“Trees.”
“Any houses?”
“Somewhere,” Daphne said. “Nothing I can see.”
“Can you tell if we’re near the bottom of a hill or near the top?” Eddie tried to phrase this one carefully, because what he wanted to ask was how well anchored the car appeared to be and did they have further to fall?
Daphne put a hand on either side of the window frame and pulled herself up farther to look.
“Jesus,” Eddie said, watching her dangle there. “Be careful.” From where he sat, she appeared to be weightless, boneless, her infinitely flexible self rising up through the window like smoke. Then she came down.
“About halfway? It looks straight going up and straight going down.”
None of this struck him as good news. “Okay, come get the cup and we’ll talk about it.”
Down she came to take the Coke cup in her mittened hand and was gone again, dispensing with his waste. Now he could see it snowing into the car. If they survived, he was going to talkto Abigail about signing Daphne up for gymnastics or ballet. He would pay for the lessons himself. This talent she had, something should come of it. Never had he seen a human being so assured in her own body.
She cranked the window closed and slowly worked her way back into the front seat, sitting in the wheel well on the passenger side.
“Don’t you want to get under the blanket?” he asked.
“I’m all wet from the snow.” She ran her mitten over her hat, flicking away the flakes.
If the car had opened up a break in the woods, the snow had closed it. If someone was looking for them, they were now harder to find. But no one was looking for them. Abigail and Leda would be waking up at the hospital now. Abigail might possibly call the house again, but when he didn’t answer for the second time, she would be annoyed, not concerned. She would decide that in the future, he would have to call her. With everything she had to deal with, she would still be a good way away from worrying about the two of them. “So I’m thinking,” he began.
“I’m going to have to find somebody to help us,” Daphne said.
Eddie smiled at her, this remarkable, bloody-faced child. He was almost too moved to speak. “Yes.”
“You can’t go,” she said. “And no one’s going to find us down here. We could wait awhile, see if maybe it gets warmer, but it could also snow more, and that would make it harder to walk. Hey, do you think we could turn the car on for a little while to run the heater?” It had only now occurred to her.
“I tried,” he said. “The car’s dead.” This wasn’t true, of course. He hadn’t tried, but lying was preferable to explaining his fear of fire.Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice.What was it with Frost poems and car accidents?
“So what am I going to do?”
As if he knew. “You’re going to pull yourself out of the window and go to the top of the hill. Check and see if anyone’s in the farmhouse. Look there first. If no one’s there, then you need to find the road. There are two roads, one on either side of the hill, and either one you walk down is going to bring you to a house in less than a mile. When you see a house, you knock on the door. If nobody answers, go to the next house. If a car passes you, wave at it like crazy so they’ll stop.”
All this time, Daphne hadn’t been afraid. She was with Eddie, who might well have been her favorite person after her sister, and they were having a huge adventure. They were spending time together, solving problems, singing songs. She knew she could get out of the car. She could get up the hill. The rest of it she wasn’t so sure about.
“What?” Eddie asked.
“I’m not supposed to go inside people’s houses or get in their cars if I don’t know them.”
Ah, that. Sure. A lifetime of purposefully imprinted fear. “That’s right,” he said. “Everybody is always going to tell you that because there’s a tiny percentage of bad people in the world, and the bad people get all the publicity. Everybody’s got to be vigilantagainst the bad people. I get that. But there are so many more people who are going to want to help you. I mean so, so many more good people that you couldn’t begin to count them. If I thought somebody out there was going to hurt you, I’d say we were better off taking our chances waiting it out in the car. But I swear to you, it’s mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges. I’m more worried about you falling in the snow than I’m worried about you running into a bad person.”
“I’m not going to fall in the snow,” Daphne said.
“Then I think you’re going to save the day.”
Her departure was slowed by the argument they had about the space blanket. Eddie insisted she take it with her. The blanket would keep her warm and dry and make her easier to see from a distance. “You’ll be a walking reflective blob,” he said. “Everybody slows down for those.”
But Daphne refused. “I’ve got my teddy bear coat, my hat, scarf, mittens, tights, boots, sweater, jumper. All you’ve got is your stupid jacket.”
“I didn’t think I’d be sleeping in a car,” he said, though she was right. He had dressed for work. He was still dressed for work.
“So you have to keep the blanket.”
“You’re goingoutsidein the snow. You’re the one who has to brave the elements, find civilization and save us. All I have to do is wait in the car.”
