Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman Page B

sketches along its length. Eileen had been an archeology student once, before coming back to this cold place, which turned out to be filled with so much tragedy. In her studies, she’d probably learned to draw, to document her findings.
    Here on the length of paper were captured a small form running, then a shed or little shack, and finally a black oval, violently scribbled in with pencil to provide shading. Arrows had been scrawled between the oval and the shed. Beneath the arrows were numbers. Three, seven, ten, and a question mark. Two, five, eight, and another one.
    I had no idea what the numbers meant, nor what I was seeing elsewhere on the table.
    Canceled checks in a neat stack. I flipped through them rapidly, then replaced the pile. They were all made out to cash, and appeared to be starter checks, without Eileen’s name or address printed on them. On each memo line, the same word had been jotted over and over, in the sharp quills of my mother-in-law’s handwriting.
Resurrection
.
    A consignment shop, or cutesy antique store was my first guess. Then my thoughts turned wilder. Some kind of service aimed at parents who’d lost children? The worst kind of scam artist targeting desperate people, driven all but insane by grief, with some life-after-death fantasy?
    The time
. Great amounts of it being gobbled up in questions and confusion.
    I scrabbled at the flaps of two cartons, both of them stuffed with tiny, folded outfits as out-of-date as Eileen’s own.
    Then I picked up a rag doll that looked as if it might dissolve into dust at my touch. But the thing remained intact, and I raised it, wrinkling my nose against sour smells of age and sorrow. Around the doll’s wrist, Eileen had attached a heavy stock card that bristled again with her handwriting.
Pooky.
    Nearby, a clump of coarse hairs had been bound together and shellacked. The spiky letters on its label read:
Rascal
.
    Dog hair? Was I touching fur from a dead dog? The tuft singed my fingers and I let it plummet, not caring when it missed the desk and fell with a stiff crackle onto the concrete floor.
    Here were my mother-in-law’s aborted career dreams. Poured into a ghoulish museum exhibit, an archeological dig that chronicled her second son’s foreshortened life.
    I stared down at my hands, clenched into rocks, then squinted into the main part of the basement. I would have to use the light from this vile shrine to memorize my way back to the stairs before closing the door. Jointed tubes of ductwork hung from the ceiling like some multi-limbed beast, but otherwise my path was clear. Just as I was about to sink into the bath of darkness, one final object lying on the table gripped my gaze.
    A splintery snake of rope.
    It matched the piece Teggie had dug up. Another tag had been secured to the end. With savage strokes of her pen, the cardstock torn through in places, Eileen had scrawled two words this time.
    Brendan’s idiocy
.

Chapter Seventeen
    I stabbed my feet into the boots I’d hidden on the porch, and raced down the steps.
    There’d been no need to worry about anybody spotting my car. It was fully covered by snow, indistinguishable from Jean’s Buick. She hadn’t returned yet, and neither had Eileen.
    But there was a gray police car parked several yards away. My heart began to thud.
    Dave Weathers got out.
    I trudged toward him across the still-unplowed road, stumbling over a drift. Dave thrust one gloved hand out, tripping a bit himself as he tried to steady me. His chest heaved in his police-issue snow gear. He leaned over for balance, breathing hard. “What are you doing here?”
    I offered up my first lie stupidly. “I came to see Aunt Jean.”
    Dave stared at me. He seemed the bumbling brother—certainly he had none of Vern’s paternal strength—but that didn’t mean he was dumb. Groping for an explanation that would come closer to the truth, I said, “And I thought