Precious and Fragile Things Read online

  The door to the lean-to opened as she stood there. Todd, wearing no coat, no hat, just the same familiar hooded sweatshirt, was already lighting up a cigarette. He snapped his lighter closed and tucked it in his front jeans pocket, then jerked his chin toward her.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She sounded breathy, winded.

  “How’s it going?”

  Gilly stretched, not wanting to lose her momentum or get chilled. “Good. Fine. Great, as a matter of fact.”

  “You coming back in?”

  “Not yet.” She stepped off the path of beaten-down snow into the depths of a small drift and sank up to her shins. “Still walking.”

  “It’s cold as fuck out here, Gilly.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. She was already nearing the house’s second corner. She had a rhythm starting, and she grinned. It seemed to take him aback, because he flinched.

  “Crazy bitch,” Todd muttered. He went inside and closed the door firmly. The scent of smoke lingered for only half a second before the wind whisked it away.

  Gilly looked at the sky and, laughing, did her best Todd imitation. “Fucking insane.”

  She pushed on. Five more steps. She experimented, taking small half steps interspersed with lunging strides. She stopped to rest after just a few steps. Her breath whistled in her throat, her mouth parched, and she scooped a handful of snow to melt on her tongue.

  Gilly had never understood those people who risked their lives to climb mountains or explore wastelands. One of Seth’s favorite shows was that one about the man who put himself out into the wilderness and survived by eating insects and drinking urine. Gilly didn’t even like to read about that sort of thing, much less watch it on television. So what on earth was possessing her to live it now?

  Without looking at her watch she could only guess at the amount of time she’d been out here already, but it hadn’t been too long. Perhaps half an hour. Thirty minutes to move a few hundred feet!

  Sweat streamed down her back and froze on her forehead. She sucked in gusts of air, burning her lungs and enjoying it. Determination fueled her. It would be so easy to give up. Gilly forced herself to move forward two more steps, the weight of the snow even heavier on her legs now that she’d taken a few minutes to rest.

  If she gave up now, it would be a failure she could never forgive herself for. Somehow, for some stupid reason, making her way around this cabin had fixed itself in her mind as something important. Sacrifice for redemption…for penance? An idea completely at odds with what she believed, totally against her faith.

  However, knowing what she was doing was crazy didn’t make Gilly change her mind. She set her jaw, biting at the thick fabric of her sweatshirt to keep it from slipping down off her face. She lifted her legs, the muscles burning, and set them down. Two more steps.

  By the time she made it around the cabin’s second corner, her mood had changed from exhilaration to doubt. She reached out to touch the side of the cabin. Like a talisman, touching the rough shingles gave her strength.

  Evening, by her reckoning, was a few hours away, but the sky had grown dark enough to make it seem as though night were beginning to fall. She had to finish this journey before that happened. She might be crazy, but she wasn’t insane enough to stay out here after dark.

  Gilly had only seen the back of the cabin through the windows. Once out here, the humped and hilly landscape of snow seemed as foreign to her as an alien planet. She made it to a dilapidated picnic table, heaped high with snow, with a minimum of huffing and puffing and steadied herself on its snow-covered top.

  Gilly glanced to the windows, half-expecting to see Todd’s broad silhouette checking on her again, but all she saw was the glow of the lights he must’ve recently lit. She paused long enough to sit on the table’s bench seat and wiggle her toes inside the boots. She could still feel her feet pushing against the leather, though all other sensation had numbed. The foolishness of this undertaking struck her as she thought of blackened and amputated toes.

  Don’t think of it. You’ll be okay. Just keep moving.

  She whacked the snow off her bottom and looked at the cabin. Through the windows she saw Todd moving. It looked warm in there, and though she wasn’t cold yet—not really, aside from her toes—she was tired and hungry and worn-out.

  “Move your ass,” she said aloud. “C’mon, Gilly. You came out here and wanted to do this. Don’t be a baby.”

  Time ceased ticking as she stumbled through the mounds of whiteness. One foot in front of the other, lifting and plunging. The sound of her breath came loud in her ears, like a freight train. Like the roar of a lion. It gave her strength, that sound, and when she opened her mouth and let out a scream of triumph as she touched the cabin’s third corner, she didn’t care how crazy or bestial she sounded. Her shriek echoed off the trees, startling a rabbit from its hiding place beneath the thick undergrowth. The sound of it, though it had come from her own throat and of her own volition, frightened Gilly, too.

  She was almost there. The world tilted in front of her eyes, but Gilly managed to bring it back into focus. No fainting out here, not even if it meant she could lie down in the deep, soft snow. Sleep had never been so appealing, but to sleep here meant certain death. She must keep moving.

  Had she ever done anything this physically hard? Gilly thought again of childbirth, the never-endingness of it, the fact that once begun she could not have stopped it if she tried. There are moments in life that once started cannot be stopped; she would have to see this through to completion as surely as she’d given birth to her children. There was no going back. Only forward.

  She gathered her strength again, feeling it ebb with every moment she remained still. Her body screamed a protest when she forced her foot forward. Gilly stumbled, the first time since she’d stepped off the porch earlier this afternoon, and hit the snow.

  It engulfed her, enveloped her, wrapped her in clouds of stinging softness. Whiteness filled her eyes, her nose, her throat while she coughed and gagged. She was drowning in it.

  Gilly got her feet beneath her and pushed with her hands, lifting herself out of the drift with an effort she could only classify as superhuman. She shivered, then quaked with reaction and cold.

  “C’mon,” she muttered, slapping her hands together. “Stupid, Gilly! Stupid to do this!”

  But even as her body stung and ached, and the bitter wind tore at her flesh, Gilly didn’t feel stupid. She was almost done. She would do this, and in doing it become stronger.

  She forged ahead, battling her weakness with grunts and curses. She touched the fourth corner of the cabin, viewed the front porch, and found no strength for screams this time. Instead she gathered her breath and forced herself to drag herself through the snow.

  “To the steps,” she breathed. “Then I’m done.”

  And she made it to the steps, though without recall of how she did it. Every painful step of the trip around the house was clear like ice in her brain, but not the final steps. She simply found herself inside the front door, shedding her clothes, and realized she’d done it.

  Her hands wouldn’t loosen her clothes. Gilly staggered to the dining room table, knocking puzzle pieces to the floor. She didn’t have the strength to do more.

  The room felt blessedly, unbearably hot. She raised her face to the warmth, letting it seep into her as she tried to shed her sodden, frozen clothes.

  “Get out of that stuff,” Todd told her.

  Gilly looked up, feeling the goofy grin paint itself on her face. “I did it. All the way around the house!”

  “You’re a real jerkoff, Gilly, do you know that?”

  She should’ve felt worse for her adventure. Should’ve been cringing and whimpering as the heat leached into her frozen bones. Instead, Gilly felt joyous. Exuberant. She almost, but not quite, laughed.

  The almost-laugh sobered her. “I need to warm up.”

  “I heated some water for you.”

  “What?”