She passed dormant bulbs. Witch’s hair hung from gables alongside dripping icicles caving to daybreak, and braids of poison oak targeted the Macauley house like it knew it would not be wrenched free. Three weeks into three months as winter undressed Monta Clare, tipping its way down the bare hillside, the naked arms of trees knitting a white sky without break.
Saint’s grandmother bought her a shearling jacket she saw in the window of a Goodwill store, leaving her bus idling outside, the patrons moaning loud.
The collar was fur lined and the thing so heavy Saint struggled to put it on, but she no longer much cared what she looked like, no longer much cared when the other kids laughed at her, or said her grandmother was a bus-driving dyke. She pulled her hat down to the slaughter of winds and spent a moment looking at the rot of lattice that had once been wrapped with roses of different names and colors.
Saint did not go inside the Macauley house anymore. She had heard from her grandmother that Kim, the landlord, had been quietly trying to reclaim the house. Ivy Macauley no longer paid the rent, and, despite the promise of boom and regeneration and economic prosperity, near everyone was feeling the acute pinch of what would be that longest winter.
At the top window between drapes ruffled at one corner and yellowed from forgotten sun she saw the shape of Ivy Macauley. Skeletal, her body no more than a show of surrender. There had been the softest talk of another service. Chief Nix had said no; the old priest had stood in the doorway and clutched his book and looked around at the ringing phones and badges and holsters draped over chairs like he could not believe God’s world needed such ardent protection.
Saint raised a hand to Ivy, who came down the stairs and opened the door.
She wore shorts and a vest, and her skin was the blue gray of the dying.
“You’re too young for this,” Ivy slurred.
And Saint did not say that so too was Patch.
Saint walked out to the woodland and tried to be mindful, to not trace the white canvas for errant tells, to notice the high sun melting a little of the season, the droplets that shivered down pines.
She found the girl sitting on hard ground staring at the water.
“They’re going on,” Misty said.
Saint watched a sandpiper test the water, then soar high and away.
“You think he’s dead?” Misty said, hands deep in her pockets, her legs neatly crossed, her face drawn with the worry. Saint knew there was not always an exact moment when children turned to adults. For the lucky ones it was a long, hard-earned acceptance of responsibility and opportunity. But for her, and for Misty, the divide had been curt and fatal.
“Some people think he is,” Misty said, like her words were not reaching Saint. “He’s just a kid, like us. The other girls talk about boys, and movies and hair and…fuck. Goddamn motherfucking fuck.”
Saint sat on the frozen ground beside her.
“What if he’s cold? What if he’s someplace and he’s cold and he doesn’t have a coat or gloves?” Misty said.
Saint looked at the branches, her eyes not meeting the girl’s because she didn’t want her to see it, that she had no right to worry about Patch because he did not belong to her like the rest did. She knew nothing about him.
“I keep trying to remember something. Even though my parents…they pay someone to make me forget.” Saint watched Misty’s tears. “Tell me something about him.”
For a long time Saint was quiet. And then she talked. And she forget she was not alone, and allowed herself to be carried on the cushion of that memory.