He turned on the ball of his foot to head back the way he’d come. “Chief Stanton. Mrs. White wandered off again, so they’re going to search our woods for her.”
“Again? Why isn’t someone watching her?” Caroline said. “I went to her house yesterday, but she didn’t answer the door.”
Ben reached the dining room and saw that the place mats were all over the floor and the silverware was back in a pile at one end of the table.
“No one’s going to want to sit down and have a meal while one of their friends is missing in the cold. And I can’t blame them; I feel the same way.” Caroline slammed the stack of plates she held onto the table. “What was I thinking, inviting people up here before everything was ready? And in the middle of a blizzard! It’s like a nightmare.” She was actually wringing her hands.
Ben knew that this was the moment to reach across to her, but he was so tired of the endless tiptoeing and glad-handing that had become necessary to their daily life. On Monday he’d call Dr. Hatcher to figure out how to get her to go back into therapy. She’d hate him for a while, but he was out of ideas.
“It’ll be fine,” Ben said. Hosting a dinner party was the last thing he wanted to do, and he wondered how on earth he had become the one to assure her that everything would work out.
“I guess I should get started on the stuffing,” Caroline said.
“It’ll be a great night,” Ben said as she walked out of the room. His words sounded wan, even to himself. “One we’ll make sure they never forget.”
35
Everyone at school was excited for the snow. Everyone except Charlie.
Mrs. Crane drew a diagram with the clouds and the wind and the sun on the board to explain it. Charlie did his best to listen to her, but he could not stop looking out the window, trying to imagine what the forest would look like under a blanket of white. The thought of it tied his insides into a knot.
In the cold, in the dark. All alone. That’s what the Watcher had told him.
A lady Charlie didn’t know came into the classroom. Charlie thought she might be someone’s mom. Sometimes moms came into class if something bad had happened. But then she called Charlie’s name, and Mrs. Crane told him to go with her. This had never happened before, so he moved slowly to make sure that he was doing what they wanted him to. He put his workbook in his backpack and zipped the bag all the way closed before standing up.
The lady had a nice smile and smelled like something baking in the oven. She told Charlie her name and shook his hand, like Dad’s friends from the city used to. He followed her to the building where the teachers went at the end of the day. The doors here were all open. It smelled like coffee, and that reminded Charlie of the name of the lady’s smell. The lady smelled like vanilla.
She took him to a little room with three big green chairs. She told him to sit wherever he wanted. He sat in the one closest to the door. It was strange to sit on the soft chair, because the chairs in the classrooms were wood and metal.
“Charlie, did your dad tell you that I was coming to talk to you?”
Charlie shrugged. He wished the room had windows. Though he couldn’t do anything to stop the weather, he felt it was important to know when the storm began. The storm would bring the kind of cold and dark that the Watcher had spoken about.
“Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing, Charlie,” the lady said. “You’re not in trouble or anything like that. Your teachers say you’ve been doing great in your classes. You’re a very smart boy.” The lady looked at Charlie as if he was supposed to say something, but he hadn’t heard a question. “But I know it must be a big change coming up here from the city. Wow. What a difference! I love New York. Have you been back to visit since moving up here?” she asked.
Charlie shook his head.
“Do you ever miss it?” she asked.
“Maybe,” he said. He’d never been afraid of the cold or dark in the city.
“Can you tell me about your house up here?”
“It’s old,” he said. “The stone it’s made from came from the mountains. The wood in the floors came from the forests. The walls are thick to keep out the cold, but the cold comes in anyway.” It got colder every day.
“Stone houses are very nice,” the lady said. She smiled at him, and Charlie could see himself in the shine of her eyes. “And you’re right, old houses can be very drafty. Must be a really big change from the city. But I bet you get to play outside more, right?”
Charlie nodded.
“What kinds of games do you play out there?”
“I like to run and sit and watch.”
“Oh, me too. What do you see out there?”
“In the summer there are bullfrogs in the lake, and herons, too. There are rabbits and moles and voles and mice and groundhogs in the fields. There are deer in the forest and chipmunks, squirrels, opossums, and raccoons in the trees. There are hawks and coyotes and crows and turkey vultures, too. But some of them only come out when it’s warm. The winter is different.”
“Yes, it’s too cold for a lot of those animals now, isn’t it? And how about your family? How do they like it up here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you’d probably know if they were unhappy, right? How about your little brother?”
“Bub,” Charlie said.
“Bob?” She reached for a red folder on a side table.
“Bub,” Charlie said again.
“That’s an interesting name.”
“It’s not his real name. I called him Bub when he was born, and my dad liked it, so we call him that now.”
“Does Bub seem to like it here?” she asked.
“He’s a baby.”
“I know, but is he a happy baby? Does he cry a lot or cause trouble? I have two little brothers, and they were always causing trouble.”
“He’s nice. When he kisses me it tickles.”
“That sounds very sweet. He sounds like a nice baby.”