Baby It's Cold Outside Read online

But Violet slowed on her way back to the utility closet, her gaze falling on the naked treetop outside in the square. She saw Dottie, sitting night after night in the puddle of her office light, alone. Eating a piece of cold chicken for lunch, muscling that old truck into gear as she pulled away from city hall.

  She used to be a real firecracker.

  Even when Violet was a child, Dottie intrigued her, the murmurs surrounding her circumstances always just a little unintelligible, a woman of mystery and adventure.

  Night fell upon Frost like coal dust, the sleet swirling now, lighter. They could use the lighted star as a beacon to draw townspeople to the dance.

  If she headed out to Dottie’s, Violet might escape, at least for an hour, to gather her fortifications for tonight’s predicted loneliness.

  And…what if she could talk Dottie into joining them at the dance?

  Violet caught a glimpse of herself in the pane of glass, her dark hair wet and bedraggled with the storm. Yes, she might need some spiffing up before the dance, but who was she kidding? Every man in town, eligible or not, knew she was the girl who spent more time under the hood of her father’s tractor than learning to waltz. She didn’t even know how to dance.

  Still, she reached back, pulled the bobby pins from her bun, shook out her hair. Then she grabbed her coat, her plastic rain hat, her umbrella.

  “Mother, I’m taking Father’s car out to Dottie’s place.” She was the only one, besides Johnny, who knew how to drive it anyway. She opened the door and noticed that the ice had turned to thick, fluffy flakes, hurtling down from the heavens, accumulating in a light layer.

  “I’m going to get the star.”

  * * * * *

  Jacob Ramsey III always had an answer for disaster, a way to untangle life, a word of hope to solve any problem.

  But today, he had to arrive before the daily mail if he hoped to save the day.

  He set down his suitcase—still packed for Davenport—and stepped aside to avoid being skewered by the umbrella the pretty dark brunette wielded. He swept off his hat, held open the door, but she barely seemed to notice him as she called out to someone behind her.

  Jake did register it as odd that she might be driving, but then again, his mother had taken the Stearns Runabout for a tour around Lake Michigan a few times. Nearly killed an apple man, but still, she’d managed the wheel, the brake. He’d heard of women driving during the war also.

  In fact, most likely Violet knew how to drive, what with her ability to fix army trucks, jeeps, and other vehicles in the army motor pool.

  He’d like to see that—a woman with a wrench in her hand.

  But first he had to find her.

  Jake drew in a breath and picked up his suitcase, approaching a group of women at the punch table arranging pastries. The older one wore her years on her face, in her stern features, her dark hair dappled with just the barest threads of gray. Red lips and a black party dress suggested she refused to surrender to the onslaught of age. He glanced at the others then said, “Hello, I’m looking for someone and I’m wondering if you could help me.”

  The older woman looked up at him, wiping her hands on her apron. “I hope so—I know everyone in Frost. Are you visiting for the holidays?”

  Visiting? He didn’t exactly know how to describe it. “I’m just…delivering a message, really. I’m looking for a woman named Violet Hart.”

  A younger woman—blond—and a pregnant woman frowned at him. “What do you want with her?”

  Behind her, the band had begun to unload, the trumpets warming up their horns. He’d happened upon a party of sorts. When he’d disembarked at the train station, under the torrent of sleet, Jake had simply ducked his head and fought his way to Main Street, hoping to find a hotel. The lighted dance hall beckoned like a safe harbor.

  “She was a friend…of a friend. In a way. Or…well, I just need to talk to her. Do you know where I might find her?”

  “She’s not here.” This from a woman who hiked a small boy onto her hip. “She just left to get a star for the tree outside.” The child—cute, with dark blond curly hair—squirmed off her hip. “The dance will start in less than an hour. She’ll be back before then. Please stay. Have some cake.”

  He didn’t want cake. He’d lose cake, right on the wooden dance floor. No, Jake had no hope of holding anything down until he talked to Violet. Until he explained why his mother had sent back her letter.

  Until he told her the truth.

  “How long ago did she leave?”

  “You passed her when you came in,” said the blond.

  Oh, he felt like a cad. The brunette, with the long, chocolatebrown hair, the lethal umbrella. Perhaps he should have guessed it, but she’d never sent a picture, so… “Where did she go?” He didn’t look at the older woman, who had crossed her arms across her chest, looking very much like Svetlana when he invaded her kitchen, but smiled at the young, pregnant one. She looked like someone who might offer a poor guy a hand in his time of need.

  Indeed. “Out of town, to the south. Go until you see a big green house—it looks like a fairy tale house. And has a stone fence around it. It’s not that far, about a half mile out of town.”

  He tucked up his collar, a shiver starting at his tailbone. Perfect. He hiked up his suitcase.

  A half mile should give him plenty of time to figure out how to tell Violet that for the past four and a half years she’d been writing to a dead man.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Realistically, by New Year’s someone might come looking for her. But with Christmas upon them…and Gordy wouldn’t dare venture over from his side of the pond.

  Dottie had done a thorough search of the cellar and found nothing useful—no peach preserves, no droplets of water trickling down the stone foundation of the house, not even a crowbar left forgotten on the dirt floor.

  How long could a person live without water? Three days? Five?

  Thankfully, with the coal furnace running, she wouldn’t freeze. Unless, of course, she lost power in the storm. She listened to it howl outside. Over the past hour—or had it been two?—the moaning of the wind turned constant, a near wail that seeped through her, found her bones. She refused to allow that it might be coming from inside.

  But as Dottie sat on the steps, the truth sank into her.

  No one would be coming to save her. No one cared that she lived alone in this house, the storm brewing outside. No one thought of whether she might be alone, cold, trapped. That truth she’d learned long ago. But it hurt, just a little more, to admit it.

  Once upon a time, it couldn’t touch her. Not with Nelson climbing up into her lap. Or greeting her with his toothless grin over a bowl of cut oats. Or waving to her from the football field. Only in the past five years did the gossip, the rumors, the casual words serrate her until the truth turned her brittle.

  God had turned His back on her. She hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  Had, in fact, believed otherwise, probably for too long—that instead, He had forgiven her. That He still loved her. How had she been so profoundly mistaken about that?

  The wind found a crack in the door and whistled inside, sent a shiver across her skin.

  She ran her hands over her skirt—why didn’t she wear pants like Violet? Especially on a day like this? A few times, Dottie had heard her reading aloud to a couple of the first graders. Not a formal story hour, but something impromptu, mothering. Violet had the cadence, could do the voices. Dottie had finally found her replacement if she wanted.

  Yes, if Dottie perished here in the bowels of the old Victorian, Violet would take over the reading program and manage the library, probably even better than Dottie had. Too bad Violet had never found her man—but that’s what happened when you spurned the hometown boys.

  Someday, Dottie intended to forgive Violet for turning down Nelson for a dance that last Fourth of July social. Most likely, Violet hadn’t meant to hurt him. If Violet had known—then again, if they’d all known such a strong, ca
pable man might be lost—

  The sledgehammer. It lay against the coal bin and Dottie got up, dragged it over to the door. Maybe she could bust a hole in the door, unlatch the hasp.

  She stood on the steps, hoisted the sledgehammer to her shoulder, and swung. It skimmed the surface of the door, arched down, and nearly slammed her in the knee.

  She dodged and it swung out, whipping out of her hands and bouncing on the dirt floor. “Oh!”

  Her hands burned.

  Maybe less of a swing might help.

  She picked up the sledgehammer and again hoisted it on her shoulder. Then, instead of swinging it, she tapped it against the door. The door shuddered as the hammer fell back against her shoulder.

  She hit it again.

  It shuddered again, this time harder.

  Oh, why did her father have to make such a fortress?

  With a cry—more anger than panic—she hit it again. And again.

  And again.

  She stopped counting as she swung, finally seeing a dent in the wood. At this rate she’d be out of the cellar by Easter.

  The hasp creaked and suddenly, the door opened.

  Snow drifted in as she stared up at her rescuer.

  “Mrs. Morgan?” Violet stood, one foot propped on the cement frame, the other holding open the door. Snow layered her dark hair, now loose and tangled in the wind. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Violet!” Dottie lowered the sledgehammer to the stairs, propped it there. “I came down to free a coal jam. How’d you find me?”

  An emotion she couldn’t place passed over Violet’s expression. “I—I heard pounding.”

  From the library?

  Dottie climbed the stairs, out into the snowstorm, hunching down as the icy flakes hit her face. “Let’s get inside!”

  Her feet crunched through the accumulation of snow as she ran around the side of the house. While she’d struggled for freedom, the world had turned white, at least two inches of snow crusting the ground. She wrenched open her back door, stomped inside the mudroom.

  Violet followed her. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.” Dottie shrugged out of Nelson’s jacket, hung it on a peg, then slipped out of the galoshes. “Come inside, warm up.”

  Violet shook her head. “Actually, I’m just here to ask…” She made a face, as if the words tasted sour on her tongue. “As you know, we’re having the annual Frost Ball tonight….” She looked away. “The tree in the square looks so barren.”

  Dottie had been reaching for the doorknob into the kitchen when the realization hit her. She stilled, looked back at Violet. “You want the star.”

  Violet met her eyes. Nodded.

  For a moment, the impulse to generosity, the old stirring of joy at seeing the star shining over St. Olaf Square, the yearning to indeed revive the old traditions, flashed inside. Quick. Bright. With a warmth that bled right through her.

  Violet blew on her hands, snow caught in her dark hair, turning it shiny, like it had that night under the summer stars. When she’d turned down her son for a dance.

  Her son who’d died, who’d made the star with Dottie at the tender age of five. Their star.

  “No.”

  Dottie turned and pushed her way into her house, the flash of sweet warmth erased. No. She couldn’t have Nelson’s star shining bright and brilliant over the town of Frost, like some sort of mockery to her grief. No.

  Violet followed her inside. “Please, Mrs. Morgan. With the storm, it’s so dark out, and we thought people might need the light. Besides, don’t you think it’s time—”

  “No, I don’t think it’s time.” Dottie picked up a kettle, noticing that in the two hours of her entrapment the house had begun to warm. Filling the kettle with water, she put it on the stove, lit the gas flame with a match. Then she opened the icebox and pulled out the pot of yesterday’s soup. “Violet, I know you mean well, but I simply cannot top the Frost tree with the star.”

  “But it hasn’t been lit for years.”

  She put the pot on another burner. “Five, to be precise. I am sure you can do the math.”

  “I can, and I was in that war too, Mrs. Morgan. I met plenty of the Johnnies who went to war, who left behind the people they loved, hoping they would go on. I can guarantee that Nelson would have wanted you to light your—his star.”

  “You don’t know anything, Violet.” Dottie hadn’t exactly intended that tone—it snapped out of her, cold and brittle. She picked up a towel, wiped her hands, softened her voice. “I know you mean well, but you’re right. It’s his star, and as you well know, his light has gone out. It seems inappropriate to put the star up again.”

  “It seems inappropriate not to.”

  Never in her life had Dottie been prone to violence, but in that moment, she gripped the towel with everything inside her, lest her hand lose its moorings and clock Miss Violet Hart across the face. “Please leave.”

  “Mrs. Morgan—”

  “Violet, I fear I will not make it into the library tomorrow with our impending storm. I believe you may take the day off also—might as well just stay in for the Christmas weekend.”

  “But the children—the Christmas Eve reading?”

  “What is it with your insistence to reignite old traditions?”

  “I told a few of the mothers—”

  “No. No reading, no star. No children. Please, and I’m asking you nicely for the last time, leave.”

  Dottie turned again, hating the effect her own words had on her, the fact that she wanted to put the towel to her face, to howl, lose herself in the noise of the storm.

  When she heard Violet close the door behind her, step out, and finally motor up her car, Dottie did exactly that.

  * * * * *

  Please…leave.

  Violet sat in her father’s old ’38 Plymouth and listened to Dottie’s voice, dissecting it. Examining the tremor inside, the pulse of regret, the hope of rebellion.

  No, probably Violet dreamed all those nuances from the crevices in her own heart. Certainly Mrs. Morgan didn’t mean to be alone for the next three days, over Christmas? Certainly she had family?

  Violet got out, took a board from the back seat, and scraped the heavy snow from her windshield, scrubbing at the icy layer underneath. She should have kept the car running, should have guessed that Dottie would turn her down.

  A firecracker, indeed. Violet had no doubt the woman would have pummeled her way through her cellar door. It just might have taken into next year.

  Please…leave.

  Violet turned, peering at the entrance. Despite her tone, the woman seemed so fragile, her legs pencils in those oversized waders, her body shrunken in her son’s jacket. Violet didn’t know what made her think of the cellar door—how she’d even heard the pounding above the blowing of the storm. Just an impulse, maybe, but with the house so cold, and Mrs. Morgan not answering her call as she tiptoed inside her dark, cold kitchen…

  Violet slid back inside the car, curling her hands around the steering wheel. She put the car into reverse, backed it around, then toward the long driveway.

  If Dottie wanted to be left alone…

  Violet could barely see past the giant pine tree in the yard, its furry branches coated with snow. Flakes pummeled her windshield and a shiver drove through her, despite the heat in the car.

  So much for the Frost Christmas Dance. Besides the band and the committee, who might venture out on a night like this? But it was tradition. And people thrived on tradition, especially when rebuilding their lives.

  Please…leave.

  Oh, Dottie’s voice embedded in Violet, pulsing, as if she’d looked inside Mrs. Morgan and seen something forbidden.

  Besides, what if it were Violet someday trapped in her cellar, no one to call out to?

  Who was she kidding? It would be her.

  She glanced back at the house.

  When she looked again to the driveway, a figure had materialized, as if from now
here, just appearing in the darkness, etched out by her lights. A man in a long, snow-crusted wool coat carrying a case, hunched over against the wind.

  “Oh!” Violet pumped the brakes, but the wheels didn’t catch. “Look out!”

  The man seemed paralyzed in the road, as if frozen in her headlights.

  She wrenched the wheel to swerve away, to miss him, and the car careened toward the lawn. She pumped the brakes again, but they refused to answer, momentum carrying the vehicle toward the towering pine in the front yard.

  No— No—

  Violet saw the accident, almost in slow motion. The tree swaying above her, the branches quivering as if waving her off. The trunk rising toward her, the snow bulleting the windshield.

  She threw her hands up to brace herself, and let out a scream as the impact pitched her forward.

  She slammed into the windshield, bounced back into the seat, then forward again into the dash. Pain seared into her knee. She may have heard a crack too.

  And then, nothing remained but stillness as she realized she’d stopped moving.

  Snow covered the long hood, dumped from the defenseless tree. The car ticked, one last time, then the engine sputtered out, hissing its demise.

  “Are you okay?”

  The voice came at her, muffled, through the window. She went to roll it down, cranking hard twice before it came to her that perhaps she should simply open the door.

  It protested, shuddering as she cracked it open. The stranger helped pry it open then bent down and held out his hand. “Are you all right?”

  “What were you doing standing in the middle of the driveway? On a night like this?”

  “Shh, you’re bleeding.” He crouched beside her as she put her hand to her forehead. He caught it. “No, wait, you have glass there.” He reached up, making a face, and she winced when he pulled a shard away. “I think there’s more, but we need to get you inside and clean it out.”

  In the light from the house, and as he cupped his hand under her elbow to help her out, she recognized him.

  “You! You were at the dance hall. Aren’t you a member of the band?”

  “No.” His other hand closed around hers, and as he pulled her up, her legs—probably from the shock—gave out on her. She collapsed like an idiot back onto the seat.