The sheriff finally arrived at the old folks home. Mrs. Collins was on the porch, standing next to her mother in the wheelchair. Her mother was saying something nonsensical about the end of the world as Mrs. Collins berated three teenage volunteers to “put their backs into it” and shovel all the snow from the front porch. The sheriff felt especially bad for one of them.
“We don’t want my mother falling and breaking her hip, do we, Mary Katherine?”
“No, ma’am,” Mary Katherine said, her face red and snotty from the cold.
The sheriff was not looking forward to this little chat with Mrs. Collins. He remembered when he first took the job, the Collins family invited him over for dinner in their ten-thousand-square-foot McMansion with the long driveway and swimming pool and tennis court and wine cellar that was slightly bigger than his apartment. Just a nice, cozy dinner to politely remind him that the second word of “civil servant” was “servant.” And if he was the town’s servant, then they were the masters. Nothing was ever said. But it was understood. The sheriff endured their tense “We are normal. We are fine” display. Especially when Brady spilled his soup on the fine linen and tensed up like a guy caught skimming from his drug-dealing boss. The sheriff knew the minute the door closed, Brady was going to catch hell. But at least he had a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion to be miserable in. The girl with the painted nails didn’t get a hundred.
And Brady’s mom could cook. He had to give her that.
Everything had been just fine between master and servant until a skeleton was found, and the sheriff ordered the woods shut down pending further investigation.
“Sheriff, I don’t have another week to lose,” Mr. Collins had told him. “But I do have a team of lawyers.”
“Great. Then, maybe you can get them out here to help us dig for more skeletons on your land. You’re building family-friendly suburbs. You don’t want those news vans to think you don’t care about a dead child, right?” the sheriff said.
It wasn’t exactly the shot heard ’round the world, but it was enough to prompt Mr. Collins to go “new sheriff shopping” the next election. But the sheriff didn’t care. As long as he solved the case, the community would stand by him, and he would keep his job. And if not, then not. He had seen worse things than second place.
“Hello, Mrs. Collins. How is your husband?” the sheriff said politely.
“Wonderful. He’s so pleased that you’ve stopped his construction…for another week.”
“Just trying to keep the town safe, ma’am,” the sheriff said, tipping his cap with the tone of giving her the finger.
“Well, you’re doing a wonderful job,” she said with a smile.
When the sheriff entered the home, he saw Kate Reese at the end of the hallway. She was taking out Christmas decorations from a box. And she looked just as beautiful as she did the night of their date that had started at 8:00 p.m. and ended when Mr. Wong said in his broken English that “we close now.” The sheriff didn’t know how three hours had passed, but they had, and then it had been time to break open their fortunes.
“What does yours say?” he had asked.
“A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed. How about yours?”
“You Will Find Happiness with a New Love.”
Ten minutes later, they were making out in his car in the parking lot like sixteen-year-olds. They had only kissed, but that only made it better.
“What are you doing out in this storm?” Kate Reese asked.
“I’m the sheriff. What are you doing?”
“I’ve got a mortgage. And Christopher is out with his friends, sledding.”
The sheriff could feel the shift in her. Once she learned that the skeleton had been in the ground for fifty years, she had relaxed with her son. A little.
“No more house arrest?” the sheriff asked.
“Parole,” she said. “If he goes in those woods again…solitary.”
The sheriff could feel eyes prying into their conversation from every corner of the place. From the old ladies playing cards through their arthritis to the staff sneaking cigarettes outside. So, he leaned over privately and whispered the reason he was here. She nodded and walked him down the hallway into one of the rooms. Then, she left him to his police business. The sheriff saw the old man sitting in his chair, bandages wrapped around his head from his exploratory eye surgery.
“Excuse me, sir? This is Sheriff Thompson,” he said.
“Well, hello, Sheriff. Nice to know you actually work, since I voted for you,” Ambrose said. “How can I help you?”
The sheriff took his hat off out of respect, even though the old man couldn’t see him do it. He took a seat across from him.
“Sir…my men combed the woods and found the body of a little boy.”
“Yes?”
“I believe it’s your little brother David.”
David Olson’s older brother, Ambrose, sat still as a statue. The sheriff couldn’t see his eyes. But slowly, he noticed that tears started running from the bottoms of his bandages.
Chapter 33
Christopher looked at the sky filled with clouds. He couldn’t remember ever seeing so many. Big beautiful clouds spilling snow on them like confetti at a parade.
His friends couldn’t believe their luck.
A snow day!
A big, delicious snow day.
“Jeez, Chris. Maybe you really do control the weather,” Special Ed joked.
Christopher forced a smile. Of course, he knew the snow could have been a coincidence.
Or not.
His mother had dropped him off at the 3 Hole Golf course that morning to meet his friends for “sledding” with a hug, a kiss, and a stern reminder.
“No woods. I’m not playing around.”
“Thanks, Mom,” he said.
“There’s no thanks here. The only reason I am letting you do this at all is that half the town is on this hill. Do not leave this spot until I come back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
The mothers told their boys they would pick them up after work (or a day of beauty, in the case of Special Ed’s mom). Either way, that gave them more than eight hours to get back to the tree house and finish.
This was their chance.
They waited for their mothers to drive away, then walked back through the parking lot with their red plastic sleds. They passed parents grumbling about longer commutes and road conditions while their children made plans with their friends to squeeze the most out of God’s unplanned vacation day.
Fueled by Special Ed’s thermos of hot chocolate and backpack of junk food, the boys trudged through the snow all the way back to the Mission Street Woods. They stopped just outside. The trees were limp under the weight of the snow. Silent witnesses to history. Christopher thought these trees had been here for hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. These trees were older than their country. These trees would be here long after they were all dead.
Unless Mr. Collins got to them first.
Christopher led the boys to the spot where he hid all the windows. As they dug them out, the snow got caught on their wrists, giving their arms an ice cream headache. But Christopher felt nothing.
They reached the clearing within five minutes, dragging the windows behind them on their red plastic sleds. The boys fought their way through the snowdrifts. Cutting through the beautiful white powder that seemed to hide the clearing away from the world. Like a mountain before anyone ever thought to ski.