To Andrew, the two-and-a-half-hour train ride from River Falls to Penn Station seemed like an eternity. The train was packed with holiday travelers, weary parents letting their sugar-rushed kids run rampant from one car to another. Andrew spent the first hour trying in vain to reach Beth by phone until his cell died somewhere in western New Jersey.
When the doors opened at Penn Station, the train was half an hour late. Andrew bolted like a caged animal. He dodged and darted his way through the mob and bounded up the exit stairs to 34th Street. It was already nearly dark; the steady snow of the arriving storm fell on a city glowing with red and green and all things Christmas. The massive tree of lights outside Macy’s cast an amber glow on the hundreds of faces waiting in line for one last shot on Santa’s lap.
Andrew darted out into the street and started wildly flagging passing cabs. Occupied. Out of service. Suddenly, he saw one pull up in front of Macy’s. As a family of four piled out of the backseat, Andrew made a dash for it, barely outrunning a skateboard-toting teenage boy in a hoodie sweatshirt. Andrew jumped in back and closed the door.
“Carnegie Hill. And please hurry!”
But there was no hurrying on this snowy Christmas Eve in New York City. The unusually heavy holiday traffic crawled along at a snail’s pace, and not even a skilled New York cabbie could find an opening.
At 52nd and Broadway, Andrew decided he’d had enough. He tossed a crumpled twenty in the front seat and jumped out, intercepting an empty bike taxi that was easily darting in and around the traffic logjam, heading in the opposite direction.
Andrew darted in front of the bicyclist, cutting him off. “Hey, buddy! I need to go to Carnegie Hill!”
The driver maneuvered around him, kept pedaling. “Not with me, you ain’t,” he said.
“How about for a hundred bucks?” The driver slammed on his brakes.
Fifteen minutes later and a hundred dollars lighter, Andrew stood at the front door of his apartment building. He put his old key in the lock without a second thought. Click. It turned with no problem. He shoved open the door and hurried inside.
“Beth!” Andrew raced through the apartment room to room. “Beth?”
Empty. In the bedroom, his eyes lighted on the digital clock on the bedside table: 4:58 p.m.
Seven hours to go.
The winter storm arrived full force as Andrew desperately searched their Upper East Side neighborhood. He checked every spot he could think of where Beth might be: the flower shop, the bookstore, the corner grocer. Nobody had seen her, and most merchants were preparing to close up shop and head home to their families. Where would Beth go? What would she be doing? Andrew’s mind tripped over itself as he tried to pluck a single right idea out of his rush of frantic thoughts.
He looked up into the falling snow. “Beth. Where are you?”
All of a sudden he saw her, just across the street. She stood at a storefront window, watching an electric train putter around a winding train track.
Andrew heaved a sigh of relief. He walked across the street and gently touched her on the shoulder. “Beth?”
Startled, she turned to him. Not Beth. The young woman with Beth’s height and hair gave him an annoyed look and hurried on up the sidewalk.
“So sorry,” Andrew said. “I thought you were . . .”
The woman didn’t look back to acknowledge his awkward apology—she just kept going and disappeared around the corner.
Andrew’s heart sank. The clock was ticking ever closer to zero hour, and his wife was lost somewhere in a snowy white sea of eight million souls. Again he looked up at the sky. He closed his eyes and let the wet snow melt against his skin.
“Show me the way,” he said. “Help me find my wife.” He waited for an answer, a voice from the heavens, a bolt of lightning, any kind of sign.
Nothing.
The drone of a city bus barreling up the street shattered the stillness of the moment. On its side was an enormous poster of Santa Claus ice-skating beneath the tree at Rockefeller Center, his back leg splayed out behind him.
Andrew felt a rush of hope. He knew where to find Beth.