Part 4
“Here are the keys, the alarm codes, and the deed copies,” Paul said, tossing a thick manila envelope onto the small table. They were sitting in a busy coffee shop just down the street from the title company in downtown Chicago, having just finalized the sale. “But there’s one more thing I need to put on the table so there’s no misunderstanding later.”
“About the property line?” Sam asked, taking the envelope.
“About a cat,” Paul said. He looked away, staring out the window at the midday city traffic. “My wife left a cat up there. It’s wintering at the cabin.”
Sam stopped, his hand hovering over his coffee cup. He stared at the other man, trying to process the words. “Wintering? Paul, the county doesn’t plow those private access roads after December. How are you getting out there to feed it?”
“I’m not,” Paul said flatly. He stood up and began buttoning his expensive wool coat. “The last time I was up there was November.”
“Wait a minute,” Sam said, his voice rising enough to draw a glance from the next table. “You left an animal outside in Wisconsin since November? What about your wife? Didn’t she—”
“My wife is in the ICU, Sam,” Paul snapped, his voice hard, defensive, and completely devoid of warmth. “She’s fighting for her life. I don’t have the time or the mental capacity to worry about a stray cat right now. The property is yours. You deal with it.”
Paul turned and walked out the glass door, leaving Sam sitting alone in the crowded cafe, staring at the brass keys in his hand.
November. December. January. February.
Three months. Three months in freezing, sub-zero temperatures.
Sam and his wife, Sarah, had been looking for a fixer-upper near the lake for years. They had gotten a good deal on the Pine Ridge cabin precisely because Paul was aggressively liquidating assets to pay for Elena’s medical care. But Sam hadn’t bargained for this.
He didn’t go back to his office. He walked straight to his car, drove to his house in the suburbs, and went into the cold garage. From the overhead storage racks, he pulled down a pair of his late father’s long cross-country skis. He tossed them into the back of his Subaru, merged onto I-94, and headed north toward the Wisconsin border.
The drive took two hours. With every mile, Sam’s anger at Paul competed with a rising, dreadful anxiety. The temperature display on his dashboard read twenty-four degrees. If the cat was still alive, it was an absolute miracle, but Sam knew he couldn’t just sit at home in his warm living room without knowing for sure.
When he finally reached the turnoff for the Pine Ridge community, he found exactly what he expected. The county plows had cleared the main highway, leaving a massive, dense wall of gray, icy snow blocking the entrance to the private gravel roads. Beyond that berm, the woods were buried under nearly three feet of untouched, hard-packed snow.
Sam parked his Subaru on the shoulder, flipped on his hazard lights, and stepped out into the biting wind. He zipped his heavy parka all the way up, dropped the skis onto the snow, and locked his boots into the bindings.
He looked out over the vast, silent stretch of white. Usually, he loved the deep winter quiet of the woods, but today, the silence felt heavy and ominous. Somewhere in that frozen expanse, an animal had been left to freeze to death.
Sam pushed off, his poles planting firmly in the snow. The weather had warmed just enough over the last week to melt the top layer, which had then refrozen overnight into a solid, icy crust. It kept his skis from sinking, but the physical exertion of navigating the unplowed, winding roads quickly had him sweating beneath his layers.
It took him nearly an hour of intense, rhythmic striding to navigate the rural grid. There were no tire tracks, no boot prints, no signs of life anywhere. The summer cabins sat dark and empty behind mounds of white powder.
Finally, he spotted the faded metal numbers nailed to a wooden fence post: 22.
Sam unclipped his skis and waded through the knee-deep drift toward the front gate. He pushed it open, his boots breaking the crust with loud, heavy crunches that echoed in the quiet air. He jogged up to the front porch of the brick-and-wood cabin and rattled the door handle. It was locked tight. He cupped his hands around his face and peered through the freezing glass, but the house was completely dark and empty.
“Kitty?” Sam called out, his breath pluming in the freezing air. He stepped back off the porch, scanning the empty yard. “Here, kitty!”
Only the wind answered, rustling the bare branches of the oak trees. Sam gripped the heavy brass keys in his pocket, feeling a crushing sense of failure. He was too late.
Then, a sharp, insistent chip broke the silence.
Sam turned. A small brown sparrow was perched on the edge of the snow-covered gazebo roof in the backyard. The bird chipped again, bobbing its head, and fluttered down to the wooden railing, staring directly at Sam before hopping toward the shadowy interior of the structure.