“This is a fiasco,” he says.

When I return to the den, Charlotte still has her eyes shut, and I think she’s fallen asleep. I sit across from her in my father’s chair and study her. Her eyelids are bluish, and her mouth falls open slightly. I wonder where she’s been and what she’s been doing over the last ten days.

I think about how my father could so easily have told Warren that Charlotte was sleeping upstairs when Warren came to visit. And that would have been that. Charlotte, in my pajamas with the pink and blue bears, would have been handcuffed in our back hallway, walked out to the Jeep, and taken away. We might never have seen her again. My father would always tell me it was for the best, and I would always know that he was wrong.

I wonder where Warren keeps his handcuffs. I wonder if he wears a gun.

I pick up a book I’ve been reading off and on, more off than on, a sign that I’ll probably abandon it soon. I find my place and try to absorb a few sentences, but I can’t concentrate. I drop the book hard onto the table.

Charlotte opens her eyes.

“Do you want to see my room?” I ask.

She sits up, slightly dazed and blinking.

“I could show you a picture of my mother,” I add.

“Uh, sure,” she says.

We climb the stairs and enter my room, which I tidied while Charlotte was asleep. My pajamas and the empty Ring Ding package are nowhere to be seen. Charlotte seems to relax as soon as she crosses the threshold, as if my room were more familiar territory. She stands and admires the mural, or at least pretends to, and, oddly, it doesn’t seem quite as amateurish as it did earlier. I think of Steve with his fictitious phone number and wonder whom he surprised with a call.

“This is great,” Charlotte says with her hands tucked into the back pockets of her jeans, a posture that accentuates the bulge of her tummy. I scan the room and see it from the fresh eyes