Page 14

14

I read the book to Sebastian until the words don’t make sense anymore. I read him all the others, too. By the time Paloma and Alexis arrive, I have come up with a hundred explanations for those photographs and rejected them all. I have tried to stitch them together with the photo from the cabin, construct some kind of narrative that would bind the two together, but I have nothing but questions and a growing sense of unease.

“Theo!” Alexis says with surprise as they enter, stowing their gear by the door. Sebastian throws himself at Paloma and wraps around her leg like a jellyfish. “Where’s Olena?”

I stand from the couch, setting Hippos Go Berserk! on the cushion beside me. “Apparently Sebastian sneaked outside and took off while her back was turned. He was fine, but she was pretty shaken up. I offered to watch him.”

I keep my tone light, trying not to alarm them. Paloma’s eyes widen. Alexis looks quickly to Sebastian, who has the deer-in-the-headlights look of a child who suddenly realizes he might be getting in trouble.

“He’s all right,” Paloma says softly, touching Alexis’s elbow. “Everyone’s in one piece, so let’s be grateful for that.”

“I thought he was over the running-away thing,” Alexis says, voice a little shaky. She runs a hand through her hair. “He started pelting off the instant he learned to walk.”

“Thank you for keeping an eye on him,” Paloma says, with a we’ll talk about this later look at her wife.

“No problem,” I say. They’re still between me and the door. Alexis gives a little jump and steps aside. Her gaze lights on the couch. On the bright yellow cover of Find Fergus . Her brow creases momentarily. “I’ll see you at dinner?” I say brightly. Maybe she won’t remember where the book was.

“Right. We’ll see you. Thanks again,” Paloma says, lifting Sebastian in her arms as she moves out of my way. I pull my boots on hastily, and I don’t take a full breath until I’m out in the cold, booking my way toward White Pine.

I find Connor’s boots by the door, his coat flung over the entryway bench. Melted snow pools under the boots.

I go into the bedroom. Connor’s phone is in its customary place on the nightstand. A man of habit. As I listen to the sound of the shower, I unlock it and open up his files. He keeps his photos meticulously organized, and it doesn’t take me long to find a folder of old family pictures. Many are from more recent years, but there are older photos saved as well—photos of Connor as a child. Of Liam Dalton.

I pull them up one after another, zooming in on his face. Does he look familiar because he looks so much like Connor? Or because I’ve seen him before?

I can’t tell. The gaps in my memory are too thorough, too impenetrable.

The water has shut off. I close the app just as Connor steps in, the towel loose around his waist, hair slicked back and dripping.

“Snooping?” he asks, and my stomach braces before I realize he’s joking.

“Just checking if you have any signal,” I lie.

“Nope. There’s a landline in the lodge for emergencies, but that’s it,” Connor says. “Granddad absolutely refuses to do anything to improve signal up here. The isolation is the point, after all.”

“Right,” I say.

He puts a hand to his mouth like he’s whispering a secret. “But there’s a spot down by the gate that can usually nab you a couple of bars,” he confesses. Then he frowns. “Are you all right? You look… rattled. Where were you, anyway?”

My mind flashes immediately to the brass wings of a dragonfly. “I, um… I was just with Sebastian. He wandered off, I guess, got a bit lost. I was looking after him until Alexis and Paloma got back.”

“Is he hurt?” He sounds alarmed.

“Not a scratch,” I assure him. “Honestly, the hardest part was keeping him entertained. He’s a bit, um, insistent.”

“You got bossed around by a three-year-old, you mean,” he says.

“Have you met three-year-olds? They are very intimidating,” I say defensively, and he laughs. He heads over to the dresser, dropping the towel. He catches my eye in the mirror over the dresser, watching me watch him. His wet hair curls around his ears.

I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I?

Some part of me recognized him from that first moment. But not because I’d met Connor before. Because I’d met his father.

Liam Dalton and I were together here, right before he died.

Right before I showed up on the Scotts’ doorstep, a girl with no name and nightmares that woke her screaming in the night.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Connor asks, buttoning up his shirt.

I don’t answer.

As before, we gather for drinks well before dinner. When we arrive, Alexis and her little family are there; so is Nick. Olena brings in a tray of Manhattans. Her tears are long gone, but she keeps her head down and her shoulders are tense, her whole body wound inward. When she passes me, she gives me a frightened look before scurrying away. I catch Nick’s eye. He’s the only one not drinking. He has a glass of water instead, topped with a wedge of lemon. He lifts it to me in a casual gesture, and I return it uncertainly. Given the unworried way Alexis accepts her drink, I doubt he’s told her exactly what happened. Maybe that’s for the best.

It’s a different story when Trevor enters. His hair is mussed, and he slouches about with a can’t-be-bothered attitude that pairs perfectly with the faint sneer on his face. He plops down next to Alexis. She pulls away from him. Either not noticing or not caring, he wings his arms out along the back of the couch, legs crossed, and surveys the room.

“What a festive bunch,” he declares. Paloma rolls her eyes. Sebastian wanders over and thrusts a T. rex toy at Trevor, who takes it. “Rawr,” he says, menacing the brontosaurus in Sebastian’s hands. “I’m going to eat you.”

“They friends,” Sebastian informs him gravely.

“Sure they are, kid,” Trevor says. He ruffles Sebastian’s hair. “You’re all recovered from your little adventure, then?”

Almost to the door, Olena misses a step. Empty glasses clack on her tray, and she steadies them as Alexis’s head rotates to fix her brother with a cold look.

“Oh, you heard about that?” she asks.

“Bastian the Abominable Snowman,” Trevor says. “It has a ring to it. No harm done, though. And I bet you had a good time with your new auntie.” His voice is almost singsong, and despite the unobjectionable wording, it feels like mockery. Connor’s hand settles on my knee.

“What’s this?” Rose asks, entering the room. She looks stunning—dressed in a gray wool top threaded with something that shimmers in the light, complemented by a pair of pearl earrings set in white gold. The few streaks of gray in her hair only add to her loveliness, which otherwise might seem too unreal, manufactured.

“Oh, Sebastian decided to take a little hike on his own,” Nick says, cutting in. “Gave Olena a hell of a scare, but Theo intercepted him before he got too chilly.”

“Oh dear,” Rose murmurs. Her eyes track to me. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t really do anything,” I say quickly, not wanting to claim credit when I haven’t mentioned exactly why Sebastian was able to wander away unnoticed.

“He’s so sweet ninety percent of the time, and then the other ten percent he turns into the Tasmanian Devil,” Alexis says. She commandeers the T. rex and makes it stomp on Sebastian’s head. He shrieks and twists away, delighted, and Alexis scrunches up her face at him playfully.

“Wonder where I’ve heard that before,” Nick says. He and Rose share a look, and Rose laughs a little.

“All three of you were little terrors,” she says.

“No! I was perfectly behaved,” Alexis says. A laugh slips from my lips. She cuts me a look. “You don’t believe me?”

I cover my mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, she was the very worst,” Nick tells me, a twinkle in his eye. “We should have just installed a ladder under that window when you were a teenager. It’s not like we didn’t know you were sneaking out every night.”

“I was sneaking out to do extra math homework,” Alexis says, deadpan. “And practice clarinet.”

“Is that what that was?” Paloma asks, feigning confusion. “Because I definitely thought we were making out.”

“Embouchure exercises,” Alexis parries, eyebrow arched. Paloma laughs. Trevor rolls his eyes.

“I have trouble thinking of you as a rule breaker,” I say to Connor. It’s little more than a murmur, but Nick catches it. He tips his drink toward Connor.

“Oh, he was a mellow teenager. But as a kid? I think he must have run away, what, five, six times? Never got much farther than the park, but we did once find him building a tree house to live in. He’d picked out a plot of land to grow his own crops. It was ten feet away from the swings, but still.” He chuckles. Connor doesn’t; his leg stiffens beside mine.

“Did you live together?” I ask, head tilting a little. Connor hasn’t mentioned much about Nick. I’d gotten the impression they didn’t see much of each other.

“Not exactly,” Rose says. She smooths her skirt in her lap. “After Connor’s father passed, Nick came to stay with us now and then, to help out. He was a godsend.” Nick looks faintly embarrassed.

“You needed the help. I did what I could, that’s all,” Nick says. “Anyone would have done the same.”

“You know that’s not true,” Rose says warmly. “You were like a father to these kids.”

“Dad was our father,” Connor says curtly.

Rose’s mouth purses, ever so slightly. “Of course he was. I’m just saying that your uncle helped us out when we needed it the most.”

“I was just glad to be part of your lives,” Nick says. I watch Connor in my peripheral vision. The hand on my knee has tightened, just enough to dent the skin. I put my own hand over his, and his fingers relax.

He smiles a little. It looks false. “Right. You were very helpful,” he says, politely enough. “Sorry. It’s just still hard to talk about sometimes.”

“Of course,” Nick says, his voice rough.

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 our yard, 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.