Ways to Hide in Winter by Sarah St.Vincent

Author:Sarah St.Vincent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2018-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

4

For two days, the stranger didn’t leave his room. Every few hours, I would find an excuse to wander onto the porch, dusting the tables and chairs, glancing up at the darkened window I thought was his. As far as I could see, there was no movement behind the curtain. I pictured him stretched out on his cot in the wan gray light, his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, imagining the things he feared most. Or maybe remembering them.

I waited, respecting his anxiety. There was no reason, I reminded myself, to think the situation—whatever it was—had changed. Jerry had just figured out that he could take advantage of me; I certainly wasn’t happy about it and had no idea what I was going to do, but it had nothing to do with anybody else. All he would have seen when he’d walked into the store was two people playing a game, even if one of them was unusually jumpy.

I understood fright, though, especially fright that was rooted in the past and therefore harder to get rid of. And if there was one thing I truly grasped, it was the desire to shut out the world.

Finally, however, I began to lose patience. No matter what this deeply odd person was doing here, he couldn’t possibly think he could stay hidden in some hole in the backwoods of Pennsylvania forever. It just wasn’t practical. He was more intelligent than that—and, I told myself, so was I.

The next morning, I climbed out of the car with a newspaper under my arm, noticing that Martin’s red station wagon was parked behind the hostel. I dropped the things I was carrying onto the hood of the Jeep and bent down to grab a handful of gravel. Mounting the hill, I positioned myself where the stranger could see me and cocked my arm back. The stones made a clicking sound against the second-story window, quiet but insistent. I kept flinging them at the glass pane until I ran out, then stuffed my hands into my coat pockets and waited.

Nothing happened. Cursing quietly and biting a nail, I turned to go.

I was halfway down the hill before the door creaked open behind me and the stranger stepped out, walking toward me, glancing out over the landscape. When we met, he pressed his arms to his sides, as if to gather himself, then looked away.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been rather ill, I’m afraid. I would have liked to come visit you, but of course I didn’t want you to become sick as well. Fortunately, I think I’m better today, but—”

I cut him off.

“The people who brought you here,” I said, looking him in the face. “Are they ever coming back?”

He drew a breath.

“Nobody brought me here,” he said finally. “I walked.”

“Really?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Because that’s not what you said at the time.”

For a long moment, he was silent.

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t try to pull this stuff on me. I thought we gave that up weeks ago.

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