Blackberry Winter: A Novel Read Free Page A

against my lips. “I love you, Max,” I whispered as I walked back to the door. “And I love you, Daniel. More than you’ll ever know.”
    I tiptoed downstairs, put another log in the fireplace, said a silent prayer, and walked out the front door, locking it behind me. It was only one shift. I’d be home before sunup. I turned back to the door, then shook my head, reassuring myself. It was the only way. He’d be safe. Safe and sound.

Chapter 2

    C LAIRE A LDRIDGE
    Seattle, May 2, present day
    M y eyes shot open and I pressed my hand against my belly. There, that tugging pain in my abdomen again. What had Dr. Jensen called it? Yes, a
phantom pain
—something about my body’s memory of the trauma. Phantom or not, I lay there feeling the familiar, lonely ache that had greeted me each morning for the past year. I paused to acknowledge the memory, wondering, the way I did every day when the alarm clock sounded, how I could bring myself to get up, to get dressed—to act like a normal human being, when I only wanted to curl up into a ball and take Tylenol PM to obliterate all feeling.
    I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the clock: 5:14 a.m. I lay still and listened as the wind unleashed its rage against the exterior of our fourteenth-floor apartment. I shivered and pulled the duvet up around my neck. Even Siberian down couldn’t cut the chill.
Why is it so cold?
Ethan must have turned down the thermostat—again.
    “Ethan?” I whispered, reaching my arm out to his side of theking-size bed, but the sheets were cold and stiff. He’d gone to work early, again.
    I stood up and retrieved my robe from the upholstered blue-and-white-striped chair next to the bed. The phone rang persistently, and I made my way out to the living room. The apartment’s wraparound windows provided views of Seattle’s Pike Place Market below, and of Elliott Bay, with its steady stream of incoming and outgoing ferries. The day we toured the apartment, four years ago, I’d told Ethan it felt like we were floating in the air. “Your castle in the sky,” he had said three weeks later, handing me a shiny silver key.
    But it wasn’t the familiar view that captivated me that morning. In fact, there
was
no view. It was all…
white
. I rubbed my eyes to get a closer look at the scene outside the double-paned glass.
Snow.
And not just a few flurries—a genuine blizzard. I looked at the calendar on the wall near my desk, shaking my head in confusion. A snowstorm on May 2?
Unbelievable.
    “Hello,” I muttered into the phone, finally silencing its ring.
    “Claire!”
    “Frank.” My boss at the newspaper, yes, but at this early hour, my greeting lacked polite professionalism.
    “Are you looking out your window?” A dedicated editor, Frank was often at his desk before sunrise, while I usually stumbled into the office around nine. And that was on a good day. The features department didn’t foster the same sense of urgency that the news desk did, and yet Frank behaved as if profiles of local gardeners and reviews of children’s theater productions were pressing, vital matters. His staff, including me, could hardly object. Frank’s wife had died three years ago, and ever since, he’d thrown himself into his work with such intensity, I sometimes suspected that he slept in his office.
    “You mean the snow, right?”
    “Yes,
the snow
! Can you believe this?”
    “I know,” I said, examining the balcony, where the wrought-iron table and chairs were dusted in white. “I guess the forecasters missed this one.”
    “They sure did,” Frank said. I could hear him thumbing through papers on his desk. “Here it is—the forecast, as printed in today’s paper: ‘Cloudy, high of fifty-nine, chance of light rain.’”
    I shook my head. “How can this even happen? It’s almost summer—at least, last I checked it was.”
    “I’m not a meteorologist, but I know it’s rare. We’ve got to cover it.” Frank’s voice had all the hallmarks of an