Read Online A Cold and Lonely Place: A Novel by Sara J. Henry - Free Book Online

Jessamyn’s face as I’d told her the news, how hard she’d cried when she found out Tobin was dead. I was shaking my head even before I spoke. “No, she was really shocked when she found out.”
    Jameson nodded again, pushing his plate away. “Something will happen soon. After the autopsy, after the police finish interviews, after his parents weigh in.” He didn’t say he thought things would be fine; he didn’t assure me the hubbub would die down soon. He wasn’t one for platitudes. In many ways, his view of the world was even bleaker than mine.
    He told me work had been busy; I told him about some of the magazine pieces I’d done. In the parking lot we exchanged another overstuffed-sofa hug, maybe the only sort we would ever be comfortable with.
    When I got back to the house and Elise opened the door for me, I felt a wave of affection and warmth and nostalgia for the people who lived in this house, so powerful it made me ache. It seemed too much, too intense a set of feelings to fit into one being.
    But maybe it just took some getting used to.
    Jessamyn was flushed from the success of having made the apple pie, her first ever, she told us, more than once. I admired its somewhat wandering lattice top, more than once. Elise beamed proudly.
Elise’s School of Homemaking
. She’d tried to show me how to iron neatly last summer, but I’d failed miserably. Jessamyn seemed a more willing and apt pupil.
    I volunteered to go get Paul from school—I was still on the approved list to pick him up, and Jessamyn decided to go along.
    The confident, cheery Paul who jumped into my back seat was a different child from the one I’d picked up from school last June. I had to admit that part of me missed the little boy who had needed me so much. I suppose parents go through this, watching their children grow more independent. Just when you’d gotten good at one phase, they were off to another. Philippe was doing a goodjob with Paul, I thought, and having the bedrock that was Elise didn’t hurt.
    That night after dinner, after apple pie for dessert, and after Paul was tucked into bed, the three of us retired to the library and a crackling fire. We relaxed and sipped a superb pinot noir and sampled different cheeses. Philippe chatted about Paul’s school and his marketing business. I talked about my brother, Simon, my friend Baker, my roommate Zach who was in Boulder visiting a girlfriend—all people Philippe had met. Jessamyn told funny stories about tourists visiting the restaurant.
    And then Philippe asked her, “Where are you from originally?”
    It was a simple question, and up until that moment I hadn’t really considered that in Lake Placid you don’t usually ask people where they’re from. Sometimes they tell you, and sometimes you figure it out from where they disappear to on holidays, if they do. But you don’t ask.
    There’s a line in the movie
Insomnia
, something like
There’s two types of people in Alaska, the ones who were born here and the ones who came here to get away from something
. You could say much the same about the Adirondacks.
    But Jessamyn replied easily, though vaguely. “The Midwest, but I don’t keep up with anyone.”
    And Philippe, bless him, just poured more wine and smiled with the right mix of sympathy and understanding, and launched into a story about one of his clients who owned a small winery. This was one of the things he excelled at, putting people at ease. And after a while he excused himself, saying he had some paperwork to do. After he was out of earshot Jessamyn leaned toward me and whispered, “What’s the deal with Philippe?” I nodded toward my room—this wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have in the open. She followed me, and we sat cross-legged on the bed as if we were in junior high.
    “So what’s the deal with Philippe?” she repeated.
    I didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. I told her about finding Paul last summer and staying in Ottawa to help him