Towering

dog die, all in one year. It must have been unbearable. I knew something about loneliness, knew what it was to sit in my room, checking my phone for texts that never came, logging on to Facebook to see other people’s statuses, happy statuses indicating their lives had gone on while mine hadn’t.
    Okay, this was depressing.
    I found the tea bags and closed the cabinet. It didn’t shut completely, overlapping slightly with the one beside it. I tried to lift it a bit, to see if that would help, then opened the other cabinet and closed them in the opposite order. That didn’t work either.
    “Oh, that’s been broken for years,” Mrs. Greenwood said.
    “I could fix it. I could get a new hinge. Do you have screwdrivers and things?”
    I wasn’t usually this helpful, but I remembered Mrs. Greenwood saying that Josh’s family owned the hardware store. And going there was an excuse to leave the house. I could ask Josh if he knew anything about the Red Fox Inn. Or Zach.
    “I don’t want you going to all that trouble,” she said. “You should do your schoolwork now that you have the internet.”
    “Hey, hey, hey, it’s Saturday. And school doesn’t even start again until the sixth. I can take today off and look around town. It’s pretty here. Hey, I can run errands for you. Do you have a grocery list?” I added this to prevent her offering to go with me. That would defeat the whole purpose.
    “I suppose you’re right. It would be nice to get some things fixed around here. Why don’t you wait until the cable man leaves, and then, you could follow him into town. You can borrow my Chevy.”
    Yes! Access to the car. Without even begging. The kettle shrieked to signal the water was boiling, and I was making tea like a pro.
    I poured the water, and as I hunted for the sugar, she said, “It’s so good to have you here, Wyatt. I’ve been so lonely since . . . since . . .” She wiped a tear from her eye.
    “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about the dog.”
    She shook her head. “Not the dog. No, not that. Since . . . Danielle.”
    Now, I knew what people meant when they talked about the elephant in the room. It had been standing there the whole time, but we hadn’t said a word about it. “Oh, you don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want.”
    “I know. But I feel I should explain. When I yelled at you last night. Of course you didn’t know anything about it, which room was hers. I should have thought. It’s just . . . I haven’t been in that room in almost ten years. At first, I sat there all the time. It made me feel closer to her, seeing all her photographs, her stuffed bears and such. The police thought she would never come home, but I was certain she would, unless . . .”
    Unless someone had killed her . But I didn’t say it, didn’t prod her to go on. I just said, “I understand.”
    “When I saw the light on last night, heard someone in there, I thought for a moment she might be back. Sleep does funny things to the mind, doesn’t it?”
    “Yeah. I know what it’s like to want someone back. Believe me.”
    She patted my hand. “It’s probably a blessing that you’re here.”
    I nodded, but I really did wonder what had happened to Danielle. And if Zach had anything to do with it.

Wyatt
    Mrs. Greenwood’s Chevy was one of those old wood-covered station wagons from the 1980s. I tried three times before it turned over. “Maybe another day, I can take it for a tune-up. It’s not safe for you to drive it like this.”
    I was setting the stage for another trip to town.
    The Wi-Fi guy pointed me in the right direction, but he was going in the other. “Can’t miss it. There’s nothing and nothing and nothing. Then, there’s Hemingway’s Hardware and Sporting Goods.”
    He hadn’t exaggerated about the nothing. I pulled onto Route 9, the supposed main road, heading south. About a mile away was a sign, advertising eggs for sale, and I wondered if it was the same Mrs. McNeill Danielle had visited years earlier. Eggs were on my shopping list from Mrs. Greenwood, and I thought maybe I’d buy them there. But when I got closer, I saw that the house was abandoned, boarded up. I remembered, then, that Mrs. Greenwood had said no one lived in the McNeill’s house, but it was strange that the sign was still up. After that, there was nothing but bare trees, ice-covered roads, snow, and more snow. The tires on the old car had looked close to bald when I left, so I drove