“You should answer it.”
“Hello?”
“Don’t know how long you were planning on sticking it out,” a man says. “But I imagine it’s getting to be pretty chilly in there. And it looks mighty dark.”
I turn to the window. The groundskeeper is standing in the snow. I can barely see him but for the headlights of his truck.
“Mabel,” I whisper. She looks up from her phone and joins me at the window.
I pick up one of the tea lights and wave it in front of the window, a tiny hello I’m not sure he can see from there. He lifts his hand in a wave.
“The power’s out for you, too, though. Isn’t it?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “But I don’t live in a dormitory.”
We blow out the candles. We pull on our boots and grab our toothbrushes. And then we are out in the impossible cold, leaving trails of footprints in the snow from the dorm entrance to where his truck is idling.
He’s younger up close. Not young, but not old either.
“Tommy,” he says. He sticks out his hand and I shake it.
“Marin,” I say.
“Mabel.”
“Marin. Mabel. You’re in luck, because there’s a fireplace in my living room and also a fold-out couch.”
Even though I’m glad to hear this, it doesn’t hit me until after we step inside his little cottage on the edge of the grounds that this is what we needed. I’d gotten so cold I almost forgot what it felt like to be warm enough. His fireplace is crackling and bright, casting light across the ceiling and the walls.
“I’ve got the oven on, too. This old thing could heat the house on its own—just be careful not to touch it.”
All the walls are wood paneled, and everything is worn in and soft. Rugs upon rugs, sofas and overstuffed chairs, all of them strewn with blankets. He doesn’t offer to show us around, but it’s a small space and we can see most of it from where we stand, waiting for him to show us whether we’ll spend the evening making small talk or if he’ll say good night and retreat to the door at the end of the short hallway.
“It’s just six thirty,” Tommy says. “I assume you didn’t eat.”
“We had some food a couple hours ago,” I say. “But no dinner yet.”
“I’m not big on dinner myself, but I have some pasta and a jar of sauce. . . .”
He shows us how to light the burner with a match on his old-fashioned stove and fills a heavy silver pot with water. He keeps his spaghetti in a canister; there isn’t much inside.
“As I said, I’m not too big on dinner. Hopefully this’ll be enough for the two of you.”
I can’t tell if he’s lying. I should have thought about all the food in the dorm refrigerator before we left, but I can’t fathom going back out into the snow and the dark, walking all that way.
“Are you sure?” Mabel asks. “We could make it work for all of us. We don’t need that much.”
“No, no, I’m sure.” He takes a look in the canister again and frowns. Then he opens his freezer. “Jackpot!” He pulls out a bag of frozen dinner rolls.
“And the oven’s already preheated,” I say.
“Meant to be. I’m going to have a couple rolls and some slices of cheese. You’ll have pasta and the rest of the rolls and whatever else you see that pleases you.”
He opens the refrigerator so we can take a look. There isn’t much inside of it, but it’s clean and neatly arranged.
“Sounds great,” Mabel says, but I just nod.
This is the first time I’ve been in a home since leaving mine, and my eyes are adjusting to the dark, and every new thing I make out fills me with wonder.
A few dishes are in his sink; a pair of slippers rest by the doorway. The freezer has three photographs on it—a little boy, Tommy with some friends, a man in a military uniform. Books are strewn across the coffee table along with two video-game controllers.
Nothing in his refrigerator is labeled. Everything here is his own.
There was a blue-and-gold blanket that lived on Gramps’s recliner in the living room for my entire life. I spent so many winter hours nestled under it, reading my books, drifting to sleep. It was almost threadbare in some places, but it still brought me warmth.
I don’t know where it is now.
I want it.
“Marin,” Tommy says. “I needed to get ahold of you anyway. I’m heading off campus for Christmas and will likely be spending the night away. I’ll be with some friends in Beacon. Call me if anything goes wrong, and here are the numbers for the police and the fire station. Call these direct lines, not nine-one-one.”
“Okay. Thank you,” I say, careful not to look at Mabel. I wish I could ask if she knows what happened to all of our things. Did anyone save anything? Did they wonder where I was?
Ana and Javier. They waited in the police station for me. Where did they go next, once they discovered I was gone? The looks that must have been on their faces—I don’t even want to imagine it.
Why won’t I just say yes? Why won’t I fly home to them and apologize for my disappearing act and accept their forgiveness when they offer it and sleep in the bed they made for me in the room with my name on the door?
If I could undo that decision in the police station, I wouldn’t have left through the back. The two weeks in the motel would never have happened and the thought of diner coffee wouldn’t make me choke.