Blackberry Winter: A Novel Read Free Page B

editor hot on the trail of a story.
    I yawned. “Don’t you think it’s more of news’s beat? Wait, unless you want me to do a piece on the city’s snowmen.”
    “No, no,” Frank continued. “It’s a much bigger story. Claire, I’ve been going through old files, and you’ll never believe what I found.”
    “Frank,” I said, fumbling with the thermostat. I turned it up to seventy-five. Ethan hated wasting energy. “It’s not even six a.m. How long have you been in the office?”
    He ignored my question. “This isn’t the first time Seattle’s seen a storm like this.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Right, it snowed in January, didn’t it?”
    “Claire,” he continued, “no, listen. A late-season snowstorm hit on this very same date in 1933.” I heard more paper shuffling. “The timing is uncanny. Some eighty years ago, an identical storm—a massive blizzard—completely shut down the city.”
    “It’s interesting,” I said, feeling the urge to make a cup of hot cocoa and head back to bed. “But I still don’t understand why thisis a feature story. Shouldn’t Debbie in news be covering this? Remember, she covered last year’s freak tornado in South Seattle?”
    “Because it’s
bigger
than that,” he said. “Think about it. Two snowstorms, sharing one calendar date, separated by nearly a century? If you don’t call that feature-worthy, I don’t know what is, Claire.”
    I could detect the boss tone creeping into his voice, so I relented. “Word count and deadline?”
    “You’re right about news,” he said. “They’ll tackle today and tomorrow, but I’d like a bigger piece, an exposé of the storm then and now. We’ll devote the entire section to it. I can give you six thousand words, and I’d like it by Friday.”
    “Friday?” I protested.
    “You won’t have to look hard for sources,” he continued. “I’m sure there’s a trove of material in the archives. Your angle can be: ‘The storm’s great return.’”
    I smirked. “You make it sound like it’s a living thing.”
    “Who knows?” Frank said. “Maybe it’s a prompt to look back in time. To see what we missed….” His voice trailed off.
    “Frank,” I said, sighing, “your sentimentality about weather is adorable, but don’t get too excited. I’m still wondering how I’m going to write six thousand words on snowmen.”
    “Blackberry winter,” he muttered.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “The storm,” he continued. “It’s called a blackberry winter. It’s what meteorologists call a late-season cold snap. Interesting, isn’t it?”
    “I guess,” I said, flipping the wall switch to the gas fireplace. Frank’s weather lesson had me craving a slice of warm blackberry pie. “If nothing else, we’ll have a great headline.”
    “And hopefully a great story, too,” he said. “See you in the office.”
    “Frank, wait—have you seen Ethan this morning?” My husband, the paper’s managing editor, beat me to work most days, but he had been starting his mornings progressively earlier.
    “Not yet,” he said. “It’s just me here, and a few folks in news. Why?”
    “Oh, nothing,” I said, trying to hide the emotion I felt. “I was just worried about him getting in all right, with the snow and all.”
    “Well, you be careful out there,” he said. “Fifth Avenue is an ice skating rink.”
    I hung up the phone and looked down to the street below, squinting to make out two figures, a father and his young child, engaged in a snowball fight.
    I pressed my nose against the window, feeling the cold glass against my skin. I smiled, taking in the scene before my breath fogged up the pane.
A blackberry winter.

Chapter 3

    V ERA
    “Y ou’re late,” Estella said, eyeing me from behind her gray steel desk when I walked into the maids’ quarters at the Olympic. A single lightbulb dangled from a wire in the dimly lit basement room. She nodded toward a mound of freshly laundered white linens in urgent need of