Page 35 of A Killing Cold

Conversation moves on to less fraught topics. By the time Louise and Magnus join us, the tension has bled out of the moment. Connor hadn’t mentioned anything about having a problem with Nick. In fact he hadn’t said anything about him at all, really, except that he exists. What’s his problem with his uncle? Is it only what Connor said—that Nick acted like a replacement for his father but couldn’t be?

At last it’s time to move to dinner. We traipse out, Connor with his hand on the small of my back. In the foyer, a small mountain of gifts has gathered beneath the tree. I find myself searching for green paper and red ribbon.

I only ever got one gift at Christmas each year. The holiday was an occasion for worship, not consumerism. I might not have held on to those religious teachings, but Christmas is one of the few periods I’ve looked back on with a pang of nostalgia—the sense of peace around that time, the single present carefully selected. It was Joseph who picked them out for me each year. They never told me as much, but it was obvious. Only Joseph would have bought me a flower-pressing kit that included handmade cards with sketches and the botanical names of every flower in ouryard, or picked out a collection of polished rocks and a book for identifying them—citrine, jasper, carnelian, quartz. I lined them up on my windowsill and memorized their names.

A teddy bear under the tree. A ribbon around his neck. Soft fur tickling my nose.

“Theo?” Connor says. He’s pulled away from me, continuing on as I’m rooted to the spot. I don’t answer, don’t move.

I remember—

The girl reaches greedily for the gift when it’s offered, tears off the paper.

“Here. Just for you. Merry Christmas. A bit late, admittedly,” the man says with a grin as she uncovers her prize. She squeals. Launches herself at him in what’s meant to be a hug but is more like a headbutt, her arms wrapped around her new treasure. He laughs, ruffles her hair.

“Mama, did you see?” the girl demands. She holds the bear out. “It’s a teddy, just for me.”

“A teddy for Teddy,” the man tells her.

“This is too much,” the girl’s mother says. A red gift bag sits on the floor beside her; a blue scarf pools in her lap. Her fingers ball it up, smooth it out.

“It’s nothing,” he says. He sounds strange. Neither of them sounds exactly happy, but they don’t sound mad or sad, either.

“It might be nothing to you. But it isn’t to us,” she says.

It’s wrong, I think.The scarf was red.It’s a nonsense thought—as if a person could only own one color of scarf—but something in it makes me shudder. I reach for the memory again—reach for Liam and my mother and the scent of pine and cedar—and then a tiny body crashes into my legs. Sebastian, running at full tilt. He keeps his footing but loses his dinosaurs, and they tumble to the ground.

“Whoa there,” Connor says with a laugh. Half-gripped in memory, I stretch a smile into place for the nervous-looking Sebastian and crouch down to help him retrieve his prizes.

“There you go,” I tell him, pressing his tyrannosaurus into his hands.

“What do you say?” Paloma prompts him, coming up from behind to collect her son.

“Thank you. And sorry,” he says, and then he’s scampering off again, Paloma in his wake. I stay crouched a moment, elbow braced on one knee, watching them go, my mind still chewing on it all—

Red scarf. Blue. The image flickers in my mind.

“Coming?” Connor asks. I turn to look at him—and freeze. Where he’s standing, my angle near the floor puts him perfectly aligned with one of the trophies mounted to the wall. With the light half behind him, it only magnifies the illusion.

The illusion of antlers springing from his temples. Curving upward, sharp prongs the length of my palm reaching toward the ceiling. A being out of myth, out of the heart of the woods, out of a dream of cold winter.

Like a frame coming into focus, I see it clearly—the man in my dream. His face has always been occluded in shadow, but I know it. I’ve always known it.

Connor looks so much like his father. A man I knew, once upon a time.

A man who I’ve seen in my dreams ever since.

15

My dream has always felt like something out of a fairy tale—the sort of fairy tale where girls get their hands cut off and witches are forced to dance on hot coals. The man with antlers chasing me through the dark wood, the dragonfly, the single red star that glows like an ill omen. They were pieces of a story, not real.

But in that moment, looking up at Connor, I knew I’ve been wrong all this time. It was real. Parts of it, at least. Liam Dalton is the antlered man in my dream, and I was terrified of him.

There is no question of staying in White Pine tonight.

I make it through dinner and everything after, feeling absent from my own body. I answer questions without knowing what I’m saying, eat without tasting the food.

That night in bed, I wait until Connor’s breathing is slow and steady. I envy that sense of safety that lets him sleep so deeply. He lies with his head flung back, his throat exposed. The pose of a creature who has never been prey. I drag my fingertips along the line of his jugular, and then I slip away.

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