Nan had never slept so late. True, the house was tucked in the flannel pocket of silent snow, but I began to have an odd feeling. I’d noticed before that her bedroom door was closed, but I didn’t think about it. Now I remembered that I’d left it open, in case she had a bad dream.
At first in the dim light I thought she was tucked into the bed as I’d left her, but as I went closer I saw the covers were disturbed. I ran my hand over the sheets and all down around the bottom of the mattress, as if she might be playing a prank. But Nan wasn’t in her bed. I said her name in a singsong voice, the one for games. Nothing. She could be looking at books downstairs or gone upstairs to paint. She had free run of the house and didn’t hesitate about using it. I called her name, and pretended we’d decided to play hide-and-seek, or hot and cold. I called out the words and waited for a giggle or a response. Nothing. I said loudly that French toast would be ready soon, and she better come down or I’d eat hers, too. “Mrs. Circumstance only has two pieces of bread today, and I’m very hungry!”
I went back to the hall and looked out the window.
The day was gray again, the sky still low, the snow diminished to a smattering of tiny flakes. I stared at the ground until I was able to make out faint traces of footsteps, nearly obscured already by fresh snow. My heart stopped cold. I breathed pure fear. As soon as I could move, I ran downstairs and pulled on a coat and boots and plunged outside. Right away my boots filled with cold clumps. Within a short time my nose and hands ached. The snow came down in tinsel lines, and every few moments one found my face or my eye and bored in, while in the distance they drilled into the dark gray sea. I winced at the sound, scratching like crinoline. It was less than twenty-four hours since I’d walked the same route back from the lunch, and this was so much farther, so much longer.
At one point I saw a figure across the meadow. Who could be up and out at this hour? An arm rose to wave to me and I realized it was Robert. The explanation for what he was doing out was so simple I instantly supplied it. He was a boy and here was big snow.
The snow had piled high enough to block the Chalet door. I tugged on the handle and worked it outward a little, then swung my boot like a broom to clear a patch, an action I repeated several times until I got the door open wide enough to step in. The stove was out, and the oil lamps, too. It’s hard to describe the silence. It was more like a nothingness—an absence of all. “Nan?” I whispered—whispered rather than spoke. The atmosphere resisted interruption. “Nan?” I walked in slowly and let my eyes adjust. The lunch dishes were still on the table, though Virgil’s pages had been set down on a chair. I went into Nan’s room. The window was now wide open. There was a puddle on the floor; she must have come in that way.
I called their names again. A response—was it? A moan from the direction of his room. I didn’t want to go there. Not now. How had this happened, all of it? I stood completely still and listened. Then—
“Ness?”
“Yes. Here I am. Where are you?” A useless question. I knew where she was.
“Nessie,” she whimpered.
I set aside my scruples and embarrassment and pushed open Virgil’s door. The room was so cold I could see my breath. I beckoned to her and she came out from under the covers. “Is Papa there?”
“Yes.”
“Virgil?”
I could sense nothing of him, not a single aspect. I discerned Nan in the room, but no one else. Yet there was a lump in the bed.
“Come here, Nanny.”
She came into my arms and I carried her into the main room. “Where’s your father?”
“In the bed.”
“Asleep?”
She nodded.
“Is he alone?”
She nodded again. Absurdly this pleased me. I was utterly mixed up. “It’s very cold in here, don’t you think? Should we go get some hot chocolate?”
“Is it school?” She pulled a bit of my hair toward her and wrapped it around her hand.
“It’s too snowy for school. Are you sure Fur is here?”
She nodded.
“Did you talk to him?”
She shook her head.
“He must be very tired. Go get a fresh shirt. You can come back with me until he wakes up.”
“But I want my surprise!”
Her surprise? Then I remembered—I’d been the one to put that idea into her head. She, a child, hadn’t been able to wait and walked over in the night to find out what the surprise was. “In a little while,” I said unsteadily. “Now go ahead.”
She went to her room and I went to his. I whispered his name but got no response, none at all. A bad feeling centered me. I became utterly calm. I pulled down on the covers until I could see his face, and Karen’s. They were both pink, but utterly still. There was no sense of life in the room, and no sign of a problem. I reached out and touched him, and he was stiff and cold. Cold beyond the frigidness of the room. The deeper, more permanent cold. Yet I balked at the truth. Had they gotten drunk? Were they passed out completely? Yes, that must be it, I thought, even though I knew otherwise. My mind was split in two. What happened?
I went back to the main room where Nan waited. “He’s asleep,” I told her—and then I added, by sudden inspiration, “and so are you. We are in a dream. We are going to go back to bed and wake up for breakfast. Then we’ll read and play and paint, have more cookies and hot chocolate…”
She looked at me quizzically. I picked her up and left the cabin. “You are sleeping peacefully, aren’t you? And having a beautiful dream of snow. You are dreaming that I’m carrying you through the snow and that later you’ll build a snowman with Robert, and you’ll have lots of treats all day and we’ll build a fire.” I spoke to her in that manner until she dropped asleep on my shoulder.
I called the police. My story was that Nan was asleep in the bedroom at Leeward when I had noticed there was no smoke coming from the Chalet chimney, and I went over to check but there was no answer when I knocked. I had no idea that Karen was there. We’d had lunch together the day before, but I didn’t know she’d stayed on. I hadn’t noticed her car outside; I hadn’t gone out front. It was all simple; there was no reason to doubt me, and everything matched my description. I was the neighbor who’d gone to check on the heat. Who would think I was any more than that? Not Robert. Not anyone. No one but me knew the passion I’d felt for a year and a half, the depths of soul I’d found. No one but you will ever know, Elspeth.
Nan could be coaxed to forget. Robert might, too, if he weren’t reminded of me anymore. By the time he sees me again, he’ll have forgotten the whole thing.
Now, Elspeth, I come to the end.
Have you ever wondered what happens when a person dies in winter and the ground is frozen too solid to dig a grave? The body is kept in the mortuary until spring. This causes great devastation to the families as they have to go through a death twice, or so I’m told. The funeral director said this to me as a matter of interest, not thinking I might be among the devastated.
Carbon monoxide poisoning. The oxygen in the cabin was completely burned up by the woodstove fire until there was none left. People die every winter from faulty heating. All the windows were closed. That was the case because I closed Nan’s window. It had been left open on purpose and I closed it. It’s my fault. Even if I didn’t know, I still made a choice that wasn’t mine to make.