Jonah awoke, jarred awake, as if from a Van Winklean sleep.
Dawn bled through the windows.
He pressed his face into his palms and moaned, the sound an ancient wind conjured from deep within him. He stood, unsteady, the room aglow in dawn’s slow golden light, the sun’s mindless warmth creeping along the floor.
Dust motes turned in the light.
He shambled to the doorway to the back room. A spider skittered across his boot then squeezed itself into a crack in the floor.
Jonah stepped into the room and lifted the trunk lid.
Empty.
Fool.
He shut the lid on the empty trunk.
No. Not empty. Not quite. Something caught his eye. He lifted the lid again. A tiny scrap of paper lay at the bottom. Blank.
No, not tiny. Folded small.
He bent and picked it, unfolded it.
Not blank.
A drawing. Two stick figures. A man and a girl. Sitting on a porch swing.
Had she been here after all? His mind spun with confusion; the fever from the spider bite left his memory opaque. He slipped the drawing in his pocket and went to the window.
It was closed.
No.
Not quite.
It was open, a hair, the width of knife blade. A slice of frigid air leaked into the room.
On the floor at his feet, a droplet of water. Melted snow.
“No.” He backed away from the window, his heels striking the trunk.
No. If she were out in the cold all this time. If she’d fled. Again. Fled him. Was alone again. She’d die. Was already dead.
He rushed out of the room and stumbled out onto the porch, looking about wildly, shouting, “Sally!”
He stepped off the porch, the snow a blinding white with the rising sun shattering off of it, trudged around the side of the cabin.
A ruffed grouse busted from beneath a stunted spruce with a spray of fresh snow, startling him.
He continued around the back of the cabin.
Virgin snow. Not a mouse track upon it.
He circled the cabin but saw no tracks.
Had the falling snow covered her tracks? How would he ever find her if she didn’t answer his call?
“Sally!”
He’d failed her.
Again.
He traipsed into the woods, his aching legs leaden. Snow cascaded from limbs. He fell, cold snow melting at the back of his hot neck. He cried out for her.
No answer came.
Panting, he pulled himself up, jacket stuck to his back with sweat. He was too lame, too old, and the snow too deep for him to tramp any farther so blindly. He worked his way back to the cabin. Went into the back room to reassess. The cold air leaked under the window, but the droplets of water could have come from snow melted from Lucinda’s boots.
He went back out and stood on the porch, listening.
If she’d existed, she was gone now and he’d never find her. She was lost, and a primal grief crowded him. For a moment, standing there, he smelled her, the milky fragrance of her breath. Then a breeze caught her scent and carried it away.
If it had ever been there at all.
The door creaked behind him.
His heart stopped. He dared not move.
The door creaked again.
It was her. She’d hidden elsewhere in the cabin. Somehow.
The door creaked.
By degrees, he turned to see—
The door swaying in the wind. The emptiness within him opened wider.
Home, she’d said.
He sniffed at his shirt collar but no hint of her remained.
There was nothing left to prove she’d ever been there at all.