Light on snow_ a novel - Anita Shreve [8]
My father shakes the doctor’s hand. “I’d like to call you tomorrow,” he says. “To see how she is.”
“I’m on all day,” Dr. Gibson says. He hands my father a card, and we watch him walk away.
“Where’s your car?” Detective Warren asks my father.
My father has to think a minute. “In the front lot,” he says.
“I’d like you to come for a ride with me,” Warren says. “I want you to take a look at something.”
“My daughter’s tired,” my father says.
“We can leave her here,” the detective says. “Pick her up when I drop you off. This won’t take long.”
“No, Dad,” I say quickly.
The detective opens his mouth to speak, but my father cuts him off. “She’ll come with us,” my father says.
Warren drives a red Jeep, which seems an odd choice for a state policeman. I decide he probably doesn’t do too much undercover work. Maybe he needs the truck for chasing criminals on back roads.
“You’ll have to give me directions,” Warren says. “I don’t have much call to come up here.”
“To where?” my father asks.
“To the motel,” Warren says.
We pass through the small town of Shepherd, New Hampshire, named after Asa Henry Shepherd, a farmer who came up from Connecticut to till the land in 1763. In the local phone book there are over thirty Shepherds listed.
“We’re getting some weather tomorrow,” Warren says. “Ice, according to the radio. I hate ice.”
My father says nothing. It’s freezing in the Jeep. I’m sitting in back. The detective drives with his coat open, the red scarf loose around his neck.
“Black ice is the worst,” Warren says. “Two years ago there was this family from North Carolina, coming off the exit ramp to Grantham. They were up skiing, had no clue about black ice. The Chevy they were in went airborne.”
I watch the rhythm of my father’s frozen breaths.
“A couple checked in to the motel over by you,” Warren says. “The owner gave a description of the man but says she didn’t see the woman. Male, Caucasian, five-eleven, twenty, twenty-one, black wavy hair, wearing a navy peacoat. She thinks he was driving a Volvo, six, seven years old. They’re supposed to get a plate number, but she didn’t.”
“A Volvo?” my father asks, surprised.
The detective bypasses our road, heading east toward the drive that will lead to the motel. The headlights provide small glimpses into the forest, the same woods that border our property. Through the windshield I can see a puzzling glow in the night sky, as if there were a small city waiting for us at the top of the hill.
Warren drives with a heavy foot. My father has never liked being a passenger, hasn’t been one in years. I can smell the detective in front of me—a mixture of wet wool and coffee, with a faint overlay of spearmint.
“Turn here,” my father says.
Warren makes a turn onto a paved driveway that runs up a short hill to a low red-shingled motel. There are two cruisers and three other cars in the parking lot. Behind the motel the woods are lit with a series of powerful spotlights.
Warren gets out of the Jeep and beckons to my father to join him.
“You stay here,” my father says to me.
“I want to come,” I say.
“I’ll be right back,” he says.
The door to a motel room is open, and I can see two uniformed policemen inside, one of whom is Chief Boyd. My father follows the detective across the lot.
I draw up my knees and wrap my arms around them. The window next to me is smeary, but I can see my father stepping over the threshold and into the lighted room. I don’t understand why I’ve been left alone in the car. What if the person who left the baby to die is still around?
I lean to one side and let my weight topple me onto the cushion so that I am lying on the backseat in a fetal position. I am in a detective’s car. A small jolt of something like excitement mixed with fear tingles at the back of my neck.
I examine the floor of the Jeep in the light from the parking lot. There’s an empty Coke can on