Snowblind(47)

A burst of static came from the radio and she jumped, startled, and glanced down, only to find the panel dark. The radio had been silent before and it was silent now because she had turned it off when she'd gotten behind the wheel, not trusting herself to avoid distraction. Frowning, she tapped it on and listened to the music fill the car, an old Dave Matthews song that she had entirely forgotten until it sparked to life in her brain right then, filling her with thoughts of middle-school dances and the arrogant boys who'd always been her fascination. That had been her undoing, really. She loved Jake, but with him there was always the painful undercurrent of their shared anguish. With those arrogant boys, she had always been able to forget, but she had regretted every kiss and fumbling backseat fondle.

Inhaling sharply, she hit the button to silence the radio again. To silence the past.

Tonight, arrogant boys would not do. She needed not to forget but to remember, and she needed to talk to the one person who would understand what she was feeling. If she told Jake about going to her mother's house the night before and finding her with Doug Manning, he would understand the pain in her heart implicitly. He knew her better than she knew herself.

Which is exactly why you moved three thousand miles away.

The thought stung her, but there was truth in it. She had left to escape her mother's indifference, but also to put the past behind her. Put the pain behind her. And as much as she loved him, she could never separate Jake from that past or that pain.

Still, ever since she had decided to return to Coventry she had intended to go to see him. She had seriously entertained the possibility that she was losing her mind, and that was one of the reasons she needed to see Jake. Being in his presence, wrapping her arms around him and getting the rib-crushing hugs that she had only now begun to realize she had desperately missed  …  that would give her perspective. This morning, with the storm in full swing, she had decided to call him and arrange a visit for tomorrow. She'd tried several times and left messages, even sent texts, but received no reply. Miri knew that Jake owed her nothing after the way she had abandoned Coventry, and the way she had abandoned him, her best friend. But it still hurt.
     
 

     

Unable to reach him, she had decided to dare the storm, to roll the dice and hope that the tires on the rental car were up to the task. Only now that she was out driving in the middle of it did she realize that she had never really intended to make the drive out to Jake's farmhouse. That could wait until the storm passed, until the city plows finally got around to clearing the side streets that they had thus far mostly ignored.

Last night she had seen her father's ghost in the middle of a flurry of snow, and when the snow had stopped falling, the ghost had vanished. What now, then, with the blizzard raging around her? Every time her cell phone rang, she had hoped to hear his voice again, if only to erase whatever doubts she had about that first call. But she had not heard from him since.

You saw him, she thought. That's better.

Leaving the hotel, she had stood in the parking lot and let the snow and wind pummel her as she called out to him, her voice stolen away by the storm. She had glanced around the parking lot, hoping to see him, wishing for any sign that he had not left her behind again.

Now she drove carefully, trying to stick to roads that had been recently plowed and sanded, but in most places it was difficult to tell. The snow fell too fast for the city to keep up. Still, she managed to get across the new bridge and, sticking to main roads, found her way to Allie Schapiro's house-the last place she had seen her father alive.

Pulling to the curb, she killed the engine and shut off the headlights and sat in the darkness, watching the snow fall. Bent over the steering wheel, she looked up at the darkened windows of the room that Jake and Isaac had shared as boys. The window to the right drew her attention, though it could not have been any darker. Nothing moved there. The window had nothing at all remarkable about it except for the fact that once upon a time a little boy had fallen from it to his death.

The engine ticked as it cooled. Miri sat there watching the house, watching the snow swirl and eddy and gust with the storm, hoping. A light burned in an upstairs room-maybe Allie's room-and the living-room windows on the first floor held a dim golden glow. The car rocked and the wind whistled around it and after a time the engine ceased its ticking, too cold to make a sound.

Miri sat in the car long enough for her hands to start to hurt from the cold.

"This is stupid," she whispered, her voice seeming somehow louder than it should.

Despite her frustration, she could not bring herself to leave yet. Instead, she popped open the door of the car, a little alarm dinging inside until she plucked the keys from the ignition. She wore leather gloves and a knit cap and a handwoven scarf, but these were slight protection against the ferocity of the storm. It tore at her, hammered the cold into her bones. Stuffing her gloved hands into the pockets of her coat, she stepped into the middle of the street and inhaled deeply of the frigid air. Somewhere far away, a plow scraped pavement. The bell in the library tower rang, the sound echoing strangely in the storm and rising and falling with gusts of wind.

"Dad?" Miri called, looking around, feeling foolish as the cold wind bit at her exposed skin.

She went to the spot where Isaac had died. Memory rushed into her, stealing away her breath. She squeezed her eyes shut but grief waited for her there, inside her head, and so she opened them again to escape the images that still remained-images of little Ike Schapiro broken and twisted and then carted away on a gurney, his face the last thing visible as they zipped him into a body bag.

Miri glanced up at the window from which Isaac had fallen-or been dragged, the way Jake told it.

A face looked back down.

Her mouth opened, a tiny sound of terror escaping her lips as she backed away from the house. Her hands were shaking and her heart thrummed so loudly that it took her a moment to realize that the face looking down upon her belonged to Allie Schapiro. Ms. Schapiro put a hand over her mouth in surprise, but now she slid the window open.

"Miri? Is that really you?"

"Yeah," she called up. "Sorry, Ms. Schapiro. I didn't mean to scare you."

"What are you doing out in this weather?" she asked, but with an edge to her voice that very few people would have understood. What she meant was, What are you doing out in this storm when you know what can happen?

"It's hard to explain," Miri said, glancing back at her car.

"You wait right there, then," Allie said. "You might as well tell me over coffee."

"That sounds-" Miri started to say, but Allie had already slid the window shut.

Miri smiled to herself. She had always liked Allie, even back when the woman had just been Ms. Schapiro, her teacher, instead of her father's girlfriend. During that brief time when she'd thought that they might all be a family, she had fantasized about what it might be like, and worried about what it might mean for her love for Jake.

Little-kid stuff, she thought. Puppy love.

She spared one more glance at the snow-packed road beneath her feet, remembering Isaac. Her father had gone for help, rushing off to chase the distant sound of a plow-quite like the scrape and roar she could still hear, even now.

Miri turned to look off in the direction her father had gone that night, when she'd watched him vanish into the storm.

And he was there. Translucent, unaffected by the snow and the wind, the storm passing through him as if he weren't there at all. But he was.

Her heart lit up. She had expected to be afraid or disoriented. Instead she felt nothing but joy, so powerful that she began to weep tears that felt warm on her cheeks.

"Daddy," she said, and she started toward him.

Her father's ghost smiled, his eyes even kinder than she remembered. He reached out a hand as if he might touch her, but when she went to take it her fingers passed right through him.

"I'm sorry," the ghost said. "I can't … "

A scream cut him off, then stopped abruptly, echoing in the storm. Miri spun just in time to see Allie faint dead away, tumbling headfirst out her front door and into the snow.

Miri took a step toward her and then halted, remembering the way the ghost had vanished the night before. She spun around, her heart aching at the thought of him going away again, but this time the ghost remained.

"It's all right," her late father said. "Go to her. There are things you both should know."





The key was not to get greedy. Doug had reminded Franco and Baxter of that half-a-dozen times leading up to today and he knew they were sick of hearing it. Fortunately, it seemed they had been listening. Baxter had been a thief for most of his life and Franco had taken to it easily. Doug had taken more convincing and he had felt bad after each burglary, especially the night they had stolen a Bose stereo system. Yes, the sound was amazing and it was worth a mint, but at the end of the day it was just a stereo. Their shopping list was supposed to be simpler than that-jewelry, cash, credit cards, and anything kept in a safe that looked valuable. He dreamed of finding a stack of old bearer bonds, the kind of thing that people stole in movies from the seventies.

In the past they had taken art and small antiques when those things were given a special display in the house, but two-thirds of that stuff had turned out not to be worth the hassle. Since none of them was an expert and because they had four houses they wanted to hit during a single storm and they could steal only what they could transport by snowmobile, they had decided to forgo anything about which they were uncertain.