Part 4
The cold met Daniel as soon as he opened the car door. It slid under his collar and tightened around his ears while he pulled the skis from the back seat and laid them on the packed snow beside the road.
He moved quickly because the light was already thinning. Emergency blanket in his backpack. Flashlight. A can of wet cat food Hannah had made him buy months ago for the stray that visited their alley. A towel. Work gloves. The keys from Grant’s folder zipped into the inside pocket of his coat.
The skis held on the crust better than he expected. His first steps were awkward, his body remembering something his mind had not done in years. After a few minutes, the rhythm came back: plant, slide, breathe. The road curved through birch and pine, the seasonal cabins hidden behind snow-heavy branches. No smoke lifted from chimneys. No porch lights burned. Every mailbox wore a white cap.
Halfway in, Daniel stopped to catch his breath. The silence was so complete that his own pulse sounded intrusive. He called once, not loudly at first.
“Luna?”
Grant had not told him the cat’s name. Daniel had found it on a vet receipt tucked inside the property folder, probably by accident. Luna Whitmore. Spayed female. Domestic longhair. Gray. The receipt was from the previous summer, before any of this.
“Luna,” he called again.
Only the trees answered.
The lots were hard to read under snow. Numbers had vanished beneath ice. Daniel had to scrape at gateposts with his glove until he found a faded metal plate: 18. Then 19. The next two were hidden behind drifts. By the time he reached Lot 22, his shirt was damp under his coat and his hands ached from gripping the poles.
The gate was padlocked. Daniel dug snow away with his boot until the lower edge moved, then worked the key into the frozen lock. It resisted, scraped, and finally snapped open so suddenly he nearly dropped it. He pushed through a gap barely wide enough for his shoulders.
The yard lay untouched.
That was the first thing that made his stomach sink. The porch steps were smooth under a clean shell of snow. No small prints. No scattered fur. No path worn by an animal moving between shelter and door. The cabin itself sat dark, windows blind, roof heavy with ice.
Daniel crossed to the porch and peered through the glass. The mudroom was empty except for an overturned bowl just inside the door. He unlocked the cabin, stepped in, and was hit by the stale cold of a house shut down for winter. He called Luna’s name through the rooms anyway. Kitchen. Living room. Bedroom. Bathroom. Nothing moved.
On the counter, Claire’s sweater was still folded beside a stack of mail from August.
Daniel stood there longer than he should have, looking at that sweater. Grant had sold the place with his wife’s life still scattered through it in small unfinished gestures: a paperback facedown on the nightstand, a half-used tin of tea, a pair of gardening gloves by the sink.
He backed out and locked the door.
“Luna!”
His voice cracked across the yard. Somewhere above him, a chickadee answered with a sharp, quick call. Daniel looked up. The bird hopped along the bare branch of an apple tree near the back of the lot, then dropped to the roof of a small woodshed almost swallowed by a drift. A slab of snow slid off the shed roof and landed with a soft thud near the door.
Daniel narrowed his eyes.
The shed door was not closed all the way. A dark seam showed between the wood and the frame, narrow but open enough for wind, birds, maybe something smaller than hope.
He pushed toward it, sinking to mid-thigh where the crust broke under him. The skis were useless inside the fenced yard, so he left them near the porch and fought through the drifts on foot. By the time he reached the shed, his legs burned and his breath came in harsh bursts.
The door groaned when he pulled it open.
Inside, the air smelled of wet wood, old leaves, and something sour underneath. Daniel clicked on his flashlight. The beam crossed garden tools, a rusted wheelbarrow, a cracked clay pot, and a torn bag of cheap kibble flattened against the floor. A cloth cat house sat in the corner.
Empty.
Daniel crouched and shone the light inside anyway. A few gray hairs clung to the fabric. Nothing else.
The chickadee slipped in behind him, bold in the way hungry winter birds can be, and hopped along the floorboards near a bench. Daniel followed the movement with the flashlight. On the bench lay a stiff bundle of dark wool, folded or collapsed into itself.
He did not want to lift it.
That was the first honest thought he had in the shed. He did not want the answer under that blanket, not after two miles of snow, not after Grant’s clean hands, not after imagining a living creature waiting for a door that never opened.
But he had come to know.
Daniel pulled off one glove with his teeth. His bare fingers stung instantly when they touched the frozen edge of the wool. He lifted it slowly. Underneath lay something gray, curled tight and still, so thin it hardly looked like a cat at all…
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