Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [73]
“Harry,” my father says.
“He’s too soon,” I say.
“I’ll go out to him,” my father says.
Our road is the last on Harry’s route. It’s not unusual for my father to greet him with a mug of coffee or, if it’s really late in the day, with a beer. Once Harry came into the house to use the bathroom, and he stayed talking to my father with a Beck’s in his hand for an hour. He’s a local who makes his living in the winter plowing for the town and for private individuals. There’s no shortage of work in New Hampshire in the winter.
Charlotte sips the last of her coffee. She sets the mug down.
I feel a panicky sensation in my chest.
“I guess I’ll go upstairs and make up the bed,” Charlotte says. “Do you have clean sheets so I can put them on for your grandmother?”
“Why?”
“She’s coming, isn’t she?”
“I don’t know where the clean sheets are,” I say, though I do: they’re in the top drawer of the bureau.
“I’ll just strip the bed then,” she says, standing.
I have an image of Charlotte ripping the sheets from the bed, leaving a bare mattress. “You can’t leave,” I say.
“I have to,” she says.
“You could live with us. What would be wrong with that? We could say you’re my cousin and that you’re living with us for a while. You could get a job, save money, go back to college.”
Charlotte gives a quick shake of her head.
“But I’ve got it all worked out,” I wail.
“If the police discover me here, you and your father will be accomplices.”
That word again. “I don’t care,” I say. And it’s true, I don’t care. I want to be an accomplice to Charlotte’s life.
I watch as Charlotte takes her dishes to the sink. She rinses them carefully. She wipes her hands on a dish towel. She slips past my chair and heads for the stairs.
For a minute I sit alone at the table. I touch its surface and remember Charlotte in the front room that first day, running her fingers along the furniture. I hear Charlotte upstairs, and I have again an image of a stripped mattress, blankets and sheets neatly folded.
I find my jacket in the back hallway. When Harry has gone, I’ll plead with my father. We can’t just send Charlotte away, I’ll tell him; we can’t.
Harry is sitting in his truck, his window rolled down, a mug of coffee in his hand. My father is standing next to him. “Hey there,” Harry says to me when I reach my father’s side.
“Hi,” I say.
“Getting ready for Christmas?” he asks in that jovial way adults speak to children.
“Guess so.”
Harry, older than my father, has a thin beard and an even thinner ponytail. His truck is covered with Pink Floyd stickers. Behind Harry is a neat four-foot-wide path the plow has made, the snow at the right edge piled high. He’ll get the other side of the drive on his way down.
“You’re early today,” my father says.
“Been out all night. Got the call around ten.”
“You must be wrecked.”
“Nah, I’m fine,” Harry says, adjusting his baseball hat. Red Sox. “Headed home to put up the tree.”
“How many inches did we get?”
“I can tell you exactly. Forty-one.”
“Must be rough, plowing with the ice underneath.”
“You want me to go up to the barn?” he asks.
“No,” my father says, “we’re okay. I stayed with it. Just do this little bit here we didn’t shovel.”
Harry hands my father the empty mug and puts his truck in gear. He cocks a finger at me. “Don’t forget the beer and cookies for Santa,” he says.
My father and I back away. Harry lowers the plow. We watch as he makes a wide swath. “Dad,” I say.
“Don’t start.”
“She has nowhere to go.”
“She has places.”
“We just can’t send her away.”
“She’s a big girl. She’ll be all right.”
Harry turns around, works his way back to us. He gives a wave out his window as he heads down the long drive.
“Dad, please?”
My father walks away from me to the side of the barn. He takes a glance, seems satisfied, and turns in the direction of the house. I follow to see what he was looking at. His truck and Charlotte’s car are entirely shoveled out, a fine dusting of snow on top. It’s what my father was doing all night—making sure Charlotte could leave in the morning.
Charlotte is standing in the hallway