The girl learned that the trap lines he set followed the lives of the animals, not just from season to season but along with weather. She learned to recognize the sly, cunning fox, the sleek marten, the ever-present skunk, the sharp coyote, and the distant, howling wolf. She learned to identify the yellowing marks of telltale urine, the soft, dimpled snow over a dug burrow. The heat of scat as it buries itself, the clue of a few hairs caught in a branch, the musky smell of an animal in the far distance.
She was a snow girl and could run in the snow forever, Mr. B clapping his hands, his mouth making those funny shapes of joy. But most importantly, she was a trapper and learned to follow in his tracks like the surest of hunters.
In the snow it is easy to get lost. The snow girl kept tiny pieces of thread in her pocket, the ones she unraveled from her sweater cuffs, now bleeding up her arms. On the rare times when Mr. B was not looking she reached into her pocket, where she kept the threads, and tied them on the branches. Not up high where Mr. B was, but down at her level, hidden in the trees.
She told herself she was doing this to find a way back to the cabin if she ever got lost. But she knew that Mr. B would never let her outside alone. He would track and kill her if she did try to escape. She knew that as real as day, and could imagine her intestines blooming red on the snow.
There was another reason to do it—a secret she could not even tell herself, because if she did Mr. B might sense it. He would see it in her trusting eyes.
She wondered if Mr. B would catch her, or notice the tiny bits of thread wound in inconspicuous places: on the new bud of a fir tree, wrapped around a tender cedar branch. But he never did. He was too busy looking for animals in the snow.
When Naomi woke she could see the empty parking lot outside her window, covered with snow, and farther up the road, the Shell station.
And then the world disappeared.
Snow between you and me, Madison: snow and a world of hurt that had to happen for three years—even if you are dead, especially if you are alive.
Naomi spread her fingers on the window, feeling the cold drops of condensation on her palms. She frowned angrily at the whirling bank of snow over the mountains. She didn’t like being held back.
Behind her the phone rang. She knew, turning, who it would be.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” she said.
His voice was a drink of water after a long illness.
“It’s Mrs. Cottle,” Jerome said.
“I’ll come,” she said, without a pause.
She headed down from the mountain ranges, driving slowly as the snow disappeared off the roads and the air warmed, onto the freeway that led her past the town where the Culvers and her good friend Diane lived, and on down to the fertile valley, where the air was still cold but the green grass was budding.
That was the thing about Oregon: one could travel from snow to desert in just one day. The town of Opal was the happiness between.
Jerome was waiting for her outside the farmhouse when she pulled in early that afternoon. She took in the tidy gutters, the clean roof, and the mended fence line. A farm without stock, a home without children. The world here was dying. But underneath the earth still beat. Her eyes admired the familiar hills, the valleys and the mountains above where they had so often hiked and camped.
She got out of her car. As always, her heart twisted upon seeing him.
Jerome: her foster brother. Jerome, who had lost his arm in the war; Jerome, who now worked part-time as a deputy sheriff in the same office where she first had arrived.
His empty T-shirt sleeve was pinned up around the shoulder. His black hair moved in the cool breeze. Slim jeans hugged his hips; she could see the muscles of his stomach through the thin cloth of his shirt.
He hugged her with his one arm. She smelled mint soap.
They walked together up the steps. “You’ve been keeping the home nice,” she said.
He shrugged. “Custodian of nowhere.”
“Now, now,” even though it had been what she was thinking.
Mrs. Cottle was wrapped in a thick cardigan and three layers of crocheted blankets. Her Bible was at hand. She was sleeping, peacefully, her blue-mapped eyelids trembling. Naomi leaned over and kissed her cheek, lovingly.
“She was awake a moment ago, I swear,” Jerome said, laughing.
“I know.”
They ate shepherd’s pie and fresh carrots at the dining room table. Jerome had a glass of cider. She had water.
There was something comfortable about Jerome. It had been that way since she was brought here. A part of her let out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. Mrs. Cottle used to joke they were like twins, both knapping fires of life.
But they were not twins. They were something different.
“You should have told me,” she said.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” he said, cutting the shepherd’s pie with his one hand. “You have your work.” He took a bite. “It wouldn’t change it, anyhow.”
“You’re good to take care of her.”
“I miss you, Naomi.”
“I miss—” Naomi’s cheeks colored.
His dark eyes looked up under faint brows. When they were younger she thought these were butterfly brows, so gentle and expressive they were.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you,” he said.
“Only a few months,” she said, hopefully.
“More like six,” he answered, softening it with a smile.
“Counting?” she asked lightly.
“We belong together,” he said.
She stared at him, the tender cords of his neck, and the knotted burl of scarred bone at his shoulder where the right arm was missing. After she first came here he would call to her outside, running across sunlit fields. Come see the stones, Naomi, he would say. Come see the—
“I should get back on the road,” she said, longing to stay, afraid of it.
“Stay the night,” he begged.
She thought of Madison Culver. She was probably nothing now, just bones, with drying flesh held together with the barest hide—she had seen such things—or more likely the various parts of her carried away by wild animals.
There were times there was no child at the end of a journey, only a memory. She didn’t want it to be true for the Culvers, but it had been true before. If she could give them nothing else she would give them that solace. Nothing, she knew, was worse than not having an answer.
While there was still a chance, she could not stay. Jerome didn’t understand, she thought. Or maybe, his eyes said, he did. Maybe he understood there would always be a reason for her to leave.
Come see the stones, Naomi, Jerome had called to her in the days after she had arrived, and they ran the ridges above the farmhouse through a sea of grass until they reached a mountain of rock under a blue clap of sky. Running with Jerome, the sweetgrass waving around their waists—
At the top of the ridge, the sky close enough to touch, they stopped: the stones.
It was a magical place that not even the local rock hunters knew about, a cliff where the earth had opened up, showing her true self in all her beauty: a cascade of brilliant jasper and hot agates, prisms and sparkles of quartz, so you might plunge your hand in and come out holding jewels. The natural gemstones may not have been worth anything, but they were special to Naomi and Jerome.