In the Bleak Midwinter

“Good night, Kristen. We’ll talk tomorrow.” She shut the town house door and hunched her shoulders against the pelting snow, high-stepping past him to the truck in a futile effort to keep her boots from getting even more wet. She was inside, brushing off her jacket, by the time he climbed up into the cab, wincing a little at the ache in his hip. Definitely too long a day. He fired up the engine and sat for a moment, too wiped out to shift into gear and begin the long, slow ride back home. He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. Back to the rectory, that was. Had to take Clare home first. On the radio, a psychiatrist was incredulously quizzing her caller who had fallen in love with her sister’s husband. “Reality Check!” Dr. Adele barked like a drill instructor.

He smiled as he reversed out of the parking space, his four-wheel drive chugging against the accumulated snow. “So you really were an officer,” he said.

“Sorry if I rolled over you in there, but I—”

“No, no, I appreciate it, really. I never know the right way to handle these scenes. Try to comfort someone and you’re just as likely to get an ashtray over the head. Hang tough and be professional, and next thing you know you’ve got a reputation as a heartless monster or worse, there’s a suit for police brutality on your desk.”

“Mmmm.” She turned her face away from him and leaned against the window.

He concentrated on the road, turning the defroster on full to clear the steam from his windshield. The snow came at him horizontally as he drove, as if nature were trying to sandblast his truck with the icy flakes. Traction was bad, even with his weight and the four-wheel drive. It had been a hell of a night. Thank god he hadn’t let Clare drive home in that ridiculous little mosquito of hers.

Between the roar of the heater and the annoying jingle for an auto dealership on the radio—“Fort Henry Ford for Quick Credit Cash Back Cars!”—he missed the first two or three muffled gulps from the other side of the cab. He risked taking his eyes off the road for a moment. Clare was twisted so he couldn’t see her face, her arms wrapped tightly around her midsection. He heard her again, the sound of something noisy being swallowed.

“Clare?” For a selfish second, he thought please, please, not another distressed woman. I can’t handle any more today. “Are you okay?” The back of her head jerked up and down. He saw the bank of yellow lights ahead and coasted to a slow stop well before the oddly angled intersection of Route 39 and Tanco Road. He had once waited here while the Millers Kill fire department used the jaws of life to remove three mangled bodies from a station wagon that had tried to beat the light in bad weather. The driver had been a guy his age. “Clare,” he said, turning toward her, “if you’re okay, will you please look at me?”

The back of her head jerked back and forth. “Clare?” He thought back to how he felt earlier this evening, the weight and tension dropping off of him as he sat across from her at the kitchen table, talking. “Clare, who do you talk to? You asked me that, remember? Who do you talk to, Clare?”

Her voice was thick and tight. “I’ll be all right. It’s just been a long—” she couldn’t continue. The lights turned green. He didn’t move. “It’s just—” she tried again. “She makes me think of my sister,” she finally got out.

“Your sister,” he said. “The blond girl in those pictures on your table? What about your sister?”

She turned to him, her eyes bright, her face drawn and pinched. “She died. Five years ago this Thanksgiving.” She scrubbed her face with her open hands.

In the mirror, he could see distant lights headed up Route 39. He shifted the truck into gear and carefully drove on through the icy intersection. “Tell me,” he said, wondering as he said it why he was asking. He respected people’s privacy more than most, and this was clearly a private pain. “What was her name?”

“Grace. She was . . .” She coughed. “She was like a beautiful decoration on a Christmas tree. Funny and loving and frivolous. She was the sweet little sister and I was the tomboy know-it-all big sister. She was the beautiful one and I was the smart one.” One side of her mouth crooked up. “She was always trying to get me more interested in clothes and makeup and dating and all that girl stuff that came so naturally to her.” She plucked at the leather sleeve of her coat. “She gave me this jacket when I made first lieutenant, because she thought it looked like something a dashing aviatrix would wear.”

“She sounds like a very special person,” he said quietly.