The Vanishing Season

  From the sound of it, Aunt Cylla made Pauline’s mom look like a wild optimist.

  Here’s some of her favorite advice, Pauline wrote.

  “You’re no different from anyone else.”

  “Too soon old, too late smart.”

  “Marry well.”

  But she was also loving, and gave Pauline the best bedroom, with a window that looked out across the city. Pauline wrote in so much detail—as if hungry to get it all down—that Maggie could picture it all vividly. They played cards at night, and Aunt Cylla asked Pauline all sorts of questions about James and told her to watch out for men. The only man Cylla had ever loved was a fluffy dog named Oscar that was permanently attached to her lap.

  Pauline wrote, in her typical melodramatic way, that the grayness of the neighborhood seemed to stretch around the whole world, even though it belonged just to her. It seemed to her like gray was the color of being realistic. Finally, she let James Falk kiss her and then wrote Maggie a long letter—mentioning the kiss only briefly.

  I know it sounds crazy, but I think I’m different from everyone else, and most people want to move forward, but not me. I just want to come home. I just wish I was little again.

  Anyway, Mom and Aunt Cylla are both adamant. I can’t come home until the killer is caught. And the way things are looking, that will be never.

  It sucks, because there are no Maggies here, at least not any good ones. No one to entertain me with her dry sense of humor and sweetness. You’ve got a stout heart, Maggie. Mine feels like a raisin sometimes. That’s right, I said “stout heart.” I got that from The Lord of the Rings. I’ve watched it three times so far because it’s the only DVD Aunt Cylla owns. When Aragorn says that about the Hobbit, it reminds me of you.

  Maggie didn’t know how she liked being compared to a hobbit.

  All the Maggies here have hearts like these, Pauline went on.

  She drew a droopy, anemic-looking heart.

  She didn’t ask anything about Liam.

  Since Hairica, Maggie’s mom rarely let her go into town anymore, even in the daytime. “Just until this whole thing’s over. I wish we could send you away to a rich aunt to keep you safe, but since we can’t, you’re stuck with us at home.”

  With no job and no schoolwork for break and no Pauline, Maggie had very little to do, except deal with Abe. Pauline had had to leave him behind, and he’d adopted Maggie, waiting outside the front door every morning for her to wake up and come downstairs—his tongue lolling to one side, his breath steaming into the air. She fed him and took him on her runs with her, and he gave himself the job of being her protector, chewer of her shoes, and invader of her room, when he managed to get into the house. She didn’t call Liam. She figured he was probably as bored as she was, but it didn’t feel right to see him without Pauline.

  And then one afternoon, he showed up on her porch.

  “There’s a place just behind my house where it’s frozen solid,” Liam said. “Let me take you.”

  They walked into the pine woods, Liam in front and Abe in the rear. Most guys Maggie knew would have turned back to help her over logs or held back branches to let her pass, but Liam just trudged along, and Maggie had to hold up her hands to ward off the pine branches that snapped toward her and threw snow in her eyes.

  He stopped a few feet in front of her, and she caught up beside him to see they were standing at the lake’s edge, the ice creeping across the water in long, bluish-white fingers.

  “I’ve already tested it; it’s fine. We’re only going a few feet out. Abe . . .” Liam turned to the dog, who was sitting at the edge of the ice beside them with ears down nervously. Liam pointed in the direction of Pauline’s house. “Go home. Go on.” Abe looked up at Maggie mournfully, hesitated a moment, and then slunk off into the trees again.

  Liam stepped out onto the ice, and Maggie followed.

  As a person who was afraid of drowning, walking on water in its frozen form was still far from comforting. But Liam’s confidence helped to reassure her, and they walked only ten or so feet out before they came to a hole he’d chiseled out of the ice. He’d built a windbreak on one side and left bags of snacks and a flannel blanket curled up in a ball.

  “You’ve been fishing already?” she asked.

  “Every night this week,” Liam said. Maggie tried to suppress a laugh. There were no guys she knew like Liam in the world.

  He showed her how to bait her hook, and she fished uselessly for about twenty minutes. Every time she got a nibble, she either pulled too fast or waited too long. Liam was endlessly patient.

  “Has Pauline written you?” he asked.

  Maggie nodded. “You?”

  Liam shook his head. Maggie realized this meant he didn’t know about Pauline and James. She thought about telling him. But then, it wasn’t her news to tell.

  “You know, this one time she made me help her set all these chickens free from a chicken factory in Sturgeon Bay, when we were twelve. They were all in this giant coop. We snuck over on our bikes in the middle of the night. We opened all the doors, and they all went flying everywhere, and we came home covered in feathers. And the feathers got into everything. I bet there are still feathers in my house.” Liam sighed affectionately, remembering it. “She gouged her back pretty bad, crawling under a fence. She’s still got a big scar.”

  Maggie remembered the scar, and now she pictured a twelve-year-old Pauline shimmying under a fence like a criminal. She tried to picture the chickens flying off into the dark, hundreds of them, their bright white feathers flapping and swirling in the moonlight, the sound of their wings drilling into the silent air.

  “Can you imagine the people who lived nearby, looking outside in the middle of the night because of all the noise and seeing a stampede of chickens running across their yards?” Liam asked.

  Maggie laughed.

  “But you know,” Liam went on thoughtfully, “probably most of the chickens died or got caught. It was dumb; she didn’t think it through. Pauline breaks things just as much as she fixes them. But it doesn’t stop her.”

  They sat for over an hour, until Maggie’s butt had gone completely numb.

  “Well, it’s getting late. And I wanna show you something else.”

  They stood up and began walking. Maggie’s feet suddenly slid, one backward, one forward. And then a whoosh, and her back foot plunged into the ice as it crackled around her.

  Liam grabbed her just as her other foot went under. One moment she had nothing beneath her toes, and the next they were stumbling forward and on solid ground again, but not before Maggie’s feet had gotten dunked in the slushy, frozen water.

  “I’m so sorry,” Liam said. “Here.”

  He crouched for her to climb on his back. Maggie balked.

  “Come on, you don’t want to walk through snow with wet feet.”

  “I’m heavier than I look.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Once she had her arms around his neck and her thighs around his waist, Liam rose easily, like she weighed nothing.

  He walked back in the direction of his house, but instead of turning home, he veered right. Maggie could feel the warmth of his back against her stomach and smell his Liamness, the smoky, musky smell that seemed part outdoors and part just guy.

  Maggie was just about to ask where they were going when the woods became familiar and she recognized the glade up ahead and, in the middle of it, steam rising from the finished sauna.

  “This is where I was taking you anyway.”

  He let her slide off, stood back, beamed proudly yet also shyly, and opened the door. A cloud of steamy heat enveloped her.

  Maggie looked at him questioningly and then hobbled inside on her cold feet. He followed her in, closing the door behind him.

  There was a bench on either side of the tiny room, and the whole place smelled deliciously of cedar. Maggie sank onto the bench to her right and shrugged out of her coat, pulling off her hat as Liam did the same. She felt the warm
, wet air—thick and smelling like sweet, burned wood—sink into her skin, and her muscles relaxed. Her dark hair got damp quickly, and she wiped it aside from where it was pasting itself to the sides of her face. She rested her head back and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the dripping sounds of the moisture.

  “Liam, it’s like summer in here. You found a way to bring summer to winter.”

  She glanced over at him. He smiled, looking gratified. “You like it?”

  “It’s . . . the best.” Her whole body felt limp and happy. She pulled off her scarf and her thermal shirt while Liam stoked the fire at the back, which was in a metal, racklike box low to the ground.

  “I feel like nothing bad could find us here,” she said.

  Liam sat again and lifted her feet across his lap, toward the fire. “We should warm up your feet.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to stay away from really hot stuff when your feet are frozen?” she asked.

  “I think that’s just if you have frostbite.” He began to rub her feet. “I read that you’re supposed to just put the person’s feet against your belly to warm them up.”

  “Is there anything you don’t know?” she teased.

  He rolled his eyes as if to say she was one to talk, lifted his shirt, and pulled it over her feet so that her soles were touching his stomach. “There.”

  Steam began to fill the sauna, and Maggie, a little shy about her feet against Liam, tried to relax again. They were silent for several seconds. She tried to think of whether Pauline would mind if she saw them right now.

  “Technically you’re supposed to get naked in saunas,” Liam said, with a wry grin, and Maggie smacked him on the arm.

  “Mmm-hmm. Very subtle.”

  “Just kidding.” Liam blushed all the same.

  Impulsively, without saying anything, Maggie shimmied out of her shirt, down to just her sports bra. Liam looked at the wall; then they both laughed.

  “I’m not embarrassed,” Maggie said, even though it wasn’t like her. “Sports bras aren’t like real bras.” She wasn’t trying to flirt. She just wanted to be . . . different from how she usually was.

  “Why would you ever be embarrassed? You look perfect.”

  “I don’t want to be perfect,” she blurted out. “I mean, ugh, I always try to be perfect.”

  “It’s a compliment.” Liam checked her feet under his shirt. “They’re still a little cold.” He pulled out her left foot and rubbed it, paying close attention to what he was doing. He seemed to be weighing something in his mind.

  It reminded Maggie of the first day they’d met, when they’d been so comfortable sitting together and not saying anything. But the difference was Liam’s hands on her feet, and a kind of intimacy in the way he was touching them—like he was concentrating, trying to think what would feel best, his thumbs kneading the backs of her heels, then, more softly, the fragile, sensitive flesh of her arches.

  “They’re warm now. I guess I’ll walk you home,” he finally said abruptly.

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, pulling her shirt and her coat on in two quick movements. They were so warm that the air didn’t even feel cold when they walked outside.

  At her door Liam told her he’d see her tomorrow. “With Pauline going the way she did, we didn’t really celebrate New Year’s,” he said. “We should have a belated one. I’ll think of something.” As if they’d decided they’d see each other every day. As if, without Pauline, they would be an automatic pair.

  At his house the next night, they got snacks from the fridge and a bag of cheese popcorn, and Liam led Maggie down the hall toward his room.

  “Dad’s asleep. He goes to bed at eight and wakes up at five. Old guys.” Maggie thought that Liam looked pretty wiped out himself, and she wondered why. There were circles under his eyes, and his expression was soft and sleepy.

  His room was at the end of the hall. It was neat and small and smelled like Liam, with an old model ship hanging in the window and, strung across an antique wooden desk against one wall, a bunch of tools—wire cutters, a level—things Maggie recognized from helping her dad work on their house. The gramophone was on the right side of his bed.

  Liam turned to her. “Okay, you have to sit here.” He put his hands gently on her shoulders and guided her to his bed, then waited for her to sit and settle against the pillows he’d already propped up.

  “Okay,” he said again, nodding, biting his lip. He walked around the bed and crouched toward what looked like a speaker that sat on the floor near the gramophone, propped up diagonally against the wall. The speaker was covered with a material of some kind that he’d taped on at the sides, and a mirror was glued or taped on top of the material, right in the middle. Liam checked the tape, touched the corners of the mirror, and then stood and pulled something tiny off his desk. Finally he turned to the gramophone.

  “So this has been the big part, modifying the gramophone to connect to the speaker,” he said, glancing at her. “Lots of soldering.” He raised his eyebrows at her as if this were mock-impressive. “I stayed up pretty late.” He wound the gramophone and then set the needle down. A jazzy, old record began to play through the speaker. It was Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.”

  Liam sank onto the bed beside her, against the other pillows. She looked at him quizzically. “It’s a random song, I know. I just thought it was festive.”

  He turned out the light beside his bed, held out the small, silver thing in his hand—which Maggie now saw was a laser pointer—and turned it on, pointing it at the mirror on the speaker. Then he leaned over and turned up the speaker.

  Suddenly red lights appeared on the ceiling, bouncing off the mirror, as it was tilted upward, and splitting apart. Maggie stared up at them, confused, amazed. And then the lights began to dance.

  They danced in rhythm with the beats from the speaker, leaping up at the low notes, getting lower at the high notes, jerking and swaying, depending on the speed of the notes.

  Beside her, Liam was careful not to rub arms with her, but he kept looking over at her to see what she thought.

  Maggie felt a lump of gratitude forming in her throat. It was hard to swallow. Life felt suddenly so beautiful.

  “You remembered what I said about capturing the dots,” she said.

  “Of course I remember.” Liam smiled. “I just thought, this is your first New Year’s away from Chicago, and possibly your first belated New Year’s ever. I don’t want you to feel that it doesn’t measure up. Especially since Pauline isn’t here. I thought maybe you’d be happy if I caught some dots for you.”

  “It measures up,” Maggie said, watching the lights dance across the ceiling like little red stars, like Mexican jumping beans. “It’s the best, Liam. Thank you.”

  They sat in silence until the song was over. Maggie clapped. Liam looked sheepish but happy. “There’s only one song on each side of the record,” he explained.

  “That was perfect,” Maggie said.

  “I guess it’s kinda weird. I mean, I guess it lives up to how people think me and my dad are so weird, when we do stuff like this.”

  “Every village has got a few idiots,” Maggie offered. “Don’t worry about them.”

  Liam looked slightly convinced. They scooted down farther, so that they were lying down, staring at the now-still dots on the ceiling.

  She could hear him breathing.

  He looked at her in the dark. “She still hasn’t written,” Liam said. “I miss her.”

  Maggie wasn’t surprised he’d said it. And she meant it when she replied, “I miss her too.”

  Soon his breath slowed, and he drifted off to sleep. Maggie wanted with all her being to stay, but instead she slipped out of the covers, her heart thudding as she moved away from his warm body, and hiked home under the stars.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  14


  THURSDAY EVENING, BECAUSE MAGGIE WAS GOING STIR-CRAZY, HER DAD SAID she could go into town to the library to pick up some books they had on hold.

  “We can’t keep her home all the time,” he said to her mom, who looked up from some papers she’d brought home from work. “We’re practically pushing her into the arms of the mysterious Liam Witte, who we’ve never even met.”

  Maggie felt her face flame red. Her dad seemed delighted at this reaction.

  “The past couple years, I was thinking you might be gay,” her dad said. “To be honest, I was kind of hoping you were gay. I was a teenage boy once. I know what they’re thinking.”

  “Oh my God, Dad, stop talking.” Her mom stifled a laugh. She handed Maggie her keys and shooed her out the door. Maybe that had been her dad’s plan all along.

  Maggie drove slightly below the speed limit, because she’d learned that you never knew when you might hit an ice slick. She was becoming an expert at navigating the wintry, country roads. Downtown was the proverbial ghost town: Only the library and the convenience store were open. Maggie parked in the lot at the far end of Main Street and started walking, pulling her coat tighter against her and cursing herself for not bringing her hat. The hood of her coat just wasn’t cutting it; cold air slipped in through the sides and gnawed at her ears.

  At the end of Main, the library was lit up like a beacon, still festooned with evergreen garlands and red ribbons and silver bells. It was corny, but Maggie was getting used to the quaintness of downtown; she kind of liked it.

  Inside she picked up her mom’s books from Lillian the librarian, who—by now—knew her by name, and then turned and hurried back down Main Street. She decided to veer off to the left to the convenience store to get a Snickers, and then she cut down the side street that led diagonally back to Main.

  The sound of footsteps off to the left behind her made her halt for a moment and look over her shoulder, but she figured it must just be the echo of her feet, because there was no one there, just garbage cans, dark windows, empty shops. The trees along the front of some of the storefronts swayed in the frigid breeze. She started up again, a little faster, a bit spooked but knowing she was just being twitchy.