She waited, listening to the sound of her own breath until it seemed so loud it was as if the forest were breathing with her.
Ruthie tightened the straps on her snowshoes and hurried back down to the house, slipping and sliding, falling several times; she moved as quickly as she could, trying to ignore the sense that she was being chased.
Did she take the truck?” Fawn asked.
Ruthie shook her head. She’d stopped back at the coop after putting the snowshoes away and grabbed some eggs from the nesting boxes. She carefully took them from her pockets and set them on the counter. She was cold, exhausted. Her legs and lungs burned from her snowshoe adventure up the hill.
“Where’s Mom?” Fawn asked, chin quivering, eyes damp and bulging like a frog’s.
“I don’t know,” Ruthie admitted.
“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Fawn asked.
“What, like the police? I’m pretty sure you can’t even report a missing person until they’ve been gone for twenty-four hours. She hasn’t even been gone for twelve hours. And Mom would freak, Fawn. You know that.”
“But … it’s so cold out there. What if she’s hurt?”
“I looked everywhere she could possibly go. There’s just no way Mom’s out there. I promise.”
“So what do we do?” Fawn asked.
“We wait. That’s what she’d want us to do. If she’s not back by tonight, maybe we call the cops then, I’m not sure.” She ruffled her little sister’s hair and gave her best it’s-going-to-be-okay smile. “We’ll be fine.”
Fawn bit her lip, looked like she was about to start crying. “She wouldn’t leave us.”
Ruthie put her arm around her little sister, pulled her into a hug. “I know. We’ll figure it out. After breakfast, we’ll look for clues. People don’t disappear without a trace. It’ll be like playing Nancy Drew.”
“Who?”
“Forget it. Just trust me, okay? We’ll be fine. We’ll find her. I promise.”
Katherine
Sometimes, when Katherine woke in the night, she could almost feel them both there beside her. She imagined the other side of the bed was warm, and if she squinted her eyes just right, the pillow seemed to bear a soft indent where their two heads had lain. She’d roll over in the morning and press the pillow to her face, trying to catch a scent of them.
It wasn’t just shampoo, shaving lotion, and motorcycle grease. It was all of that blended together with something intoxicatingly spicy underneath—the essence of Gary. And Austin, he’d smelled like warm milk and honey, a sweet ambrosia that she could drink up and live on forever. In the soft hours of early morning, before the sun came up, she believed it just might be possible to distill everything a person was down to a scent.
Once she was awake, like now, sitting in the kitchen with a cup of French roast in her hand and still wearing one of Gary’s old T-shirts, she realized how silly the thought was, knew that their being in bed with her was only a dream, a body memory perhaps. Like a person feeling pain in a phantom limb.
How many mornings had they spent like that, Austin tucked between them in fleecy pajamas telling them grand stories about his dreams: “… and then there was a man who had a magic hat and he could pull anything you asked for out of it—marshmallows, swimming pools, even Sparky, Mama!” She’d ruffled his hair, thought it sweet that he could bring their dead dog back in his dreams.
The acidic coffee hit her empty belly with a snarl and a toothy bite. She tapped her ring against the mug. Gary had given it to her two weeks before he died. She turned it around her finger, noticing the indentation it was leaving, as if it were slowly working its way into her skin, becoming a part of her.
She should eat something. She’d skipped a proper dinner last night, settling in at her worktable with a jar of olives and a glass of Shiraz. Since Gary’s death, she’d pretty much been living on canned soup and crackers. The idea of actually going to the trouble of cooking a proper meal for just herself seemed silly, not worth the effort. If she craved something more elaborate, she could go out. Besides, she’d discovered some pretty fancy canned soups: lobster bisque, butternut squash, roasted red pepper and tomato.
But she hadn’t been shopping yet, and the soup-and-cracker cupboard was empty; she’d have to go to the market today. She’d unpacked a few dry goods yesterday—oatmeal, baking soda, flour—but the pots and pans were in boxes. She’d been in the apartment for two days now, and other than setting up her artwork area in the living room and making the bed, she had done little to settle in.