I feel like crying now.
“And maybe you can check on my car? Let the police know?”
I think about my phone in the car, how it must be sending out a signal. How John will know how to find it online. We share an account.
Maybe they are already on the way!
Something about this thought feels strange. I don’t want it to feel strange and I fight against it.
They will come, won’t they?
Oh God… how it feels strange, a sudden alarm as I wonder about the log on the fire, and Nicole’s words and Evan’s behavior.
The man folds the paper carefully into the pocket of his flannel shirt.
“Sure thing!” he says with enthusiasm.
I feel relief, though it rests on shaky ground.
I talk myself through it. The man will go to town and call my family. He will check on my car and tell the police where I am. Maybe later today when he feels better about the trees we can leave Alice and he will drive me to town to get my car and fill it with gas from his tanks. Maybe I can drive home myself.
Alice pulls a chair up to a cupboard.
“Do you like tea?” she asks me.
It takes me a moment to process her question. I am still adjusting to this new situation—not going to town. Not calling my family.
“Yes,” I say, finally.
“Look at all the kinds we have!” she says, opening the cupboard to reveal several canisters of loose leaf tea.
“Come here and pick one!” she demands.
And I obey.
“You can heat the water with the stove. The generator should have it working,” the man says.
I smell coffee so it must be his dead wife who liked tea. He wants me to have some now. Maybe he wants to put my mind at ease—because there is no need to worry. He will contact my family. They will come for me.
As he turns to leave the kitchen, a thought rushes in and I call after him.
“My purse!” I say. “Is it with my clothes?”
He shrugs. Ponders.
“I think you left it in the truck. I didn’t see it last night in the house.”
I can’t remember either, but it’s unlike me to leave my purse. I carried it with me into the storm.
“Can you bring it inside? Before you go?”
“Sure thing,” he says.
He leaves the room. Alice and I make tea. I listen for the door, for the man to return with my purse.
But the next sound I hear is the truck driving away.
6
