“I was frozen,” she answered in a phlegmy voice. “Cold as the point of an icicle.” An old soul in a child's body, one of the preternaturally mature. In one swift swallow she finished her milk, and then she cleared her throat, the tones of her speech lightening an octave. “I hadn't had a thing to eat all night, so thank you, Mrs. Quinn.”
Margaret wondered how she knew her name, and then reckoned that the child must have read it off the mailbox. The little girl yawned, revealing the jagged mouth of baby molars and holes, the serrated edges of her adult teeth piercing the gums at odd angles.
“You must be tired, my girl.”
“Norah, with an A-H at the end. I feel like I haven't slept in a thousand years.”
Both hands of the clock slipped off twelve. “There's an extra bed at the top of the stairs. But first thing we'll call your mother.”
“I haven't any mother. Or father either. No one at all in this wide world. I am an orphan, Mrs. Quinn.”
A sliver of sorrow cut through her heart. “I'm so sorry. How long have you been on your own?”
“Always. Since the beginning. I never knew my parents.”
“And where have you come from? We should call the police to see if anyone is missing a child.” She tried to remember the name of the detective—Willet was it?—who bothered her for months after Erica went missing. They never did find her daughter.
“I am not lost.” The girl stared, unblinking.
The police are useless, she thought. “But how did you get here?”
“I have been looking for some place, and your light was on, and there is a welcome mat at your door. You were expecting someone.”
“No one ever comes.”
“I am here.”
“That you are.” On her fingertips, she calculated the years, thinking all the while of the possibilities. Her daughter had been gone for a decade, and the girl appeared to be just shy of nine. Old enough to be her own granddaughter, had such a child ever existed. Margaret led the girl upstairs to the empty room, which she rarely visited any longer, not more than once a month to run a duster over the wooden bureau, the desk, the bedframe. There had been many times when, suddenly tired of life, she sat on the edge of the mattress and felt unable to ever move from the spot. Sending Norah to wash her face and hands, Margaret stood before the closet, afraid of what might spring out, and reached in its dark recesses to pull out a trunk reeking of camphor. Under layers of too-large coats and a never-worn dress, she found a young girl's nightgown, creased and stiff. Norah wrapped herself inside the old clothes, crawled under the covers, and chirped her goodnight.
The question, dormant but habitual, arrived without thought. “Have you said your prayers?” She looked at the child's tiny head upon the pillow and saw in the faint light an unexpected answer to her own hopes. Switching off the lamp, she dared touch the child's soft hair, whispered “sweet dreams,” and left the room to stand, breathless, outside the bedroom door. Listening from the hallway, unnerved by the presence of another, Margaret waited for the rhythmic breath of sleep, and nodding to the sound of the slumbering child, she padded back to her darkened bedroom.
2
The depth of darkness made the warning signs difficult to see. He was nearly upon the caution before he could read: Bridge Freezes Before Roadway, which made him laugh, for he had been cold a long time, and nothing would make him colder. Screwing his hat tighter against his scalp and gathering his scarf into the collar of his coat, the figure leaned into the breeze and strolled onto the bridge. The moisture wicked away from the chapped skin on his shaved jawline, and with every breath he drew, the air drove into the misery of his sinuses. The cold dried his eyes, and each time he blinked, he made warm tears which unsettled his ideas of order. No headlights approached; none had crossed his path that night. The bitterness of that late hour kept everyone indoors, nestled in their blankets and prayers to stay warm and safe. He stepped over the water and listened to the river, choked with broken ice, crawl and lap softly against the long steel shafts sunk into its bed. As he walked on, his heels echoed against the pavement, and when he paused, the world froze all over again.