Cole can call me a stupid city slicker all he likes, but I’m no fool.
At the edge of the woods the pines are tight together, like they’re trying to huddle up against the wind and the snow. I bumbled through, tree by tree, sticking out my arms to get my hand on the next trunk. It did me good to feel that rough surface through my gloves. There was something still standing in the middle of this blizzard.
It was so cold that somehow my ankle wasn’t even hurting anymore. I couldn’t tie my laces right and the snow was getting into my shoe with each step. I kept going at my own pace, groping forward, it’s not like anyone else was moving fast in this weather. When I couldn’t find any more trees to hold on to, I figured that I was there, that the house shouldn’t be far off—and, sure enough, between two gusts, there it was.
All I could see was a brownish shape, but I’d know that steep roof anywhere. If I’ve been going the right way and if the boy’s ahead of me, he’s got to have seen it too. And he must have, he’s obsessed with his uncle Thomas. He thinks that it’s impossible to disappear without a trace these days. Oh, if only! Anyone can just go poof if they really want to, and I’m one to know. That’s something that boy doesn’t get. He’s too logical—it’d never occur to him—and I guess that’s some comfort to him, that someone would find us if we disappeared.
I do hope he’s right and that Benedict’s going to find us, even if he’s probably looking for the boy, not me. He’d never say it, but I know he does love his kid. Sometimes I catch him looking at the boy like he’s the golden calf, and there’s real love in his eyes—and head-scratching too. The boy looks like him, but not really. He’s picked up the man’s tics, wrinkling his nose at tricky things. When they get frustrated, they just about bury their heads in their shoulders like two turtles. But otherwise their hair and eyes and so on aren’t even close to the same. The little kid’s taken after his mother plenty.
They don’t talk much. Benedict doesn’t know how to act around children, this is probably the first one he’s taken care of. He’s not in the habit of stringing three words together, while that idiot Cole’s always jabbering at him about the weather or bears or the traps he’s set or fish in the spring, the huge char he caught the very first time he’d cast his line with Magnus watching. And it’s not Cole the kid needs to be hearing, it’s Benedict. Who barely says a thing. Apart from Cole, it’s me he talks to the most, but only to ask me for something he needs, a book or some paper, something he’d like to eat, like those damn boxes of Apple Jacks that Benedict gets at Roy’s, a thirty-mile drive away. Roy puts in a special order for us every year. Fifty boxes in one go and Benedict does his best to keep them dry and safe from rats.
Now, that’s a real picture, that guy built like a brick shithouse, carrying packages off the truck like they’re fine china and going to all these lengths just so the kid can have a bit of his old life.
Of course, the boy can’t stand the cereal anymore, but he doesn’t want to say so and break Benedict’s heart. Now, that’s a childish thought: worrying about breaking someone’s heart.