Winter's Reckoning by Adele Holmes M.D

Author:Adele Holmes, M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press

Chapter Thirteen

HANNAH

Eyes unopened, Hannah sensed she was starting a new episode of her nonsensical adventure back in the kitchen on the dreaded cot. A blast of piquant odor informed her Maddie’s precious camphor oil was open. Her grandmother ordered camphor through the mail—she couldn’t grow it there—and was quite persnickety about whom she used it on.

Ugh, aren’t I the lucky one?

Hannah opened one eyelid and realized that she was alone, quilted into the kitchen. The women were not there, nor did she hear them in the other part of the house.

Guess that old reverend never brought us any more wood.

Ren and Gramma fretted over his absence, and Hannah suspected it had to do with more than lack of heat. She withdrew into the covers and tried to summon the ancestors who had visited her when she was near death. When that didn’t work, she closed her eyes and attempted to fall back into a rabbit hole, like she felt she had done while she was recovering. Eventually, she dozed off and on until the women appeared in the kitchen, sad-looking versions of their previous selves.

The next few days ran into a jumble, cocooned into a stretch of suspended existence. Her fever remained at bay, and she scratched incessantly at the sutures on her scalp.

Gramma resumed pulling boards from the front porch, and her arms became muscled up like a lumberjack’s. Hannah assumed the house must look naked, and mostly for naught—the dried old wood barely produced a spark before it turned to ashes.

“I’m not even sure what date it is,” Ren said. “I know it’s after Thanksgiving yet must be quite a ways before Christmas.”

The blizzard seemed to be gone for good, though cloudy days marched on as nature remained in hibernation, except for the increasingly frequent birdsong. The biggest snowdrifts were higher than a person’s head, and even the shallow spots were too deep to spot hare.

“I’m so hungry,” Hannah announced one day after yet another dinner of vegetables. “It doesn’t matter how we mix them up; they all taste the same.”

“Any sort of meat would be a feast right now,” Gramma agreed. She lifted her shotgun into the air. “I’m keeping my eye out.”

Her grandmother had returned the Winchester rifle to its crypt in the closet, out of sight.

With a squeal of delight, Ren popped into the kitchen, her face aglow. “Look what I found in the last row of jars.” She showed off a quart of last year’s pickled quail eggs like it was a prize.

Hannah celebrated the rubbery white knobs; she’d detested pickled quail eggs in the past. Ren only let them have one each. She stored the rest back on the porch.

Later that night, when Ren was bundled up in the corner asleep, Gramma moved her bedding over by Hannah’s cot and settled in for a conversation. The soft glow of a solitary candle made her grandmother look young.

Hannah wanted things to be like they were before the blizzard. A tear trickled to her cheek only to be dammed by her grandmother’s finger.

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