Dead of Winter Read Online Free Page B

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    Snow.
    Jake Dodds was so very tired of
it.
    It seemed winter had crept in while he
was sleeping, draping drop cloths over the town of Miriam’s Cove
and hushing itself with guilty whispers while it awaited his
reaction to the desertion of color.
    It was everywhere, layered on the
ground, hunched over the hedgerows in the garden, bowing the
branches of the trees in the yard, shotgun blasts of it on the
sides of cars and windows, fired by children driven by manic
excitement. It was on the roofs, the sills, the shoulders of people
ducking to avoid the sharp wind that sent it flurrying into their
grimacing faces.
    Everywhere.
    And it didn’t seem as if it would ever
stop. It didn’t seem as if the underlying vibrant green luster of
life would ever return. Even the sun had been reduced to a foggy
white cyst beneath the pale skin of the sky.
    He was starting to feel as if the
whole goddamn season with its twinkling lights and carols, dazzling
storefronts and endless slew of commercials advertising
mind-numbing electric toys, was to blame for the snow. People
expected snow for Christmas and maybe the collective power of that
expectation was enough to make it so. Whatever the reason, he
didn’t like it one bit. Christmas was a time for sitting around the
fire eating marshmallows and fruit cake, for decorating the tree
with loved ones and maybe indulging in a snifter of brandy before
bed, for gifts that meant something and for the excited chatter of
children when they discovered the bounty beneath the
tree.
    But now, six days before Christmas,
sitting by his window and staring out at an almost monochrome
world, Jake realized that all that was gone, not only in the minds
of the masses, but from his own life too.
    A distinct awareness of family values
and a fondness for the ritualistic aspect of the season had not
been enough to keep his wife alive or his children from growing up
and scattering themselves around the world. Leaving him alone with
the white and an empty house to watch it from.
    Clearing the condensation away with a
swipe of his hand, he scowled at the silent fall of snow as
children giggled and flung handfuls of the stuff at each
other.
    In his garden stood a long-suffering
walnut tree, a beard of white nestled in its crotch almost like
mimicry of the season’s patron saint.
    Jake thought he knew what it felt like
to be that tree – immobile, rooted to the ground, trapped and
powerless to do anything but stand by and watch the passage of
time, unable to run away from the grief, the sorrow and all the
dark things that sharpened the edges of life.
    He shook his head, sliding the cover
over the well from which such melodrama sprung and allowed himself
the faintest hint of a smile as a tall, wiry figure in a brown suit
and overcoat appeared, ducked his head against the snow and turned
the corner into Jake’s driveway.
    A visitor was just what he needed now
and visitors were seldom welcomer than Lenny Quick.
    Jake groaned at the ache in his bones
as he rose from the seat by the window, and he took a moment to
steady himself before making his way to the front door.
    “ God’s dandruff,” Lenny
said, snapping his hat against the palm of his hand. He inspected
the hallway as if he’d never seen it before (though he had been
here at least once every week for the last thirty years – with the
exception of that time in early ’90 when pneumonia had kept him in
a hospital bed) before he turned to watch Jake shutting the soft
white world outside.
    “ No end to it, is there?”
Jake said, smiling now. Ever since Julia’s death, he had felt as if
the walls were closing in around him, that somewhere beyond the
rose-patterned wallpaper, a clock was ticking. He heard it at
night, faint but most definitely there. Tick-tick-tick , the winding down of
his own deathwatch. Company helped silence that sound and made the
ghosts nothing but tricks of light and shadow.
    Lenny shivered and brushed the snow
from his shoulders.