The conversation was being carried out in a cipher that Ben didn’t understand. He imagined getting into bed and letting the world carry on without him.
“I think JoJo Tanner took my son,” Ben said. His voice came out in little more than a whisper, but Lisbeth heard him fine.
“Bill Stanton told me,” Lisbeth said. “I’m sorry.”
“I think Bub is still in the forest somewhere. I can’t leave here without him.” Ben felt his throat tightening, but he refused to give in. “After that, we’ll go back to the city.”
Lisbeth looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “You would leave?”
He could not read the expression on her face.
“Ben, we’ve told you about our village,” she said. “Swannhaven is special. You see that, don’t you? How else could we have survived that terrible winter so long ago? Times can be hard here, but they can be good again, too. We need only survive the days that seem the darkest. It will be hard; it wouldn’t count for anything if it weren’t. A price has to be paid. Some need to pay more than others, it’s true. But we’re strong together. You’ve seen that from the meetings, haven’t you? How we all work together to put food on everyone’s table? I hoped that you would see that. It’s the same with every necessity. We do not live on bread alone. Sometimes we need more than eggs and corn and heat to make it to tomorrow. But if we stick together, everything will be all right. We tried so hard to help you understand,” she said. “Tell me that you do.”
“We don’t belong here,” Ben said. He shook his head. “This isn’t the place for us. I understand that much.”
Lisbeth studied him with sad eyes.
“That’s not it at all, sugar.” She shook her head and looked at the ground. When she finally raised it again, he saw little trace of the kindly woman who’d once cajoled him into eating two slices of pie. “You do belong here. You always have.”
45
The day crept toward dusk, and the wind whipped dark clouds through the sky. But even a blizzard wouldn’t get in the way of Ben looking for the man by the lake. He knew the likelihood of seeing him was slim, but it was all he had to hold on to.
Snow was falling heavily by the time Father Cal arrived. Ben answered the door with his coat in hand. The priest was a shock of black against a field of white.
“Could you help Charlie get packed?” Ben asked. He slid a hat over his head. “Just a few days’ worth of clothes. He can get whatever else he needs in the city.” He stepped outside, and it was all he could do to keep himself from sprinting from the Crofts for the lake. The man might be there right now.
“You’re leaving?”
“My brother will be here tomorrow, and he’ll drive Charlie back to the city. Caroline’s resting upstairs.” Ben had found her when he returned from his encounter with Lisbeth; she’d passed out on the stairs, utterly exhausted, the ax still in her hands. He’d carried her to their bedroom, where she slept like the dead. He’d tried to pull off her bloody gloves, but her torn hands had scabbed them fast to her skin.
“Caroline and I are leaving, too, but only for Exton.” He’d decided this on his walk back from the ruined chapel. This would be their last night here. “We can’t go back downstate until Bub is found, but we can’t stay here.”
“But, Ben, why would you leave the Crofts?” Cal asked.
He didn’t know how to explain his fears to Cal, because he couldn’t yet articulate them to himself.
“I have to go.” Now that the priest was here, the idea of delaying his search for even one more moment made him want to tear his own face off.
“Will your brother be able to get up here tomorrow? We’re supposed to get two feet.”
“I don’t know.” Ben shook his head. He couldn’t consider that possibility right now. “But I have go. I shouldn’t be more than two hours.”
“Two hours? There’s no way you can stay out there that long. The storm will kill you.”
“I need to try everything I can think of.” Ben struck out in to the frozen world and he knew the priest wouldn’t try to stop him. Cal dealt in the coin of the human condition. Tragedies might be bursts of misery, but regret was forever.
—
Ben seemed to walk against the wind no matter which direction he moved, but he realized how cold it was only after he’d settled himself into Charlie’s blind. When he stopped moving, he felt the cold begin to creep past his clothes and into his skin. Soon it had dug into his bones. His toes became numb in his boots.
Ben flexed his muscles to keep his blood circulating. He kept his eyes on the lake and watched the storm unfurl around him. The great heads of clouds that had billowed over the horizon in the afternoon were lost in the blur of snow. He could see the near edge of the lake clearly, but there was no trace of the far shore. The footprints he’d left on his way to the tree line were already gone.
He knew that men who fell asleep in the snow did not wake up, but he was so tired. He let himself lay his head against his arm as he watched for the man. He could feel the beat of his heart in his ears. After a while, Ben began to feel like a tree or a rock or another immobile piece of the forest.
Through the snow, the trees swayed. The wind howled and the land turned indigo in the dying light. Eddies of snow swirled into faces against the lake’s frozen outline.
He strained to focus his attention. He tried to watch for the man, and he tried to catch what the wind was saying. He let himself close his eyes. He could hear the beat of his heart keep time with the wind as it sounded through the planks beneath him. He could hear it in his ears and feel it ebb into the tree where he lay and into the ground in which his tree was rooted and into the mountains against which the ground was nestled.
A hand tapped his leg, but he shook it off.