In his arms Lydia whimpered and lifted her head. He could see her scanning the kitchen with glassy eyes and he didn’t want any more of this awful house being absorbed into her mind, so he pressed her face into his neck.
—Don’t look, he said. God, don’t look. We gotta go.
But when he reached the mudroom and unlocked the front door, he could feel her faltering in his arms, growing heavy and boneless, and only then did he realize how seriously in shock she was. Her pajama bottoms were wet and one of her feet was bare and felt sculpted of ice. Her face was crusted under a mask of blood and she was chattering so badly he thought her teeth might crack.
—Are you hurt? Lydia?
—i’m freezing.
The little window in the front door showed a gray morning blowing drifts, and even the draft from the jamb made her curl against him. It had been a few minutes since he’d called 911, but the streets were clogged with snow so he knew they wouldn’t be here any time soon.
—We gotta go outside. We’ll find a neighbor and get warm.
—i’m too cold.
He hugged her tight. He could hear the wind ripping down the street and ticking the windows with snow.
—Okay. Okay.
He set her on the little wooden bench by the door and grabbed a coat off one of the mudroom hooks—Dottie’s, nylon, light blue—and made a cape around her shoulders.
—Let’s get you out of here.
—i don’t want to go outside.
She hunched on the bench with her hands in her lap. It occurred to Tomas with a terrible clarity that right now she’d rather climb back beneath the sink than go anywhere else on earth, and though this reality was among the saddest he’d ever faced, it paled next to the horror of a different realization—one that slammed so forcefully into his chest that it nearly knocked him to the floor.
A pair of green mittens was there on the bench, right next to his daughter.
He braced an arm against the mudroom wall.
—what’s the matter?
—Nothing. I’ll grab you a blanket. Then we go.
Over the back of the couch in the living room a gray blanket was tented into the girls’ sleepover fort, but he walked right past it and stood in the mouth of the hall, clenching his jaw, just down from the body pile.
Two days ago, during Thursday’s lunch break, Tomas had crossed the O’Tooles’ frosty lawn, holding the knitted green mittens that Carol had left in the library the afternoon before. Bart’s yellow pickup was nowhere in sight, so he stepped forward and knocked on the door. He was wearing brown slacks and a quilted brown coat, and only when he was standing on the stoop did it occur to him that he should have done more to dress up, but he reassured himself that Dottie wouldn’t mind. Smoke rolled out of the chimney next door, but otherwise there were no signs of people. This was good. Of course he wished he was gripping a fistful of carnations, but the mittens he held were better. They gave his presence here some purpose.
He knocked again, harder this time.
Dottie answered in her bathrobe, a red, silky number with an embroidered dragon crawling up the slope of her left breast. She didn’t say anything, just smoked her cigarette and looked bored. Tomas could feel warmth pouring from the open doorway.
—Are you alone? he said.
—I am.
—I’m here for something.
—I gathered that.
He handed her Carol’s mittens, then unzipped his jacket pocket and began digging around inside. Dottie glanced at the street.
—Slow down, she said. Close the door behind you. It’s freezing out.
Inside, Dottie rested the mittens on the mudroom bench. Tomas followed her into the living room but stopped when they passed the kitchen. In there, next to the sink, a bottle of Coors sat on the counter. A toolbox sat on the floor by the back door.
—Is Bart home?
—Yeah, she said, blowing smoke in his face. He’s gonna take a bath with us.
Tomas coughed into his hand as she strolled down the hall and into the peach-and-blue bathroom. The tub was filling in there, bubbles curling beneath a silver flow.
—Get in here, Mr. Giggles.
Dottie dropped a few bath beads into the water. Tomas stood next to the sink, his hands folded politely over his stomach. On the back of the toilet was a boom box with big round speakers and a cord that had to stretch over the sink to reach the electrical socket. Dottie pushed Play and flutish pop came rocking out. The small space of the bathroom, coupled with a broken treble knob, made the music sound tinny.
—Aqualung! she shouted.
—What?
—Never mind.
She turned it down a bit and let her robe fall to the floor, then slipped into the sudsy water.
Tomas looked at the bath rug. At the smear of blue toothpaste on the wall above the sink. At the steam billowing against the cold bathroom window. Finally he looked at Dottie, allowing his eyes to ingest everything—her wet skin and soft flesh, her puffy nipples barely underwater, her reddish pubic hair swishing gently between her thighs. She was still smoking, but with great languor she reached out her arm and dropped the butt into the toilet and it hissed and made the hot room smell ashy.
—You coming in?
—In?
—We need to be quick.
Her hand softly grabbed him behind the knee. He could feel his slacks getting wet and he could feel, in his jacket pocket, the knot of gauze that he’d brought just for her.
—I have something.
—Is that a bandage? she said when he retrieved it, her face quivering between a smile and a cringe.
Tomas untaped Rose’s ruby ring from its bundle, wishing that he would’ve done this right, with one of those blue velvety boxes with plush satin that resembled a tiny coffin.
—It’s for you, he said.
When Dottie held the ring up to the light, sudsy water slid down her arms. For a second, seeing it in her hand reminded Tomas that he’d recently promised it to Lydia, and he felt a short, inconvenient tug of shame.
—Is this really for me? she said. It’s a flower?
—It’s a rose.
—It looks old. Expensive.
Dottie slid it onto her pinkie but the ring was too big, so she moved it over to her pointer. There was already another ring there, Tomas noticed—silver and turquoise—and a gold braid on her middle finger, as well as bejeweled bands on each ring finger. He’d known from the start that she loved jewelry, but at the moment he felt a bit threatened by how crowded her fingers seemed.
—It’s a little loose, she said, splaying her hand against a pillow of bath suds. But I like it.
—That’s not all, he said, and he couldn’t help but smile as he pulled out the page he’d ripped from the library’s copy of High Country Realtor magazine this morning. The page held a real estate listing for an A-frame cabin on acres of pine a few miles north of Rio Vista. The cabin was isolated from town but close enough to hear the river and feel the shake of passing trains. And it was cheap. Really cheap. A few weeks ago the ad may have slipped past him, but these days the future had settled itself in the center of his thoughts, and in the center of that future was Dottie.
Her hand came dripping out of the suds and lazily grabbed the page.
—The one on the bottom left, he said. The cabin. In Rio Vista.