Ben tried to immerse himself in his book. Sometimes, this part of his day filled him with dread, but today he was thankful for the distraction. He’d reached the book’s second part. The Revolution had begun, the snows had fallen, and he had finished the chapters that played through his mind the night before: the action-filled scenes of the Iroquois attack. Now he was up to the difficult middle pages: the morning after the winter morning that changed everything.
Ben had set the stage and introduced the players in the first part of the book. Henry, the strict and religious patriarch. Elizabeth, the kindhearted but weak-willed daughter. He’d also set out some of the backstory of how the Swann family first found themselves in the house between the mountains. This was all essential to understanding their actions during the long disaster of the Winter Siege.
What, exactly, that long disaster entailed had somewhat eluded Ben. He knew that there would be death and that there would be terrible cold and even more-terrible hunger. But from the accounts Ben had heard at the Preservation Society, when the snows finally melted, the Iroquois were simply gone. Not much of a climax. And difficult as that winter must have been for the surviving townspeople, it did not seem quite so significant that it would still play such a part in their lives. The valley’s entire political and economic structure appeared to be informed by the events of the winter of 1777, and Ben could still not make sense of why.
This was why the words had not been working for him. He typed himself in circles as the sun crested the horizon. After a time, creaks sounded from the floors above. When he reached for his coffee to find it empty, the mug ice cold, he discovered that hours had passed.
He put on some more coffee and made waffles. Bub liked waffles.
“You didn’t come back to bed,” Caroline said from the doorway. Bub writhed in her arms.
“I couldn’t find Hudson,” Ben said. “I thought if I stayed in the kitchen, I’d be able to hear him paw at the door.”
“He spent the night out there?” Caroline asked. She put Bub in his high chair. “What are you going to do?” The alarm on Caroline’s face somehow made it more real to Ben. Hudson was supposed to be here right now, curled at his feet.
“I don’t know.” He paused to let the lump in his throat recede. He supposed he could search the forest tree by tree, but Hudson knew how to get back to the Crofts. Beagles did not get lost. And if he’d hurt himself, Ben thought, he’d still be able to howl or bark. Yet the forest’s silence had been unyielding. He refilled his mug with coffee. He moved to fill Caroline’s, but she stopped him.
“Mrs. White gave me a new batch of tea that I wanted to try.” She sighed as she filled up an infuser with the latest concoction. “I was thinking I’d bring her some leftovers today. Last night must have been so frightening for her. I hope it’s not a sign of things to come.”
“Tell her I said hi,” Ben said. It felt like a decade had passed since he’d encountered Mrs. White in the middle of the road, but it was good to change the subject.
“I got an e-mail. The furniture’s coming today,” she said.
“Great.” He wondered what beagles might eat in the wild.
“I’m going to a fabric store in Gracefield,” Caroline said. “But I should be back in time. If not, I’ll tell you.”
“I’m meeting with Lisbeth Goode at around eleven.” The night before, Ben had made an appointment to look at her archives of the Swannhaven Dispatch. He hoped that these papers might shake something loose and get him back on track with his book. “And I need to pick up Charlie at three.”
“The big table’s supposed to be in this shipment, so I thought next Friday would be a good day for that dinner with the villagers.”
“That soon? I thought maybe we could do it after Christmas.” This morning, the idea of playing host filled Ben with dread.
“Christmas is the perfect excuse for a dinner party. And we may as well get it over with.”
“If you don’t want them to come over, then why invite them?” He didn’t understand what drove Caroline to continuously add stressful new items to her list of tasks. Between the house and the holidays, taking on anything else seemed like a self-inflicted wound.
“The only thing that matters is the inn, Ben. We need them to support it. Now, we were going to invite the Swannhaven Trust plus the Bishops?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. He was sure he could count on Lisbeth Goode, the Stantons, and the Bishops coming, but he didn’t know about the others. Walter Harp was always polite enough, but Ben had never gotten the impression that Harp had warmed to him. They would love for Mrs. White to come, but they’d have to see how she was doing. And Roger Armfield always seemed to be flustered to the point of incoherence around him—then again, for all Ben knew the man was like that all the time.
“What about Father Cal? Having another non-villager would be nice.”
“I’ll ask him.”
Bub threw a waffle slicked with syrup at Ben. It left tendrils of stickiness clinging to his sweater when he peeled it off, but all Ben could muster was a sigh. He could feel Caroline staring at him.
“If we’re both going out, you should make sure that Jake knows about Hudson so he can keep an eye out,” she said.
“What about Hudson?” Charlie asked. Ben hadn’t heard him come down the stairs. He moved as quietly as a ghost, and this morning he looked as pale.
“Hudson ran out last night and didn’t come back,” Caroline said. “You’re late, but I’ll fix a waffle for the drive to school, okay?”
“He went into the forest?” Charlie asked.
“I’ll cut up half a grapefruit, too,” Caroline said. “You need your fruit.”
“He was there all night?” Charlie asked.
“He ran into the forest right after you went inside,” Ben said. “I looked for him but couldn’t find him.” There was much he wanted to say about last night’s excursion, but right now he didn’t have the energy.
“You went into the forest?” Charlie asked. His face was taut: an expression that Ben couldn’t read.
“I called from the edge of the trees,” Ben said. “Why?”