Page 23 of A Killing Cold

“No, no, it’s no problem. We should be able to talk about these things, instead of pretending they didn’t happen,” she says, and again I feel like I’m stepping into an argument she’s had with someone else entirely.

I don’t know what to do with this conversation—this talk of prenups and Liam’s faults, every topic its own peculiar test. I don’t know who it is Rose wants me to be, and whether she would rather I prove worthy or slip up in some way that justifies throwing me out.

The sound of laughter comes from up ahead. My calves and thighs are burning, and we’re hopelessly behind. I see a look flit across Rose’s face—she wants to be up there, joining in the laughter.

“I think I’m going to head back,” I say, seizing on the moment.

“Are you sure?” she asks. It’s more polite than a genuine objection.

“If I go much farther, one of you is going to have to carry me back,” I reply frankly. I wave a hand. “You go catch up. I’m going to go make myself some cocoa while you all voluntarily get cold and exhausted.”

“I’ll tell Connor you took off,” she tells me by way of acknowledgment, and by the time I get myself turned around—a laborious process—she’s winging away at a speed that makes it embarrassingly obvious how much she slowed down to accommodate me.

The trail back is clear, pummeled by our passage already. I make it a short distance on the skis before giving up and unclipping myself, opting to carry them under my arm while I tramp along in boots. The conversation rattles around in my head as I walk.

Connor talks about his father with something like awe. But the way Rose spoke of the prenup made things sound less blissful.

Make sure they stay off the lodge roof, she said. But didn’t Mr. Vance tell me it was the abandoned cabin where the accident happened?

I suppose that technically, he didn’t. I made an assumption. He didn’t correct me.

But if Liam Dalton died falling off the lodge roof, why abandon the cabin at all?

It’s none of my business, I remind myself.

I stop. The path snakes out before me. The ruts our skis carved are clear, leading onward. They will take me faultlessly back to White Pine, to the place I am meant to be.

Off among the trees, the fifth cabin stands. I can see its gray-brown flank from here. Icicles line its eaves. I wonder if the snow has covered the footprints leading to its door. Mine, and Mr. Vance’s, and someone else’s.

There is a reason that cabin was abandoned. But it isn’t the one I assumed.

And there’s that feeling, tugging me forward. That sense of not familiarity, exactly, but the thing nearest to it. Like looking at a photograph of a family vacation from when you were very young that you don’t actually remember but feel like you ought to.

Not that I would know, of course. Other than hunting with Joseph and trips to see family in Idaho, we never went anywhere. I didn’t know to be jealous; I thought trips like that were things invented for books, to make them more interesting. It wasn’t like I had friends at school to compare notes with. My classroom was the kitchen table and Beth glancing over my work as she moved about cooking.

Beth wasn’t a natural teacher, but she did her best. Math came easily to me, and I would devour anything about literature or history. It would be much later, of course, that I found out how questionable the history I was learning was, and discovered that my college classmates did not have a section in their history textbooks about “the men whowalked with dinosaurs” or sidebars about why Buddhists were going to hell.

School was the only time I ever pleased her.You’re so sharp, she’d tell me, wagging her head, but when I started to get older there was worry in that, too.So full of questions, she would say, and it meant something much different at fifteen than it did at five.

I learned that if I wanted answers, I had to find them myself.

It’s only a few steps out of my way. The snow is ankle-deep here where the trees have sheltered the path. And it can’t hurt to look, so I turn. I cross the distance quickly and lean the skis against the steps of the cabin.

In the light of day, I can more clearly see the pale silhouette on the door where the ornament must have once hung. My fingers trace the shape of it. A cross, almost—but not quite. The horizontal bar splits at its ends.

A jolt goes through me. I know what that shape is. Or I did, for a moment so brief all I can feel is the reverberation in the air after it’s gone. I recognize it the way I recognized Connor, that night at Harper’s party.

I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?I asked him.

I think I would remember, he said.

My hand falls to the door, certain that it’s locked—but as if it has been expecting me, the knob turns. I push the door inward. It catches slightly, the door sitting unevenly in its frame, and then springs open. I let go. The door swings inward, and I try to remember how to breathe.

Dried leaves and pine needles litter the floorboards. The welcome mat inside the door has gone gray with years of dirt. A woodstove stands against one wall, and in the back of the main room is a silent refrigerator. I flip the switch a few times, but the lights don’t come on—no power.

I try for a moment to match this cabin to the one in my dream, but of course that’s not how dreams work. My dream was more the impression of a place, no precise details or identifiable architecture. Besides,I’ve never been here before. I have never been to the East Coast at all, and even if I had, what would I be doing at Idlewood?

It’s only some long-faded memory, finding echoes in this place.

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