Dad eased up on the gas. They slowed, pulled into line behind a big pickup truck that belonged to Clyde Harlan, and drove up the mountain.
When they reached a clearing, Leni saw a bunch of snow machines (Leni still thought of them as snowmobiles but no one called them that up here) parked in an uneven line. They belonged to the residents who lived in the bush, without roads to their homesteads. All of them had their lights on and their engines running. Falling snow braided through the light beams and gave it all an eerie, otherworldly look.
Dad parked alongside a snow machine. Leni followed her parents out into the falling snow and howling wind, into the kind of cold that burrowed deep. They saw Mad Earl and Thelma and made their way over to their friends.
“What’s up?” Dad shouted to be heard above the wind.
Before Mad Earl or Thelma could answer, Leni heard the high-pitched wail of a whistle being blown.
A man in a heavy blue insulated parka and pants stepped forward. A wide-brimmed hat identified him as a policeman. “I’m Curt Ward. Thanks for coming. Geneva and Matthew Walker are missing. They were supposed to arrive at their hunting cabin an hour ago. This is their usual route. If they’re lost or hurt, we should find them between here and the cabin.
Leni didn’t realize she’d cried out until she felt her mother’s reassuring touch.
Matthew.
She looked up at her mother. “He’ll freeze out here,” she said. “It will be night soon.”
Before Mama could answer, Officer Ward said, “Space yourselves about twenty feet apart.”
He began handing out flashlights.
Leni turned her flashlight on, stared out at the lane of snow-covered ground in front of her. The whole world spiraled down to a single strip of land. She saw it in layers—bumpy white snow-covered ground, snow-filled air, white trees pointing up to a gray sky.
Where are you, Matthew?
She moved slowly, doggedly forward, distantly aware of other searchers, other lights. She heard dogs barking and voices raised; searchlights crisscrossed each other. Time passed in a weird, surreal way—in light diminishing and breaths exhaled.
Leni saw animal tracks, a pile of bones mixed with fresh blood, fallen spruce needles. Wind had sculpted the snow into peaks and swirls with glazed and hardened icy tips. Tree wells were black with debris, made by animals into makeshift dens that gave them a place to sleep out of the wind.
The trees around her thickened. The temperature dropped suddenly; she felt a rush of cold as day gave way to night. It stopped snowing. Wind pushed the clouds away and left in their stead a navy-blue sky awash in swirls of starlight. A gibbous moon shone down, its light bright on the snow. Ambient silver light set the world aglow.
She saw something. Arms. Reaching up from the snow, thin fingers splayed out, frozen. She lunged forward through the deep snow, said, “I’m coming, Matthew,” through wheezing, painful breaths, her light bobbing up and down in front of her.
Antlers. A full set, shed by a bull moose. Or maybe beneath this snow lay the bones left by a poacher. Like so many sins, the snow covered it all. The truth wouldn’t be revealed until spring. If ever.
The wind picked up, banged through the trees, sent branches flying.
She trudged forward, one light amid dozens spread out through the glowing blue-white-black forest, pinpricks of yellow searching, searching … she heard Mr. Walker’s voice call out, yelling Matthew’s name so often he started to sound hoarse.
“There! Up ahead!” someone yelled.
And Mr. Walker yelled back, “I see him.”
Leni plunged forward, trying to run through the deep snow.
Up ahead, she saw a shadowy lump … a person … kneeling by the side of a frozen river in the moonlight, head bowed forward.
Leni shoved through the crowd, elbowed her way to the front just as Mr. Walker squatted beside his son. “Mattie?” he shouted to be heard, laid a gloved hand on his son’s back. “I’m here. I’m here. Where’s your mom?”
Matthew’s head slowly turned. His face was starkly white, his lips were chapped. His green eyes seemed to have lost their hue, taken color from the ice around him. The ice beneath him glowed with moonlight. He was shaking uncontrollably. “She’s gone,” he croaked, his voice raw. “Fell.”
Mr. Walker hauled his son to his feet. Twice Matthew almost collapsed, but his dad held him upright.
Leni heard people talking in snippets.
“… fell through the ice…”
“… should know better…”
“… Jesus…”
“Come on,” Officer Ward said. “Let ’em through. We need to get this kid warmed up.”
NINE
Winter had claimed one of them; one who had been born here, who knew how to survive.
Leni couldn’t stop thinking about that, worrying about it. If Geneva Walker—Gen, Genny, the Generator, I answer to anything—could be lost so easily, no one was safe.
“My God,” Thelma said as they walked solemnly back to their vehicles. “Genny didn’t make mistakes on the ice.”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Large Marge said, her dark face crumpled with grief.
Natalie Watkins nodded solemnly. “I’ve crossed that river a dozen times this month. Jesus. How could she fall through this time of year?”
Leni was listening and not listening. All she could think about was Matthew and what he must be going through now. He’d seen his mother fall through the ice and die.
How could you get over a thing like that? Every time Matthew closed his eyes, wouldn’t he see it again? Wouldn’t he wake screaming from nightmares for the rest of his life? How could she help him?
Back at home, shivering with cold and a new fear (you could lose your parents or your life on a normal Sunday, just out walking in the snow … gone), she wrote him a series of letters, each one of which she tore up because it wasn’t right.
She was still trying to compose the perfect letter two days later, when the town came together for Geneva’s funeral.
On this freezing cold afternoon, dozens of vehicles were in town, parked wherever they could, on roadsides, in vacant lots. One was practically in the middle of the street. Leni had never seen so many trucks and snow machines in town at one time. All of the businesses were closed, even the Kicking Moose Saloon. Kaneq was hunkered down for winter, glazed in snow and ice, illuminated by the ambient glow of daylight.
The world could tumble, change radically in two days, with just one less person living in it.
They parked on Alpine Street and got out of the bus. She heard the whining drone of a generator’s motor, grumbling loudly, powering the lights in the church on the hill.
Single file, they trudged up the hill. Light filled the dusty windows of the old church; smoke puffed up from the chimney.
At the closed door, Leni paused just long enough to peel the fur-trimmed hood back from her face. She’d seen this church on every trip to town, but she’d never been inside.
The interior was smaller than it looked from the outside, with chipped white plank walls and a pine floor. There were no pews; people filled the space from side to side. A man dressed in camouflage snow pants and a fur coat stood up front, his face practically hidden by a mustache, beard, and muttonchops.
Everyone Leni had ever met in Kaneq was here. She saw Large Marge, standing between Mr. Rhodes and Natalie; the whole Harlan family was here, squished in close to one another. Even Crazy Pete was here, with his goose settled on his hip.
But it was the front row that held her attention. Mr. Walker stood beside a beautiful blond girl who must be Alyeska, home from college, and alongside Walker relatives Leni hadn’t met. Off to their right, standing together with them and yet somehow alone, was Matthew. Calhoun Malvey, Geneva’s boyfriend, kept shifting his weight, moving from foot to foot, as if he didn’t know what to do. His eyes were red-rimmed.