Jonah hung up the phone, tugged on his barn boots, cinched his bathrobe belt tight, and chased after Lucinda.
Lucinda had fled across One Dollar Bridge and was almost out of sight where the road began a steep climb toward the Gore, toward paper company wilderness, and the old talcum mines.
Running, Jonah cried out after her.
Lucinda charged onward, clumsy in her boots but faster than Jonah, who was winded, what scant energy he had left from his days of grief flagging rapidly.
Up ahead, Lucinda dodged off the road, into the woods. With the snow, however, there was no way for her to escape. Jonah could easily track her.
He trudged up and up the road and found her tracks and began to follow them into the woods.
The woods were dark and still beneath the ancient hemlock and spruce. But Jonah had been wrong. Tracking Lucinda would not be easy.
Snow was scarce beneath the old conifers, most of it heaped on the massive bows above him. It took Jonah a while to find Lucinda’s slight tracks in the skiff of snow, and he was slowed by having to go around a labyrinth of blowdowns that the girl was small enough to pick her way through and out the other side. Up and up she climbed, like a nimble cat.
Yet for Jonah, the going was slow, arduous, and the cold air needled his lungs.
He tracked her for what seemed an hour, the frigid air stinging his bare skin beneath his robe. Lucinda’s tracks were angling toward the old mine shafts and he feared for her, and for himself.
He stopped now and again to hear nothing save the wheeze of his lungs. Several times, he lost her trail and had to backtrack. Gasping, he rested against a hemlock. He considered heading back, getting Maurice. But he’d gone too deep into the woods, and pushed on.
Up ahead, she cried out.
Jonah tried to pick up his pace.
A snowshoe hare sprang from beneath a young fir and loped away in a whirl of snow.
Jonah pitched forward, the snow deeper, Lucinda’s tracks easier to follow.
She cried out again.
She was close. Very close.
He searched the woods, tracked her prints in the snow until they brought him to a snarl of impenetrable branches.
He started to go around when she called out again.
She was in among the tangle.
Beneath it.
Jesus.
“Here,” she whimpered.
Jonah yanked away brush to reveal a pit in the earth.
He knelt and held his hand down for her.
“I’m okay. Snow crashed down my stupid neck and I screamed,” she said. “It’s cold! This is where we were when we saw him.”
“Come out of there,” he said.
The look on her face grew guarded. “You come down, I’ll show you. He was in the bushes. But . . . It’s so different in the snow. Nothing looks the same. It’s like another world.”
“Sally, please. Come on out of there. Okay. Stop this.”
“I’m not Sally, Mr. B., I’m Lucinda.”
“I know. I know.”
The wind kicked up and snow cascaded from the branches onto Lucinda’s face. She cried out, wiping at snow and spitting. She began to sob and held up her hand to him.
Jonah reached down and helped her out, then collapsed beside the pit.
Lucinda sat down beside him, sniffling. He slung his arm around her, drew her close. He shivered, his bathrobe damp from melting snow, his skin cold, nearly numb. What could he do to help this poor girl? What could he say to salve her wounded heart when he could barely get out of bed or bring himself to eat more than bread that had gone stale? When would any of this end?
Lucinda huddled closer. “I thought for sure—” She sniffled. “I’m so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid,” Jonah said. “You’re sad.” Sad and desperate, like me. Like all of us. Desperate to return to the lives we had.
“Is she ever coming home?” Lucinda wiped her nose on her coat sleeve.
“I don’t know. I hope so,” Jonah said, peering around the dim woods.
“Why did this happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not fair.”
“No. It’s not. It’s cruel.”
He pulled her tighter to him.
“What are we gonna do without her, Mr. B.?”
“I wish I knew.”
She peeked up at him. “I’m never going to give up. I’ll look forever and I will never ever stop. And never ever forget her. Ever.”
“Of course not.” He wiped a tear from her cheek. He needed to shuck off the negative thoughts, for her sake. “Hey. Enough doom and gloom. She could be back at the house right now while we’re sitting here being stupid and mopey, right?”
“You really think so?” Lucinda chirped.
“Why not?” he said, and believed it for a heartbeat before despair returned.
She hugged him just as terrible pain exploded at the base of his neck and he collapsed on his back.
He looked up just in time to take a fist to his face.