“Ellen? You okay?” I said as I waved away some white fog.
The frantic woman looked up from the dough she’d been kneading. She was covered in flour, her ponytail a nest of flyaways.
“Oh, thank God.” She stood up straight. “I … oh, thank God.”
She wiped her hands on her jeans and came around the table. She pulled me into a tight hug.
“Hey.” I patted her back uncertainly. “What’s wrong?”
“I was afraid of what I would do. I was afraid to be alone.” She was on the verge of sobbing.
I was not equipped for this moment. I held the hug for a few more seconds and then pulled back, taking hold of her arms.
“You’re okay,” I said with a confident smile. “Look, you did it. You were alone and you didn’t do anything harmful.”
She laughed, a strangled sound. “That’s only because I had the bread to bake. I think my arms will be sore for weeks.”
I smiled again, thinking Viola must have known what she was doing by suggesting Ellen cook and bake. “That’s how you do it. One day, one sore muscle at a time. There’s always something better to do than drugs. If you have to make thousands of loaves, then so be it.”
She blinked, her eyes still searching for an answer, something that would be easier than the obvious one of not using anymore.
“All right.” I patted her arms. “Where are you with the bread? Knitting starts in an hour. What do we need—I mean knead, ha-ha—to do before we go?”
She blinked uncertainly again, and I was sure I saw flour puff from her eyelashes. And then she smiled. It was brief but genuine.
“Yes, yes, we can do that. I just have to get this loaf in the oven, and I won’t start any others,” she said.
She had baked five loaves, and I managed to eat almost a whole one by myself as we cleaned. Butter, cinnamon, peanut butter, jam. Apparently, I had to prove to myself that all the toppings tasted good in combination with the homemade bread. They did, and the bread was also delicious by itself.
“You’re going to be rich,” I said after I chewed my last bite—my last bite for now, at least.
“Only if you don’t eat the product first,” she said.
I laughed, but didn’t think she was joking.
I think both Ellen and I saw how this temporary acquaintanceship could be beneficial. Ellen needed someone she could mostly trust to talk to who wasn’t Viola, the woman in charge of her ultimate freedom, and I always needed someone to bake me homemade bread—and keep my secret, of course.
Viola still wasn’t back by the time we left. Another inch or so of snow had accumulated while we’d been cleaning and eating. We were getting close to a foot of new accumulation.
I tried to reach Viola’s cell phone for about the twentieth time, but there was no answer. I left another message telling her I was back from my explorations and Ellen and I were going to the knitting class.
On a whim, I also tried to call Gril and Donner. They didn’t answer, either. I didn’t think I’d told any of them my new burner phone number, though; they wouldn’t know it was me just by the number.
I wasn’t sure whether to be worried or not, but I was. Would they really spend that much time in Brayn? Had Viola run into trouble traveling there on her own?
Or was it simply that no one’s phones were in a pocket of service, which was the way things often were? Lane had told me it was better to be safe and let people worry than risk danger. Had everyone gotten stuck in Brayn?
I grabbed one more piece of bread on the way out the door.
The community center had once again transformed. The mats we used for the self-defense class were stored away and chairs had been set out in a comfortable circle. As the class went on, sometimes some people would separate themselves from the others, but there weren’t enough attendees tonight to think that smaller groups would break off. Serena was pleased to see a new participant, and Ellen was an eager learner.
In addition to the three of us, Benny from the bar was there. So were Larrie and her daughter, Janell. None of the guys joined us this evening.
The wind blew noisily outside as Serena worked with each of us, one at a time. I had moved from casting on to knitting a scarf or two over the past months, but it wasn’t because I enjoyed knitting. I enjoyed the group; the knitting was just the price I had to pay to be around the people.
I was distracted tonight. Since Benny and Viola were sisters, I silently battled with myself—should I let Benny know what was going on and ask her if I should be worried about Viola?
A giant gust of wind rattled the windows.
“Gracious, maybe we should end class early.” Serena looked around, then continued, “Well, no one lives too far away. Even if it gets worse, we should all be fine.”
“We can crash at the Benedict House if we need to,” Benny offered. “Viola won’t mind.”
We were about a mile from the Benedict House, but it was a paved mile. We all had good tires, mostly reliable vehicles, and Benny was correct, Viola wouldn’t mind—that is, if everyone cleaned up after themselves.
I looked at Benny again, but still didn’t ask if she’d heard from Viola.
“What is it, Beth?” Serena said.
I blinked. “What?”
“You made a noise,” Serena said. “Are you worried about the weather?”
“Sorry. A little, I suppose.”
“This is nothing,” Benny said. “I’ll make sure you and Ellen get back okay. I’m staying in the bar tonight.”
Benny had a room in the back of the bar with a bed and a dresser. It was also the room Dr. Powder sometimes used to examine patients, and, before yesterday, the only place I’d ever seen him.
“It’s not terrible out there?” I asked.
“No, not really,” Benny said over her flying knitting needles. “You really are worried?”
I smiled it away. “It’s okay.”
Furtively, during trips to the bathroom, I dialed Viola’s number a few more times. I also tried Gril and Donner. No one answered; most of the time, the calls wouldn’t even connect. I’d found a pocket or two of service inside the community center before, but nothing was working tonight.
The class lasted another hour, and everyone decided they’d be fine to go their own way. But, true to her word, Benny followed behind Serena and me. We made it home surprisingly quickly. Just as Ellen and I stood in the doorway of the Benedict House, waving to Benny, who stood in the doorway to the bar, I heard the landline inside ringing.
I hurried to the phone inside Viola’s office, opening the unlocked door without a second thought now, and grabbed the handset. “Hello, Viola?”
There was no immediate response.
“Viola?” I said. Ellen joined me in the small room. She watched me, wide-eyed with her own concern.
“Help!” came Viola’s voice over the phone. “Stuck!”
Those were the only two words I got before the line went dead, ringing loudly with the dial tone, a noise I hadn’t heard for a long time before moving to Alaska.
I hung up the phone and then tried to dial Viola’s number again. No answer.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I said.
“What’s going on?”
“That was Viola. She sounds like she’s in trouble.”
“Call nine-one-one.”
“There’s no nine-one-one here,” I said.
“Do you have a number for the police?”
“I do. Yes.”
I had three numbers for the police: Gril’s cell, Donner’s cell, and the police office landline number. I tried all three. No one answered anywhere.
“Goddammit,” I said.
“What should we do?”
“I’m going to see if I can find her or find the police.” I stepped back out of the office.
“I’ll go with you,” Ellen said.
“No, you don’t have enough winter clothes,” I said as I made my way to my room and all my winter gear.
“I’ll be fine,” she said as she set off at a run to her room. “Don’t leave without me. I’ll be right back.”
I wouldn’t have waited for her, but I needed a few minutes to prepare, making sure I had all the proper clothes as well as a couple of blankets and some water. I grabbed another flashlight from one of the key boxes.
I was so into my preparations that I didn’t notice Ellen had rejoined me.
“We need to call someone, let them know where we’re going,” Ellen said.
“Yes, you’re right.” I was going to call Benny, but for a reason I could only attribute to not wanting to worry her, I decided to call Orin. He didn’t answer, either, but I left a message with the best details I could give: we were heading toward Brayn, looking for Viola, who’d called us sounding like she was in trouble.
I wanted to call someone else. I wanted an emergency service I could ask to help us. It all seemed so uncivilized, so backward. Who else could I call?
I couldn’t think of anyone.
“Let’s go,” I said to Ellen.
As she climbed into my truck, I noticed her almost-adequate boots and her thin outer layers. She was not prepared, but she wasn’t as unprepared as I’d been a few months ago.
“Are you from Alaska?” I asked as I turned the truck from its parking spot and out to the road again. The snow was falling lightly—for now.
“Born and raised in Anchorage. Never did much outdoor stuff, but I paid some attention.”
“Okay.”
It was dark in Benedict. Nighttime could be pitch black. When there were clouds above, sometimes the nights glowed with a dusty light. When there weren’t clouds, there was the blanket of stars. I hadn’t seen the aurora borealis yet.
Tonight, I was simply grateful for my tires and my truck’s bright lights. I drove slowly but made my way confidently.
“Keep an eye out. I know Viola keeps emergency flares in her truck. Look for something like that or just a vehicle off the road. I noticed some abandoned ones already when I drove this way, but hers won’t be buried in as much snow.” I leaned forward and peered out the front. “Maybe.”
I hoped to see another vehicle. I hoped to run into Gril or Donner. I didn’t understand why no one had called me back. Were they all off the side of the road somewhere? I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“It’ll be okay,” Ellen said. “We’ll find her. I’m sure she was prepared for every eventuality.”
I looked at Ellen.
“I think I watch too much crime television,” she said.
Even in the dark, I could see that her face looked healthier than it had a few days earlier. It was still blemished, but her color had continued to improve, and her cheeks had filled out a little. I hoped she’d been a good mother; I hoped she’d get the chance to be one again.
The thirty-minute drive took about a thousand years longer than it should have, and we didn’t see Viola’s vehicle. No Viola anywhere. No Gril or Donner, either.
The one streetlight in Brayn hung from a leaning pole above the Southerns’ house. Its weak glow was yellow and sickly and lit up the swirling snow. A light illuminated the inside of the house, and the freezer was in the same spot it had been when I’d visited the first time, but it was now open. I didn’t see anyone anywhere.
Hot anger bubbled inside me; I wondered if I might combust. It wasn’t another vision from my time in the van, but I suddenly remembered the feel of the ropes around me and the seat Travis had tied me to. I’d been under his control. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything. I hated helpless.
I closed my eyes and tried to calm down, but all that did was bring the edges of Travis’s face into view. I opened my eyes.
“You should have done what I told you to do,” he said to me. I didn’t remember what he was talking about, but his voice sounded in my head, tinged with his deep southern drawl. “None of you Rivers people ever listen.”
What the hell was that? Had he been talking about my father?
“Beth,” Ellen said as she put her hand on my arm.
I jumped. “Sorry. I was trying to calm down, figure out what to do. Do me a favor, remember these words if you can: none of you Rivers people ever listen.”
“None of you river people ever listen. Got it.”
It was close enough. “Thanks.”
“Why are we at this house?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “But I’m going to knock on the door and ask the man inside some questions. If I don’t come out in about ten minutes, go get some help somewhere.”
“What? Where?”
“I don’t know. Just find someone.”
I got out of the truck before she could ask for more details or protest. I hoped she wouldn’t roll down the window. It might never roll up again.
I marched to the front door and put my anger into pounding hard on it.
“It’s me, Beth Rivers,” I said. “Open up.”
I heard someone slowly making their way. Tex pulled the door open wide.
“What the hell?” he asked.
Tex was so large that I felt the need to step back, but I held still. He wore a sweatshirt and some jeans, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, his long beard falling to his chest.
“I’m … I’m looking for my friend, Viola.”
“She was here. Hours ago.”
I didn’t see or hear the girls and I wondered about them. I looked over his shoulder.
He stepped sideways and looked back there, too. “She’s not here, and the girls are asleep, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
My entire body quaked with a shiver.
Tex turned to face me again and then crossed his arms over himself. “Are you telling me your friend didn’t make it home?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” I matched his pose, but only so my body wouldn’t shiver again.
“Come in. I have a landline. You can use my phone to make calls if you want to. You can invite your passenger in, too, if you’d like.” He paused as realization squinted his eyes. “Or keep her out there where she can save herself, or you, if she needs to, but I’m not going to hurt either of you.”
“Thanks. I’ll use your phone. That would be great.” I made my way around him and into the warmth of his front room.
It had seemed sparse and stark the last time I’d been there. Now it just seemed small and comfortable.
Tex closed the door. “Sure.”
The phone sat on a side table next to the wall. It was old and blue, pocked with years of chips and scratches.
I hurried to it and started dialing the same three numbers I’d been dialing for hours. No answer. I looked at Tex. “She called me when I was back in Benedict. I only heard two words—‘stuck’ and ‘help.’”
Tex’s eyes clouded. “That’s not good. Did you check her home?”
“We both live in the Benedict House.”
“Of course.” He rubbed a small part of his exposed cheek with the backs of his knuckles. “She was here hours ago,” he repeated. He walked toward me, and I took a large side step.
He looked at me with tight eyebrows. “I’m just using the phone.”
I nodded and watched. He placed a call to someone, asking them to come by the house for a while, that he had to perform a welfare search. When he hung up, he made his way to a room down a tiny hallway.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“I’m grabbing some clothes. We’ll find her.” He emerged from the room dressed in the same sort of things I was dressed in, not a bearskin coat like I expected.
“What did she do when she was here?”
“We talked. She asked about the girls, what she thought might have happened, why they walked so far away from home. She looked around the property outside, too, claiming to just be curious, but I was sure she was looking for something specific.”
“What about the police chief, Gril, or the park ranger, Donner. Were they here?”
“Yes, they stopped by a few hours after Viola did. They asked about the girls, but they were curious about the freezer, too. They looked at it and then left.” Tex frowned. “Any more questions? Or should we go search for your friend?”
He didn’t say a word about any of them asking who the girls’ mother was, but at that moment, I didn’t much care to ask myself.
“Maybe we need to search for all of them. I can’t reach Gril or Donner, either. Let’s search. Of course,” I said.
A knock sounded on the door. Tex pulled it open again and the woman who’d been at the post office walked inside.
“This is my mother, Grettl Southern,” Tex said.
She looked at me. “Ah, you’re here again.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I just nodded and made my way to the door.
“Thanks, Mom,” Tex said. “I’ll be home when I can.”
“Sure. I can be here all night, so do what you need to do.”
Tex looked at me. “We’ll take your truck, but I’ll drive.”
Ellen and I would either be fine with this man I didn’t know, or we wouldn’t. I was focused on finding Viola more than my or Ellen’s safety with this oversize stranger. “Sounds good.”
Tex grabbed a big duffel bag that had been sitting against the wall by the front door. I hadn’t paid attention until then, but the word “Rescue” was embroidered in yellow thread over the dark blue material.
Ellen was relieved to see me back in the truck. I did a quick and informal introduction and we piled inside, Ellen on the passenger side, Tex driving, and me stuck in the middle, crowded up against both of them and working hard to arrange myself so that the exposed seat springs didn’t cause any permanent damage.
“You come down the main west road?” he asked.
“We did.”
“I’m going to take a different route than you took. I told Viola the way I thought the girls had taken to get to Benedict. Some old logging roads were exposed because of the recent weather.”
“I traveled one of them from the other direction,” I said. “I mean from Benedict. A man lives back there—the police had never heard of him.”
“A few people live that way,” Tex said. “It happens.”
“Do you think the police took this route, too?” I asked as Tex steered the truck over some mounds of snow-covered dirt that I would never have attempted to conquer.
“I doubt it. We didn’t discuss the same things I discussed with Viola.”
“Did you tell them Viola had been there?”
“I didn’t.” He shook his head. “Honestly, I didn’t connect the two. I should have. I wish I had.”
I didn’t think Tex had done something to them—I really hoped he hadn’t—but it was impossible not to speculate. I didn’t have a weapon anywhere. I used to keep a knife under my car seat back in Missouri, but I hadn’t even done that much here.
We were being driven into the dark wild night, and I didn’t even have nail clippers with me.
“Hang on,” I said. “Stop, please.”
Tex brought the truck to a slow stop. “What?”
He looked at me with sincere impatience. I couldn’t really see his eyes, but I could see the set of them, and his worried forehead. I had nothing but my pure instinct working.
Here I was. I’d handed over my and Ellen’s safety to a near stranger. I’d given him the keys to my truck. He was in charge. I didn’t like it, but as I looked at Tex’s shadowed eyes in that dark and stormy night, I didn’t see evil. Not one ounce of it. I hoped I was right.
“Sorry. Go on,” I said.
Furtively, Ellen moved her hand next to my thigh. She gave it a quick squeeze. I looked at her and she sent me an encouraging nod.
The old logging road wasn’t really a road from this direction. The other direction seemed a more passable route. We rocked and rolled, slipped and slid a little, but as the snow continued to fall, Tex managed the truck so well that I wanted to ask him for pointers. I didn’t.
“This road was once used a lot, I remember—back when I was a kid, this was the way we would travel into Benedict,” Tex said.
“A mudslide back about six years ago closed it off?”
“Yes.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“There!” Ellen pointed. “Look there!”
The front lights from my truck glimmered off the orange plastic of the lights of another truck, one whose back end was tipped up, as if it had gone off the side of the road and now its front part was aimed down into a ditch.
“Viola,” I said as I reached over Ellen for the passenger-door handle.
Tex gently grabbed my arm. “Hang on. I know what to do and we need to do it the right way so no one gets hurt. Do as I say, all right?”
Tears burned the back of my eyes but I blinked them away and nodded. “Yes. Okay. Let’s get there.”
Tex let go of my arm and then pushed on the accelerator again, slowly and purposefully so that my truck got very close to Viola’s. We’d put the duffel bag on the floor. Tex reached over both of us, grabbed, and took it with him as he got out. I followed him.
We stood on the edge of the shallow berm as the icy wind and snow swirled around us. It wasn’t steep, but it would be a slippery trip down.
“Viola!” we both called.
The cab of the truck was right there, but it was shrouded by the dark night and the couple inches of snow on top of it. We were going to have to walk down the precarious slope.
Tex crouched, reached into the bag for a rope, and then looped it around my waist. “We might not need this, but just in case. I’ll hold on. You walk down and open the door. See if she’s inside,” Tex said over wind.
I nodded and did as he instructed. I was glad he kept hold of the rope—the snow was much deeper and icier than I thought it would be. It wasn’t a far walk, but I about fell a few times. Tex held tight, and his feet seemed to be rooted in place.
I wiped away the snow over the door window and looked in but still couldn’t see much of anything. I tried to open the door but it was locked. I knocked. I pounded. “Viola!”
The longest second of my life later, the door opened. Inside, Viola’s bleary eyes blinked above the silver of her outdoor emergency blanket. “Ah, you found me.” She smiled. She was wearing the Indiana Jones hat she’d worn almost every day since I’d met her. “Good work!”
“Let’s get out of here,” Tex said. “Come on.”
Viola was no worse for wear. She’d gone off the road and couldn’t get her truck unstuck. She’d made the decision to hunker down and walk back toward Brayn the next day, when there was a break in the weather. It was still early enough in the season that there would surely be a break in the weather. She’d had emergency supplies packed in her truck like any good Alaskan, and she would have been fine through the night, and maybe through another day.
Her truck didn’t seem damaged. Just stuck.
“I was going too damn fast,” Viola said. “What an idiot.”
“You’re okay,” I said. “That’s what matters.”
We weren’t going to get her truck unstuck tonight, though. As we all packed into mine, even tighter with me now sitting on top of Viola and Ellen, Viola told us more.
“I was going that way because Tex mentioned that’s the way the girls went, but I also remembered something from years ago. An ice cave,” she said.
Tex had started the truck and was turning it back toward Brayn. We decided not to search further for Gril and Donner, hoping they were as prepared for every eventuality as Viola had been. Tex offered to look for them the next day.
“Hang on again. Stop,” I said to Tex. “What do you mean?” I said to Viola.
She looked out toward her tilted truck. “Out there. There’s an ice cave. Benny and I used to explore it when we were kids. At least it used to be there.”
“I remember it, too,” Tex said. “I haven’t been inside it for years.”
“Would it keep a body frozen?” I asked.
Tex and Ellen both looked at me like they weren’t sure what they’d just heard. Viola just nodded. “That’s why I was trying to spot it. I shouldn’t have tried, should have just told Gril.”
“Shit,” I said as I looked out at the dark and the falling snow.
“A body?” Tex asked.
I looked at Viola. “Do you think I can tell them?”
“Don’t think Gril would be pleased, but considering the way you’ve already scared ’em, I think it would be okay to share a few details,” Viola said.
And so I did.