Most of the wood in the shed would have been fine for a normal fire—one of those hour-long blazes you sat in front of with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine—but now that he, Tess, and Bub were relying on the wood to keep them from freezing to death, Warren wanted to be more selective. He rolled a few too-green logs from the stack and found another bunch of winners. He’d curled the first few pieces up in his arm and was turning back to the sled when he heard the screaming.
He dropped the wood, barely missing his toes (his boots were good enough but probably wouldn’t have done much to spare his little piggies from a falling hunk of heavy wood). Bub had gotten to his feet in record time, bad leg or no. The dog looked from the shed’s door to Warren and then back to the door. He whined. Warren heard it even over the sound of the buffeting wind.
Bub took a step toward the door, looked back at Warren, whined again. Louder this time.
Warren did. He hurried to the door and jerked it inward. Cold air and gusts of snow blew across them. Bub didn’t slow down, rushed across the threshold and into the snow, and Warren followed. The wind hit him in the face, blew sleet up his nose and into his mouth. As he shuffled through the snow, he pulled up his scarf.
The screaming had stopped. Not died down but stopped completely, which scared Warren even more than the shrieking had. He ducked his head and tried to hurry across the yard.
But hurrying wasn’t easy. Even in the low spots, the shallow valleys between the drifts, there were at least sixteen inches of snow on the ground. Warren’s boots weren’t snowshoes—they weren’t even really winter boots, just old leather things that got wet and dyed his socks brown when he wore them out in bad weather—and although the snow was pretty dense, it wasn’t even close to packed enough for him to walk on top. He had to trudge through instead, like trying to walk through water.
And, on top of that, walking toward the house meant walking into the wind and snow, which had been picking up all day but seemed to have gotten especially bad just during the few minutes they’d spent in the shed. Hard bits of icy snow peppered his face if he looked up and to a lesser extent even when he kept his eyes pointed straight down at his unseasonable footwear.
Despite his limp, Bub was having more luck. He weighed less, of course, and sank only partway into the snow, and he didn’t have all the layers of extra clothing restricting his movements. He hurried on ahead and stopped a couple of times when Warren lagged too far behind. During each of those delays, he stared toward the house, toward his mistress, and whined. The wind brought the sound back to Warren, almost seemed to amplify it. Once, Bub snarled in a way that gave Warren the chills. Chills on top of chills. Swirls of snow billowed around the Lab, not obscuring him (they weren’t that close to a whiteout…not yet anyway), but giving his already pale yellow coat a smokey, ghostly look.
When they were close enough he thought he’d be able to make himself heard over the wind, Warren yelled for his wife.
No answer.
He pulled down his scarf and tried again: “Tess!”
Another cloud of snow blew against his face, into his mouth, and nearly choked him. Tess still didn’t respond.
Bub barked and limped on. Warren followed him to the back door.
He almost didn’t see the broken window at first, might not have seen it at all if the curtains hadn’t billowed and caught his attention.
He didn’t know what the broken window meant (if it meant anything at all) and didn’t care. All that mattered was getting to his wife. Finding out what in the world had made her scream like that. Making sure she was okay.
Bub leapt over the single step leading to the back stoop. Under the snow, you could hardly tell the step was there—in fact, the whole stoop had just about disappeared under the drift that had formed against the house. Warren kicked around under the snow until he found the riser, then followed his dog up to the door and jerked it open.
Bub nosed his way inside as soon as the opening was wide enough, barking, scurrying. Warren watched him slip on the linoleum. Then the dog was around a corner and gone.
Again, Warren followed.
Snow fell from his boots, and he slipped twice as he hurried down the narrow back hallway.
He found Tess on the kitchen floor, her face a bloody mess. For a second, Warren was sure she was dead, that she’d fallen into the window and slit her jugular and bled to death right there, alone. His heart pounded; a sob rose halfway up his throat and stopped there, choking him. But then she moved, looked up at him with bloody, teary eyes, and said his name.
Bub had already gotten to her. He licked her hands and face and neck. Warren moved to pull him away, but Tess wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck and pulled him against her.
“I’m okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m okay.” She said it several more times, maybe trying to convince herself as much as Bub and Warren.
Warren stood there for a second, stunned and confused, before dropping to his knees beside her and lifting her chin to get a better look at her face. His heart had slowed somewhat, but he still couldn’t seem to breathe. He didn’t think he’d ever had to work this hard to get his body to do the things it was supposed to do on its own.
He unwound his scarf and dropped it to the floor between them. “What happened?” He tried to ask it as calmly as possible but wasn’t quite able to keep the hitch out of his voice.
Dozens of cuts lined her face. Beads of blood seeped from the wounds and ran down her cheeks and neck. One long cut arced from her forehead back to her ear. It was bleeding worse than any of the others but not exactly gushing. She’d grabbed a dishtowel from somewhere and must have been using it to wipe herself up. The towel was covered with red splotches. Broken glass littered the floor behind her and the counter around the sink.
“I…” She shook her head, and fresh blood welled in her wounds.
“I don’t know. I mean, the window broke, but…” She shook her head again, more softly this time. “You tracked snow into the house.”
He looked back at the mess of tracks he and Bub had left on the floor and then returned his focus to his wife.
“It’s okay,” Warren said. “I think it’s going to be okay. Most of these cuts don’t look bad—or not
“Just to be safe?”
He kissed her bleeding forehead. Her skin was freezing. “That’s right. But first, let’s go in and sit by the fire, warm you up. I’ll find some tweezers and pull whatever shards I can. No sense taking a long, bumpy drive with your face still full of glass.” Again, he thought he managed to sound much calmer than he felt. They’d both had their fair share of accidents, and he guessed they were lucky this had been the worst of them, but it was impossible to look at Tess’s bleeding face and think anything about the situation was lucky.
“Do you think we can?” She squeezed the rag with her bloodstained fingers. She looked down and wiped absently at the back of her hand.
“Sure,” he said, trying not to look at the blood, afraid he might break down. “The bigger chunks anyway. I —”
“No, I mean get to town? Do you think the truck will make it?”
Cold wind and swirls of snow blew in through the broken window. Warren looked at her for a second, watched the blood welling in her wounds, saw the dazed look in her eyes. “Definitely.”
In truth, he wasn’t sure at all. The truck had good snow tires on it, and it was a reliable vehicle, but there was a
“I don’t think so,” she said. Her eyes were clearing. “I’m okay. It’s not worth risking our lives.” She tried to get up, slipped, and fell back onto her butt.
Warren steadied her. “Easy. Let me help you up.”
She wrapped her arm around his neck, and he pulled her to her feet.
“It’s riskier if we
She gave him her infamous don’t-be-stupid look. “It’s not that bad. Seriously.”
