Read Stones for Free Online

regaining confidence. I was imagining things. A gusty wind like that could make strange effects, play with my mind. There were no men. How could there be, in a storm like this in the middle of the night? My nightmares, the stress of the day, loneliness and isolation had gotten to me. Hadn’t I thought I saw a man in the window a few hours before?
    I took in a long breath and let it out slowly. Be reasonable, I repeated to myself. I wanted to go back to sleep, but in a way I was afraid to. There’s nothing to fear, I told myself. Don’t be a fool.
3
    Three times that night the voices returned. By the time a weak grey light diluted the darknessat the windows the wind had ceased its assault on the cabin, and I was a wreck.
    When the light had risen enough to illuminate the inside of the church, I got up, made sure the fire in the stove was out, packed up my stuff and pushed open the door. The driven snow had been sculpted into ridges like frozen waves alongside and behind the building. In the flat light of early morning I saw that the log structure stood at the intersection of the Third Concession and the Old Barrie Road. Nearby was a stone monument, and on its far side rested the van, its left front smashed in.
    Unable to stop myself, I searched the drifts around the church for footprints. I found nothing. Coiling my guide rope, I plowed my way to the van and stowed my gear behind the seat.
    The engine started immediately and, with the heater pumping warm air into the cab, I tried once more to back out onto the road. No luck.
    An hour or so later a county snowplow came by, snorting diesel smoke into the cold, still air, the blue light revolving on the top. The driver was happy to pull me out of the ditch. I followed the plow into town, glad to see the red streak of the rising sun in the trees beside the road.

chapter     
    B y failing to come home the night of the blizzard I had thrown a scare into my parents, and, as usual, they eased their nerves by ranting — after hugging and fussing over me when I walked into the house that morning. Then they ganged up on me as I was sipping a welcome cup of hot tea at the kitchen table.
    “Why didn’t you call?” Mom demanded.
    “That’s what the phone is for,” Dad put in.
    “Yeah, but the battery was flat.”
    “So? You could have recharged it from the cigarette lighter.”
    “I forgot the adapter.”
    Mom was leaning on the counter, arms crossed. “You drove off to the city without the adapter. Into the biggest storm in ten years.
With
the cell phone,
without
the adapter.”
    “Don’t rub it in. I didn’t know it was going to snow.”
    Dad added, “I keep telling you, don’t drive any distance in the winter without checking the Weather Channel first.”
    I stood up. “I’d love to stay and let you two hammer away at me some more, but I’m going to have a long, hot shower instead.”
    “Take the phone with you,” Dad said, and all three of us burst out laughing.
2
    Olde Gold Antiques and Collectibles was a narrow, two-storey red-brick building with The Magus, a bookstore, on one side and an espresso bar on the other. The store occupied the main floor, with a showroom at the front, a small office and a workshop out back. Overhead was a stamped-tin ceiling, thick with many coats of paint, and the floor was made of pegged oak planks. There was a cellar, dark and creepy, where the bathroom was and where we stored pieces waiting to be refinished or repaired.
    Business was transacted in a time warp: cash only, unless the customer was local; then we would take a check. Each sale was recorded onan invoice, white copy for the buyer, yellow for us, and rung up on a huge ancient cash register with heavy nickel-plated trim. When the big round keys were pressed, labels popped up into a window, showing the amount of the sale, and the contraption let out a
ring!
that they could probably hear across the street in the library. There was no computer, no credit cards, Air