in this small town, Warren really didn’t have a clue what had happened to his son’s marriage. Either that, or he thought an affair—especially an affair with a client—was not a big deal.
With one mittened hand, she swept away the snow on the driver’s side window of her Sable station wagon. Beneath the snow she felt a thick cobblestone layer of ice.
“Wind chill of minus-forty tonight. Wind’s going to get up to thirty miles an hour, I hear,” Grace Fisher called out from her own car another row over. The stocky older woman, director of nursing at the hospital, waved her ice scraper. “Need this?”
“Got one—but thanks.” Jill slapped her mittens together to knock the snow off, then slid behind the wheel of her car to start the motor. Retrieving her own scraper, she got out again and started on the windshield. “I’ll bet you aren’t going to miss these north-woods winters when you retire.”
Grace laughed. “If I’m not on some southern beach, I’ll at least stay by my fire with a good book.”
Jill waved goodbye to her as Grace drove away, then bent over the hood and continued chipping at the ice, her cheeks and fingers already numb.
As soon as she cleared most of the windshield, she climbed back into the car and wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. She wished she had one of those remote car starters so it could have been warm and ready for her.
She drove out of the staff parking lot and took a left, heading down Main through the center of town.
Snow glistened beneath the street lamps, splashed with color where it reflected the neon lights of businesses along the three-block downtown area. In the summer, the shops bustled with the thousands of vacationers who swarmed to the beautiful lake district. Now, many of the upscale shops were closed until May, giving the street a rather melancholy air.
She passed the drugstore and the grocery store, both on the edge of town, then drove out into the darkness to Bitter Hollow Road, a narrow gravel lane a few miles past the last street lamps. Without the moon and stars overhead the darkness seemed impenetrable….
Until she rounded the last turn and found the lights blazing at Warren’s house.
Strange. He lived here alone. She certainly hadn’t left on the lights when she’d last stopped by to water the plants.
Fumbling for her cell phone, she slowed her car to a crawl then stopped by the mailbox at the end of the driveway.
The wind was picking up, buffeting clouds of snow beneath the faint light of the single security lamp at the peak of the garage.
She squinted through the falling snow, trying to make out the dark shape parked next to the garage and partially hidden by a stand of pines.
A vehicle, certainly…possibly an SUV, but Warren hadn’t said anything about anyone else coming out here.
An intruder…?
With the press of a speed-dial button she called Sheriff Randy Johnson’s office before turning up the heater to ward off the chill.
Five minutes stretched to ten, then fifteen.
At six o’clock, faint pinpoints of light appeared through the increasing snowfall, then drew up behind her. The sheriff briefly flashed the wigwag lights on the front grill of his car to identify himself. He appeared at her door a moment later.
She rolled down her window and flinched as a blast of icy wind hit her. “Thanks for coming out.”
“No problem, Doc.” Middle-aged and burly, the sheriff had always reminded her of a towering, congenial bear—one that could overpower just about anyone who dared challenge it. He squinted toward the house and garage. “Seen anyone?”
“No…but people inside the house wouldn’t know I’m here. I turned off my lights as soon as I stopped.”
He nodded his approval. “You were smart not to go barging in. For years, I’ve been telling Warren he should move closer to town. Even with a security system, this is way too isolated for the old guy.”
“I’m supposed to be taking care of his plants,” she said through chattering teeth.
“My deputy and I will check this out. If you want to go on home, that would be just fine. I’ll give you a call in a bit…or we can just stop up at your place.”
Imagining that he wanted her out of the way in case of trouble, she hesitated, then waved goodbye. She shifted her car into Reverse, backed carefully around the patrol car and headed slowly up the two miles to her own home on Bitter Creek Road.
The Sable bucked through the drifts. She nearly buried it at the low spot where the bridge crossed the creek, but then the spinning tires gained purchase against the gravel beneath the snow and lurched forward. Jill exhaled in relief as she made it up into the timber, where the pines and winter-bare undergrowth of the forest blocked the drifting snow.
At the top of Chapel Hill, the trees gave way to a small clearing and the two-and-a-half-story, red-brick Victorian she and Grant had bought last summer. Back when they’d still imagined filling it with a half-dozen children someday.
Back when she’d still believed in her own fairy-tale ending. After growing up poor raised by her single mother, the house had seemed like a dream come true.
By day, the fanciful cupolas and explosion of gingerbread trim at every edge held their own drab charm. The paint was faded and curling, some of the pieces missing or sagging, but it was still possible to envision what it could become.
Though at night, the house loomed dark and forbidding, its narrow spires rising like daggers through the blowing snow, its windows black and empty.
She parked the car in the garage and scurried across the yard to the broad wraparound porch.
With cold fingers she fumbled her key into the front door lock, then let herself inside and flipped on the vestibule lights with a sigh of relief.
After tapping in her security code on the panel next to the front closet, she bumped the thermostat up to sixty-five and shucked off her boots and coat.
At the sound of something thundering down the curving, open staircase ahead, she grinned and crouched down. “Hey, Badger!”
Twenty pounds of sinuous fur launched out of the shadows and into her arms, nearly knocking her flat. “Pretty kitty,” she crooned, staggering upright with the cat slung over her shoulder. “Weird, but pretty. Have you been a good boy?”
On her way to the kitchen she flipped on the lights in the parlor, where the plants were all still upright in their pots.
And in the library, where she noticed with some relief that the flower arrangement on the coffee table—courtesy of her office nurse, in honor of Jill’s thirty-third birthday last week—was still arranged properly in its vase.
“Wow,” she murmured, pulling the cat away from her shoulder to look into his face. “Apparently you were still tired from the last time I left.”
He gave her a baleful look and wiggled until she put him on the floor, then stalked over to his empty food dish and lashed his plume of a tail, clearly put out by the delay.
She took a can of his favorite cat food from the cupboard and stirred in some dry kitty kibble, filled his water dish—from which he would drink only if it was full—then reopened the fridge and studied the contents.
Once upon a time, there’d been a hearty stock of provisions in there for the dinners she and Grant had prepared together. Now, the thought of cooking just made her tired. Straightening, she foraged in the freezer for a low-fat packaged dinner and tossed the first one she found into the microwave without bothering to read the label.
A chill swept through the kitchen, so heavy with sadness that she spun around, half expecting to see an apparition standing behind her.
No one was there. Nothing stirred, except the languid lashing of Badger’s tail as he chowed down on