Most of the time her father would just stand there, letting Aurora’s anger blow over him. Technically, itwashis fault: he’d promised Aurora that as soon as it paid to sell the bakery with a tidy profit, they’d move back to her neck of the woods. But the bakery lost money every year, and the truth was, deep down, her father had no intention of leaving New England. Ben had given only one piece of advice to Cassie as she was growing up.Before you decide what you want to be, he said,know where you want to be.
It did not snow that night until Cassie went to sleep, and when she woke in the morning the world had changed. Outside, a white lawn rolled right up to her bedroom window, and hills and drifts had smoothed the landscape so completely she almost lost her sense of direction. She grabbed an apple and stuffed it in her pocket; then she sat at the kitchen table to pull her boots on.
She heard the argument clearly, although it came from her parents’
room upstairs. “Sell the bakery,” her mother threatened. “Or I can’t tell you what I’ll be driven to do.”
Cassie’s father snorted. “What could you possibly be driven to that you don’t do already?” Cassie jumped as a blast of wind whitened the window before her. “Why don’t you just go home?”
Go home. Cassie’s eyes widened. For a long while there was silence, save the shrieks and moans of the storm. Then she heard her mother’s exit line. “I’m not feeling well now. Not well at all.” And after that came the unmistakable ting of the bourbon decanter Aurora kept on her vanity being opened. The more she drank, the less Cassie’s father could tolerate her. It was a vicious cycle.
“Jesus Christ,” Cassie’s father said tightly, and then he thundered down the stairs. He was dressed as she was, ready to brave the blizzard.
He glanced at Cassie and touched her cheek, almost an apology. “TakePicture Perfect 55care of her, will you, Cass?” he said, but before she could answer, he left.
Cassie finished lacing up her boots and cooked an egg, soft-boiled, just the way her mother liked. She carried it up on a plate with a piece of toast, figuring if her mother had something else in her stomach, it might not be so bad today.
When Cassie cracked the door open, Aurora was lying across the bed, her arm flung over her eyes. “Oh, Cassie,” she whispered. “Honey, please. Thelight.”
Cassie obediently stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. She smelled the cloying sweetness of the bourbon hovering at the edges of the room, mingling with traces of her father’s rage.
Aurora took one look at the breakfast tray Cassie had set down and started to cry. “Did he tell you where he went? He’s out there, in this, thisblizzard—” She jerked her arm toward the window to prove her point. Then she rested her forehead against her hand, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know why this happens. I just don’t know why.”
Cassie took one look at her mother’s eyes, red-rimmed and raw, and she planted her hands on her hips. “Get up.”
Aurora turned toward her daughter and blinked. “Pardon me?”
“I said get up.” She was only ten, but she had grown old long ago.
Cassie pulled her mother off the bed and started handing her clothes:
a turtleneck, a sweater, bulky socks. After a moment of disbelief, Aurora began to follow her, silently accepting what she offered.
When Cassie opened the front door, Aurora took a step back. The chill of winter followed her inside. “Go,” Cassie commanded. She jumped into the snow, grinning for a moment as the drifts hollowed up to her thighs. She turned to her mother. “I mean it.”
It took fifteen minutes to get Aurora more than five feet away from the front porch. She was shivering and her lips were nearly violet, unaccustomed as she was to being outside in a storm. The wind ripped Cassie’s hat off and sent it dancing over the snow. She saw her mother bend down, like a child, and touch the drifts.
Cassie scooped a mittenful of snow and rounded it into a neat ball.
“Mom,” she yelled, a minute’s warning, and then she threw it as hard as she could.
It hit Aurora in the shoulder. She stood perfectly still, blinking, unsure what she’d done to deserve that.
Cassie leaned down and made a pile of snowballs. She tossed one after another at her mother, leaving her mark on Aurora’s shoulder and breast and thigh.
Cassie had never seen anything like it. It was as if her mother had no idea what was expected of her. As if she had no idea what to do.
Cassie clenched her hands at her sides. “Fight back!” she yelled, her words freezing in the cold. “Goddammit! Fight back!”
She leaned down again, more slowly this time, waiting for her mother to copy her movements. Aurora was sluggish with alcohol, and she stumbled as she straightened, but in her palm she held a snowball.
Cassie watched as her mother wound her arm back and sent the snow flying.
It hit her square in the face. Cassie sputtered and wiped the ice from her eyelashes. Her mother was already building a small arsenal. In the blinding white, Aurora’s eyes didn’t look nearly as red; in the frigid cold, her body was starting to move with a little more rhythm.
Cassie strained her ears to catch a sound over the howl of the wind.
It was clear and fine, her mother’s laugh, and it got louder and lighter as it broke free from where it had been locked. Smiling, Cassie whirled in the snow, arms outstretched, and offered herself up to the soft, sweet blows.
