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Never long enough, she thought, because Gwen wasn’t going to come back.
Isobel looked up. She stared at the countless specks that rained down around her, each white flake highlighted against the black backdrop of night, like a thousand falling stars in a dead sky.
She had to wonder if this sensation of being shredded and left to the wind, of being left behind, could even touch what he must have felt the moment he’d realized she wasn’t coming back for him. That he was alone. Utterly and completely alone.
“Hey!”
Isobel glanced over her shoulder toward her house.
Danny stood in the doorway, washed in a glow of warm light. Squinting at her and leaning out, he looked like a plump bird poking its head out of a cuckoo clock.
“What are you doing?” he shouted.
Isobel hugged herself tightly against a sudden whip-snap of frozen wind and forced herself to move, stalking back toward her house with hunched shoulders. By the time she reached her front yard, her feet had gone completely numb. So much so that she could only feel the downy softness of the snow itself along with the frozen grass blades as they crunched beneath her heels.
Danny stepped back when she reached the porch. He gawked at her, actually holding the storm door open to allow her room to enter. His eyes grew even wider as she stepped inside.
“You went out there without shoes?” he asked. “Are you crazy?”
She didn’t answer. Against the warm inside air, her skin flared fire hot. Her feet prickled, the numbness slipping quickly away, replaced by the sensation that the Oriental rug she stood on had been transformed into a bed of burning coals.
“Mom’s been calling for you,” Danny said. He watched her with wary uncertainty, as though he couldn’t be sure she was even listening. “It’s . . . time to eat.”
“Tell them I’m not hungry.”
“Uh . . . it’s Christmas Eve.”
“Then tell them I’m sick.”
He arched a questioning brow at her.
She pushed past him and made a beeline for the stairs.
To his credit, he didn’t try to stop her, and it was his silence that told Isobel he would do what she’d said.
When she reached the top landing, she slipped into the bathroom.
Shutting the door behind her, she made certain to lock it.
IT WASN’T LONG AFTER ISOBEL climbed into the steaming bathwater that the knock came. She could tell by the faint triple tap that it was her mother who stood outside the door.
Soaking in the hot water, her bare knees tucked against her chest, Isobel pictured her dad and little brother sitting at the dining room table, her mother’s holiday china empty before them while the turkey cooled on its platter.
In this house, missing a family meal (let alone Christmas Eve supper) was like missing a military roll call. If you were absent without leave, a member of the troops would invariably be dispatched to seek you out.
“Isobel?” Her mother’s voice came muffled through the door. “Everything okay in there?”
Isobel set her chin on her knees. “Just . . . my stomach,” she lied.
“Izzy,” her mom tried again, “Danny said that he saw you standing outside in the street just now. Is everything all right? Did something happen?”
Isobel narrowed her puffy eyes, glaring at her distorted reflection in the tub faucet. Her face looked curved and muddled, like the image in a funhouse mirror.
“Izzy?”
“I just . . . wanted to see the snow.”
“In your socks, honey?”
