Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman Page A

journey seemed to begin when Brendan was older, and a new baby had been added to the family.
    I had to back up a few steps to study a picture of Brendan on a couch—its fabric a stiff, shiny gold—with a telltale white bundle positioned rigidly on his knees. Someone hovered in the foreground, only her arm showing, to keep the baby from rolling off.
    The Hamiltons had taken a few vacations that had been immortalized in film. There was Brendan at the beach, digging a sandcastle, with the smaller boy dumping out a pail of sand on top. They’d gone skiing, Brendan waving a pole, his little brother beside him, no poles and concentrating fiercely on staying upright.
    But pictures with Brendan in them were relatively rare. By far the lion’s share featured the younger brother. Captured in the photos was a side of Eileen I’d never seen before, one that seemed alien to the woman I knew. She wore that universal expression of maternity, the same look exhibited by everyone from celebrity to welfare mom, as she gazed down at her baby. How I’d longed to wear it one day: a certain positioning of the face and crinkling of the eyes, a smile that held something unstoppable.
    There were filler shots too, nobody in them, just vistas of sky and leaves and lawns and lakes, the seasons rotating by until the basement lathing had been almost completely covered.
    I pivoted at the corner and began on the last wall. Here the time captured by the photos seemed to slow down. No more progression of seasons; all was winter, snow and ice. There was a photo of white fields behind the two foursquares, then a shot of the distant lake, but from up close, its surface ridged and humpy when it froze.
    Then came Brendan dressed in winter gear and dragging a sled up a hill, his little brother now capable of holding on, but so padded that he couldn’t bend at the middle to sit properly. He was tipping backward on the sled, almost horizontal, and Brendan had twisted around to look, stilled forever in the moment that he laughed.
    Then the photographs abruptly ended.
    There was a long slice of wall that Eileen had left bare.
    A lone picture had been tacked up in the middle of that strip. It was of a man with red hair, taken as he crawled across the ice, his face pressed to its scabby surface. My father-in-law, with his cheek glistening black. Was that blood? I studied the picture, making out other men gathered in the distance. A hockey game Bill had been part of? I knew those could get pretty rough. But why, of all photos, had Eileen chosen to display this one?
    Very few shots of Bill were included on this wall. It was as if the elaborate collage represented the standings of each family member.
    Eileen, the baby, Brendan, Bill. No. The baby, Eileen, Brendan, Bill. And most of the shots of Brendan also included the baby.
    The cessation of photos must mark the time of his death. Brendan’s brother had died so terribly young.
    Shame engulfed me. I hadn’t known
anything
.
    He didn’t want you to know,
came a voice.
    I was carried along on a wave of nausea, staring into space, unseeing, until a few other shapes before me took form. In addition to obscuring the walls, Eileen had also topped a long table, something like a workbench, with an array of objects. A frost of dust lay on every surface.
    The fact of the passing time hit me like an electric shock. How many minutes had just been eaten away, looking at those photographs? Eileen could be on her way home by now.
    But she got off to a late start, I reassured myself, delayed by whatever she’d come back here for. I’d just take one more quick look. Who knew if I’d ever get the chance to come down here again? And the things in this room held answers—partial answers at least—if I could understand them.
    One part of the table was concealed by a large sheet of paper, the kind torn off a roll. Someone—Eileen, of course—had penciled a series of quick