Light on Snow Read Free

yesterday.
    “Your name?”
    “Robert Dillon.”
    She writes quickly, in red ink. “Address?”
    “Bott Hill.”
    “You have insurance?”
    “I have insurance personally,” my father says.
    “May I see your card?” she asks.
    My father feels in all his pockets, and then he stops. “I don’t have my wallet with me,” he says. “I left it on a shelf in the back hallway.”
    “No driver’s license?”
    “No,” my father says.
    The receptionist’s face goes still. She sets her pen down and folds her hands together in a slow, controlled manner, as if she were afraid of sudden movement. “Take a seat,” she says. “Someone will be right with you.”
    I sit next to a man with a doughy face who coughs quietly into the collar of a quilted parka the color of weeds. The light is harsh and unflattering, making the elderly look nearly dead and even the children blotchy with imperfections. After a time—twenty minutes? half an hour?—a young doctor in a white coat steps into the room, a mask loose around his neck, a stethoscope anchored in a breast pocket. Behind him is a uniformed policeman.
    “Mr. Dillon?” the doctor asks.
    My father stands and meets the men in the center of the room. I get up and follow. The doctor is pale and blond and looks too young to be a doctor. “Are you the man who found the infant?” he asks.
    “Yes,” my father says.
    “I’m Dr. Gibson, and this is Chief Boyd.”
    Chief Boyd, one of only two police officers in the town of Shepherd, is, I know, Timmy Boyd’s father. They are both overweight and have the same rectangular black eyebrows. Chief Boyd pulls a notebook and a short pencil from a uniform pocket.
    “Is she all right?” my father asks the doctor.
    “She’ll lose a finger, possibly some toes,” the doctor answers, rubbing his forehead. “And her lungs may be compromised. It’s too soon to tell.”
    “Where’d you find her?” the chief asks my father.
    “In the woods behind my house.”
    “On the ground?”
    “In a sleeping bag. She was wrapped inside a towel inside the bag.”
    “Where are the towel and bag now?” Chief Boyd asks, licking the tip of his pencil, a gesture I’ve seen my grandmother make when composing her shopping lists. He speaks like most of the New Hampshire natives do—with broad
a
’s, no
r
’s, and a slight rhythm to the sentences.
    “In the woods. I left them there.”
    “You live on Bott Hill, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ve seen you around,” Chief Boyd says. “In Sweetser’s.”
    “I think it was near the motel up there,” my father says. “I can’t remember the name.”
    The chief turns away from my father and speaks into a radio he has clipped to his shoulder. I study the paraphernalia attached to his uniform.
    “How long was she there?” the doctor asks my father.
    “I don’t know,” my father says.
    I have then an image of the baby still in the snow in the dark. I make a sound. My father puts his hand on my shoulder.
    “Tell me how you found her,” Chief Boyd says to my father.
    “My daughter and I were taking a walk, and we heard these cries. We didn’t know what it was at first. We thought it might be a cat. And then it sounded human.”
    “Did you see anything? Anyone near the baby?”
    “We heard a car door shutting. Then an engine starting up,” my father says.
    There’s a squawk on Chief Boyd’s radio. He speaks into his shoulder. He seems agitated, and he turns away from us. I hear him say
twenty-eight years’ experience
and
he’s here.
    I hear him swear under his breath.
    He turns back to us and puts away his notebook and pencil. He takes a long time doing this. “Is there somewhere I can put Mr. Dillon?” the chief asks the doctor. “I’ve got a detective from the state police major crimes unit coming up from Concord.”
    The doctor pinches the bridge of his nose. His eyes are pink-rimmed with fatigue. “He can sit in the staff lounge,” the doctor says.
    “I can run the girl home,”