Finch reaches out and takes Scotland’s hand. “Come on,” she says. “I want you to try out my sled.”
He unstraps his snowshoes and follows her to the little hill at the edge of the yard. She plops into the sled and gestures for him to climb in. Which he does. Sits right down behind her and tucks his legs up onto hers and off they go, whooshing through the snow on one of the runs we pushed out earlier. They dip out of sight and I can hear them laughing.
“Are you all right?” Marie asks.
“What? Sure.” The path is cleared but I keep on shoveling. “Why?”
She shrugs.
I gesture toward Scotland. “He sort of puts me on edge.”
“He seems nice.”
“Yes,” I say, heaving a shovel load of snow. “He is nice.”
She squints. “So what’s the problem?”
“Nothing.” Of course I can’t tell her about the day he waltzed into the yard with a crow on his shoulder and an AK-47 strapped to his back and his stack of carefully selected newspapers, a litany of my many offenses. “It’s just he shows up here, all the time.”
“He’s probably lonely.”
“Maybe.”
Finch and Scotland emerge, the tips of their hats, then their faces, shoulders, body.
“You’re up, Marie!” Finch calls.
Marie tramps through the snow and climbs on the sled behind Finch. A different picture altogether, seeing her with Finch, instead of Scotland.
“Haven’t been on a sled for decades,” Scotland says. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve.
“You all right?”
“Cold.” He reaches into his pocket and slides out a skull. “Give this to Finch, would you? Gotta get on home.” He hands me a white skull, small enough that it fits in my palm. “Wood rat,” he says. He slides back into his snowshoes, straps them down, and trundles off into the woods.
TWENTY-THREE
The snow has continued, three or four more inches that have arrived in waves, here and there, and meanwhile, Marie has met the chickens, gathered the eggs. She’s chopped wood and kept the fire going. The second night, she made us grilled cheese for supper. Each evening, at dusk, we roll up a towel and press it against the door to keep the snow from sliding under. We lock the doors, I prop the shovel. And though I try and hold back, though I know it will almost certainly lead to disappointment, I feel myself slipping down a trail of what if?
After dinner on the third night, Marie asks if she can see Finch’s notebook, and although I thought she’d be tickled by this request, she throws a sideways glance at me and says, “Only if we go up to the loft.” She’s still mad about not going to the valley, I guess.
“I’ll do the dishes,” I say. “You go have some girl time.”
The two of them climb the ladder and as I pour hot water into the washbasin from the kettle, I can hear them settling in upstairs, sliding the plastic storage bins and crinkling the bags of items.
“Jake brought me a notebook every time he came. And he got me Prismacolor pencils, for drawing, which he said were the best, according to his research. So, this is a goldfinch from last spring. They get brighter and brighter yellow throughout the season. Well, the males do. The females aren’t as colorful. This is a pileated woodpecker.”
I scrub the sides of the Dutch oven, wanting to give them their space.
“This one’s an indigo bunting. They’re the most beautiful of birds we get. I didn’t quite capture the color just right, but can you tell how pretty? This is a tree swallow, in the spring. They’re like acrobats in the sky, diving and looping, and they make a sound like this”—she pauses to attempt it—“sort of like water gurgling. They’re my favorites.”
“And who’s this gal with the long red hair?”
I pause, clenching the scouring pad in my palm. The sketch of the girl in the woods. I’d forgotten about it.
“That’s my friend I told you about. At first I thought she was a princess who’d run away from a nearby kingdom, but then I realized that wasn’t right. A princess wouldn’t live in the woods.”
“No?”
“Not the way she does. So that’s when I realized she’s actually a wood nymph.”
“I see,” Marie says.
The suds slowly slide from my arms.
“There’s a butterfly called a wood nymph. It’s brown, with two dark spots that look like eyes to confuse predators. But that’s not the type of wood nymph she is. She’s the kind in books. Do you know what I mean? They’re beautiful maidens who live in the woods.”