Leni didn’t realize she’d cried out until she felt her mother’s reassuring touch.
Matthew.
She looked up at her mother. “He’ll freeze out here,” she said. “It will be night soon.”
Before Mama could answer, Officer Ward said, “Space yourselves about twenty feet apart.”
He began handing out flashlights.
Leni turned her flashlight on, stared out at the lane of snow-covered ground in front of her. The whole world spiraled down to a single strip of land. She saw it in layers—bumpy white snow-covered ground, snow-filled air, white trees pointing up to a gray sky.
Where are you, Matthew?
She moved slowly, doggedly forward, distantly aware of other searchers, other lights. She heard dogs barking and voices raised; searchlights crisscrossed each other. Time passed in a weird, surreal way—in light diminishing and breaths exhaled.
Leni saw animal tracks, a pile of bones mixed with fresh blood, fallen spruce needles. Wind had sculpted the snow into peaks and swirls with glazed and hardened icy tips. Tree wells were black with debris, made by animals into makeshift dens that gave them a place to sleep out of the wind.
The trees around her thickened. The temperature dropped suddenly; she felt a rush of cold as day gave way to night. It stopped snowing. Wind pushed the clouds away and left in their stead a navy-blue sky awash in swirls of starlight. A gibbous moon shone down, its light bright on the snow. Ambient silver light set the world aglow.
She saw something. Arms. Reaching up from the snow, thin fingers splayed out, frozen. She lunged forward through the deep snow, said, “I’m coming, Matthew,” through wheezing, painful breaths, her light bobbing up and down in front of her.
Antlers. A full set, shed by a bull moose. Or maybe beneath this snow lay the bones left by a poacher. Like so many sins, the snow covered it all. The truth wouldn’t be revealed until spring. If ever.
The wind picked up, banged through the trees, sent branches flying.
She trudged forward, one light amid dozens spread out through the glowing blue-white-black forest, pinpricks of yellow searching, searching … she heard Mr. Walker’s voice call out, yelling Matthew’s name so often he started to sound hoarse.
“There! Up ahead!” someone yelled.
And Mr. Walker yelled back, “I see him.”
Leni plunged forward, trying to run through the deep snow.
Up ahead, she saw a shadowy lump … a person … kneeling by the side of a frozen river in the moonlight, head bowed forward.
Leni shoved through the crowd, elbowed her way to the front just as Mr. Walker squatted beside his son. “Mattie?” he shouted to be heard, laid a gloved hand on his son’s back. “I’m here. I’m here. Where’s your mom?”
Matthew’s head slowly turned. His face was starkly white, his lips were chapped. His green eyes seemed to have lost their hue, taken color from the ice around him. The ice beneath him glowed with moonlight. He was shaking uncontrollably. “She’s gone,” he croaked, his voice raw. “Fell.”
Mr. Walker hauled his son to his feet. Twice Matthew almost collapsed, but his dad held him upright.
Leni heard people talking in snippets.
“… fell through the ice…”
“… should know better…”
“… Jesus…”
“Come on,” Officer Ward said. “Let ’em through. We need to get this kid warmed up.”
NINE
Winter had claimed one of them; one who had been born here, who knew how to survive.
Leni couldn’t stop thinking about that, worrying about it. If Geneva Walker—Gen, Genny, the Generator, I answer to anything—could be lost so easily, no one was safe.
“My God,” Thelma said as they walked solemnly back to their vehicles. “Genny didn’t make mistakes on the ice.”