Page 138 of Price of Angels

Wynn found an out of style plaid wool coat in the downstairs closet. Black, with an overlaid pattern of brown and mustard and white, it had been chic a few decades ago, and was made of a heavy wool, delightfully warm when she slipped it on and pulled it around to fasten the double rows of buttons. It ended at her ankles, to keep the wind off her legs.

She realized who it had belonged to as she finished off the last button. “This was Camilla’s,” she said, lifting her gaze to Wynn’s. A stab of guilt. Maybe she shouldn’t be wearing it. Maybe he really didn’t want his sister’s coat on this girl he didn’t know.

But he smiled at her, zipping up his heavy Carhartt jacket. “It fits you. Thankfully I held onto it, or you’d be in one of these.” He plucked at the front of his jacket. “Hat?”

“Please.”

He handed her a knitted beanie that smelled like mothballs and she snugged it down over her ears.

“Ready?”

“Yep.”

The first step out the back door the snow compressed beneath her boot, the muffled crunching moving through her, ringing electric in her ears, blasting a smile across her face. The air was cold and damp, and the incredible new-fallen snow smell filled her nose.

Perfect, yes.

They took Cassius with them, and the Dane lifted his feet high to get them clear of the snow, leaping and skittering like an excited colt. Songbirds, bright red cardinals and petite chickadees, flittered from branches to the feeders and then back again, stealing bites of black oil sunflower seed as they passed through the yard and skirted the barn. Holly was silent and rapt as she absorbed it, drinking in each detail, pressing them into the scrapbook pages of her mind to pull out and look at later.

“This is a nice trail,” Wynn said as they passed between two tall pines. “I take the dogs down this one a lot.”

There wasn’t anything visible of the path, only a snow-covered clear track between the trees that signaled a trail. Holly followed him down it, trusting his senses and Cassius to get them back to the house later. If nothing else, they were leaving deep tracks. Better than breadcrumbs.

The trees stood like sentinels alongside the track, stoic and impartial. How beautiful were trees? The world’s silent witnesses to countless fits of passion; the keepers of deep woodland secrets; the stakes holding down the windblown surface of the earth, when humans tried to send shockwaves to its core.

Surrounded by tall pines, she didn’t suppress the words that built up in the back of her throat.

“I used to walk in the woods like this when I was a little girl,” she said, breath puffing white. “With my mom. There were all these little secret trails around our house, and we’d pack lunch and spend all afternoon looking for deer and naming the birds.”

“I always liked it out here,” Wynn said beside her. “You can think about things. You can talk, too. And the trees listen.”

She nodded. Yes, her thoughts exactly.

It felt like they went for miles, slow, pleasant progress zig-zagging through forest and edging little white meadows. Then the trees opened up, and Holly spotted a regular sequence of ridges lying beneath the snow in front of them. Train tracks.

“Trains don’t come that often anymore,” Wynn said as she stepped over the rail and kicked snow off the trestles, uncovering a damp wooden tie to stand on. “You can hear the whistle at night. Sounds like a ghost wailing.”

“I bet.” But she was distracted; the tracks had her undivided attention, as she stared down the long tunnel of trees, where they finally disappeared into the gray horizon.

She stepped to the next tie, and the next, then spun and looked down the opposite stretch, ending in a curve that could have been yards or miles away. Distance had no meaning, in the pine-green and snow-white cathedral doming around them.

Time stopped.

“Where do these go?” Holly asked, clutching her mother’s hand as they stood on the worn brown trestles. It had taken hours of walking to come to this spot, this endless stretch of tracks in the middle of the forest.

Lila stared off into the distance, where the tracks met the sunset. The breeze stirred her long dark skirt, fanning it against the slender shapes of her legs, tickling Holly with its ends. Ribbons of hair streamed away from her face. Her eyes were wet and shiny, reflecting the molten colors of the sun as it sank.

“I don’t know, baby,” she said quietly. “But I bet it’s somewhere wonderful, don’t you?”

Holly took a shallow, straining breath, the cold air making her lungs ache. Lila had never found what lay at the end of the tracks. For her, they had only been a fantasy, an out of reach promise of escape. A reminder that the world was full of constant movement, but that time would always stand still for her.

“Holly!” Wynn said beside her, and she snatched her head around.

She had climbed up onto the slick metal rail without knowing it, and as her feet went out from under her, Wynn caught her wrist in one bear paw hand.

“Ah!” She grabbed at his arms, his jacket, staggering down onto level ground, going to her knees when her ankle gave out. But then she was still, and safe, and unhurt, she knew, as she caught her breath.

“That was close,” Wynn said. “You alright? What were you doing?”

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