Hollis goes to the fireplace and sets out some kindling and two logs. He bends down, one knee in the ashes. He has always found it best not to look at whoever he’s lying to, although, in point of fact, nothing he’s told March is an outright fabrication. He was up at Olive Tree Lake, true enough; he’s simply failed to mention that he was there fucking Alison Hartwig. It wasn’t as though he planned it. He drove down to the Red Apple to get a big bag of dog food, and there she was, buying eggnog and soda to bring home to her kids and her mother. He knew he was going to fuck her the minute he saw her; he knew it would be good to fuck someone he didn’t give a damn about.
He has always been at March’s mercy, and that’s a problem. His own love for her is an agony. It makes him feel like a beggar, even now, and he can’t have that. Let someone else beg. Let Alison Hartwig beg him to fuck her. At least it won’t be him down on his knees.
March has come up behind him. She places one hand on his shoulder, and her touch makes him feel like weeping. But he doesn’t. He’s not even certain if he’s capable of crying. People said that, when his son died-
“I missed you tonight,” March says.
Hollis reaches to take her hand then, but he’s careful not to look at her. He keeps his eyes trained on the fire before him, and he doesn’t dare let anything get in his way.
20
When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night, the dark is blue and bluer still, a sapphire of night. During some winters, it is so cold that tears freeze before they fall and a pony’s breath may turn to ice inside its nostrils and lead to suffocation.
This year, December is so clear and icy cold the air itself seems as if it were a bell about to be rung. A Christmas tree is always put up on the first Friday of the month in front of Town Hall, beside the statue of the Founder, who, to ensure the festivity of the season, will be decorated with a wreath of ivy until the New Year. One week of frigid weather is nothing to a New Englander, but after two a person’s patience can be tried. The Lyon Cafe always does its best business at this time of year. Some people say the surge in popularity is due to the hard cider served only in December, but the old-timers know it’s because there’s nothing better to do. The best there is at this time of year is cider and gossip, and at the Lyon Cafe, on a cold December night, it’s possible to find both.
“Is everyone in the entire universe here?” Susanna Justice asks her mother when they step into the Lyon after a meeting of the library committee. Louise has attended as the secretary of the organization-a position she, thankfully, will be giving up at the end of the year-Susie, as a reporter who still has to go home and think of something interesting to write about the fund-raising drive in time for tomorrow’s Bugle.
“Order the cider,” Louise tells her daughter as she sets off to grab a table and Susie heads for the bar. There’s some serious drinking going on at the Lyon, and the noise level is such that Susie and Louise have to sit close together at their table, with their heads nearly touching, in order to hear one another.
“I hope you’re going to mention Harriet Laughton in your article,” Louise says. “She’s the heart and soul of the fund-raising committee. I wanted to ask March to join the committee, but I can never seem to get hold of her.”
“I know. I couldn’t either.”
Susie had been calling and calling, with no success. When Richard phoned her to say he also couldn’t reach March and hadn’t heard from Gwen for several weeks, she went out to Guardian Farm, and she didn’t like what she found.
“What do you want?” Hollis said to her when she got out of her truck. Susie was so startled by the hostility of his tone that she took a step backward; she shaded her eyes against the sun, the better to gauge his expression, but there was nothing to see. Just an angry man, staring her down.
“Actually, I want to see March,” Susie had said. “Is that a criminal offense or something?”
All she got for an answer was the wind, flapping between them. A loose shutter on the house banged back and forth. Susie could practically see Hollis reaching inside himself for a way to get rid of her, a lie to tell. Funny how she’d never noticed before how much he’d aged; his posture was that of a young man, but that’s not what he was anymore.
“What are you going to do, Hollis? Call the police and have me escorted off your property?”
Before he could respond, March came to the door. She ran out to hug Susie, then insisted on dragging her into the kitchen for a cup of tea.
“Why didn’t you tell me Susie was here?” March said to Hollis. “You hate company, that’s all there is to it.”
She had thrown her arms around him, and Hollis had let her kiss him. For an instant, he seemed happy, there in her embrace.
“‘He’s all bark,” March said to Susie as they headed for the house. “Oolong.” March had remembered her friend’s favorite tea. “Right?”
“Right.”
Once in the kitchen. Susie couldn’t help but notice how streaked with white March’s dark hair had become. March had stopped coloring it. and now simply drew it away from her face with silver clips. Hollis had come in after them, but after he allowed March to tease him about being antisocial. he withdrew to the parlor. Still, Susie had the sense he was listening.
“I’m worried about you,” she told March after she’d been served a mug of tea. The house was cold and dim; March was wearing a heavy gray sweater that looked like one of Hollis’s castoffs.
“You’re always worried about me.” March laughed. She explained that she would have been over to see Susie, but her Toyota had suddenly died. As soon as Hollis finished working on it, she’d come for a visit. “You don’t have to worry,” she’d insisted.
But sitting in the Lyon with her mother, Susie is still worried. “To tell you the truth, I wish March had never come back here,” Susie admits as she and Louise sip cider in the crowded tavern. “What does she see in him?”
“Ah, love,” Louise says with a surprising amount of bitterness.
Susie tilts her head and studies her mother.
“Didn’t you think I knew?” Louise says. “How could I not?”
“Are you talking about Dad?”
“I didn’t think it was a suitable topic for discussion. I still don’t.”
Louise checks the buttons on her sweater, as if something was undone. Clearly, even talking around the edges of the Judge’s relationship with Mrs. Dale is tremendously difficult. Watching her mother, Susie feels extreme tenderness.
“Then we won’t discuss it,” Susie says.
“Fine.” Louise takes her daughter’s hand in her own. “That’s settled.”
“Unless you ever want to,” Susie can’t help adding.
“Susie,” Louise warns.
“Fine. Next topic.”
“Did you call Richard Cooper back and let him know you went to see March?”
“I did. He’s all broken up about March leaving, but his main concern is that Gwen’s living out there. I can’t say that I blame him.”
“I saw her down in the Marshes,” Louise says. “That girl, Gwen.”
“Are you serious?”
