Mind of Winter Read Free Page A

and the baby was placed in her arms.
    Holly took her daughter in her arms, and before she saw or felt or heard her, she loved her—as if there were an organ and a part of the brain that was love’s eye or nose or ear. The first sense. It had never been needed before. Now Holly realized that it was, in fact, the sharpest of her senses.
    The second sense: smell. Holly would always associate her daughter and her love for her daughter with that secondary sensory impression—the ripe, rich Allium sativum , muddy hoofprint of that clove in its torn papery wrapper around her neck, at her chest, between herself and her baby. And a dirty diaper. And the scent of sour milk and cereal soaked into the damp neckline of the ratty, tatty gown they’d dressed her in, as if to sell her to them—as if they’d need to be persuaded to snatch her up!—with a few faded daisies on it for good measure.
    And Holly remembered how, then, too, she’d wanted to write it down. She’d wanted to say something about it on a piece of paper before she lost the words. But, of course, there was no time then. Even in the bathroom after they’d had to return their daughter to that nurse and walk away, Holly couldn’t write it down. With her naked ass on the cold porcelain, fishing through her purse while her husband paced around outside the thin door, she couldn’t find a pen.
     
    NOW, SHE NEEDED to find a pen to write this down:
    Something had followed them home from Siberia.
    From the orphanage. Pokrovka Orphanage #2.
    Holly needed a pen and a half hour alone before the in-laws and the roast in the oven and the Coxes. God, the Coxes. Who would sit at the table waiting for her to entertain them. And their terrible son, who seemed to have been born without a soul. Holly had not wanted to write in so many weeks, months, years—and if she didn’t do it now, if she could not wake up fully and find a pen, if she did not have a half hour alone, it would pass, and perhaps the desire would never, ever, come back.
    She moved her hand over to Eric’s side of the bed, to the place she hoped to find empty, the place she needed to find vacant beside her, the sheets cool, Eric gone, so that she could have a few moments alone—
    But he was there, and Holly felt him twitch awake, and then Eric sat up so fast the headboard slammed against the wall behind him, and Holly was fully awake then, too, realizing that there was far too much light in the bedroom, and Eric, realizing it, too, was out of bed fast, standing over her, shouting, “Jesus Christ. We overslept. Fuck. It’s ten thirty. My parents must already be sitting at the fucking airport, and the fucking Coxes will be here in an hour. Where in the hell is Tatiana? Why didn’t she wake us up? Jesus Christ. Holly. I gotta go!”
    Then he was gone:
    Holly had barely put her feet on the floor when she heard the sound of Eric’s car in the garage, and the garage door opening. Eric was not the kind of man to squeal his tires on the way out of the driveway, but nevertheless he did, and Holly heard it for what it was—the implication of blame. Of course. Of course if his parents were already waiting at the airport, worried or sick or complaining, it would somehow be her fault. When Eric’s siblings arrived later they would say, “Why in the world was Eric late to get Mom and Dad?”—as if the question were the answer because both were directed at Holly.
    And, as Eric had said, where the hell was Tatiana? Could she still be asleep? Had Holly peeked into her daughter’s room only an hour or two ago (pale arm, pale coverlet?) or had that been a dream? Was it before or after that when she’d woken, knowing that something had followed them—
    Holly still felt the need to write it down, and felt surprised and pleased that she still felt the need. But what, exactly, had she wanted to write down? That something had returned from Siberia with them? That it had somehow followed them? Was that the explanation she’d