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This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental. Copyright 2013 by Sara J. Henry All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Henry, Sara J. A cold and lonely place : a novel / Sara J. Henry p. cm. 1. Women journalistsFiction. 2. Family secretsFiction. 3. Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.)Fiction. 4. Saranac Lake (N.Y.) Fiction. I. Title. PS3608.E5796C65 2013 813'.6dc23 2012032575 ISBN 978-0-307-71841-9 eISBN 978-0-307-71843-3 Printed in the United States of America
book design by elina d. nudelman jacket design by alex merto jacket photographs: (woman) dave o. tuttle/flickr/getty images; (cabin) ryan mcvay/getty images

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chapter 1



sara j. henry

slush, infused by colored lights that turn it into a fairy-tale castle. You can wander through it, footsteps crunching, breath forming icy clouds, and feel a sense of wonder you havent felt since you were a child. Its part of the fabric of this town, and the flow of winter is based around it. Never mind the huge expenditure of time and energy. This is Saranac Lake; this is Winter Carnival. Up goes the ice palace, every year with a different design, a different form of magic. This year I was going to track its progress for the local paper, with a photo and vignette every dayI thought Id write about the homemade ice-cutting contraption, interview one of the ice cutters, talk to the designer. There was a lot you could write about palaces built of ice cut from the lake. As we reached the circle of men, they stepped back, and Matt and I looked down. What I saw looked at first like a shadow under the icea dark mass, debris somehow caught up in cast-off clothing and trapped underneath as the ice had formed. I was wondering why the crew didnt simply move on to clean ice when I realized the mass had a shape, a human shape. You could see something that looked like eyes and a mouth that seemed open. Right about then Matt grabbed my arm and walked me away from the thing under the ice. We stopped about ten feet away and I sank to my heels, trying to process what I thought Id seen. Matt whipped out a walkie-talkie and began barking orders as he gestured the men farther back. For once my journalistic instincts had shut down, and I had no urge to record any of this. I could still envision that face under the ice, as if it were looking at me through a rain-distorted window. And it was a face I knew.

chapter 2

I live in Lake Placid, ten miles away, in a house so big I rent out rooms, usually to athletes in town to train for bobsledding or kayaking or skiing. But sometimes a local turns up, and one day late last summer a girl named Jessamyn knocked at the door. She was thin with long black hair and green eyes that shifted as she looked at you. I wasnt sure I trusted her. But she didnt smokeIve had people stare me in the eye and swear they didnt smoke when they reeked of itand something about her made me like her. She was happy to take the smallest upstairs room, the one with just a twin mattress on the floor, a child-sized dresser, and a rod to hang clothes on. She moved from job to job, but thats not rare here. Lake Placid is a touristy sports town with plenty of low-paying jobs, and people come and go, moving on to Boulder or Salt Lake City or giving up on their particular dream and heading back home to the unexciting job they never thought theyd have to take. Jessamyn had a quick wit and a sardonic manner, and men flocked to her. Shed date them for a few weeks, then discard them as if they were an article of clothing that didnt quite fitapparently with no hard feelings on either side. She partied hard in the local bars but didnt bring it home with her. I never encountered a drunken

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paramour stumbling down the stairs; her employer never called because she missed a shift. And, like me, she never got involved with any of our roommates. You dont fish in your own pond; you dont hunt in your own backyard. Then she met Tobin Winslow. I would have pegged him for trouble from the start, with his frat-boy good looks, floppy hair, sleepy brown eyes, and diffident manner. It was written all over him that he was the sort of person who assumes life should go his way, no matter what. He didnt have a job to speak of, nothing steady, and drove a rattletrap pickup that seemed as much a prop as his Carhartt pants and flannel shirts. I suspected hed grown up in a world of crisp khakis and button-downs and gone to an elite prep school, then partied himself right out of Harvard or Princeton before drifting up here, where no one ever asked where or if youd gone to university. It surprised me that Jessamyn fell for himactually it surprised me she fell for anyone, because I hadnt seen her let anyone get too close. But Tobin seemed to appeal to something in her in a way the local guys hadnt. Maybe she was looking for someone who might take her away from here. Maybe she was yearning for conversation about more than ice fishing or carburetors or whatever game had been on television the night before. Shed been steadily working her way through the shelves of the Lake Placid library, and most of the guys she dated probably hadnt cracked a book since high school. And while Tobin may have been playing the role of good old boy, I suspected there was a lot going on behind that sleepy-lidded look. But it didnt take a rocket scientist to see that Tobin Winslow likely wouldnt be leading Jessamyn down a path to anything new and improved. Falling for him meant giving up a big chunk of herselfalthough maybe that would have happened no matter who she fell for. Maybe she didnt know how to love without giving up herself. Id figured that Jessamyns flippant manner, hard drinking, and serial dating had been the veneer shed adopted to cope with things life had thrown at her, things I could only guess

a co l d a nd l onely p l a c e

at. But it had worked, in its way. Sure, she dated guys who were completely unaware of her intellect and she hadnt been able to settle down, but that happens to a lot of us. She had a life she could handle and at least pretend to be happy. But Tobin had changed all that. Around him she dropped her sardonic edge and became close to meek. It didnt seem a change for the better. I didnt expect it was going to end wellI couldnt see Tobin settling down here, or whisking Jessamyn off to the bosom of his family, wherever they might be. Tobin would periodically disappear for a week or twono one knew whereand while he was gone Jessamyn would show glimmers of her old self. But once he came back shed take right back up with him again as if hed never left, an Adirondack version of a Stepford wife. And the face beneath the ice was his.

chapter 3

The ice harvesters had begun to talk in low tones. I heard Tobins name, so theyd recognized him too. Tobin had spent a lot of time in the Saranac Lake bars, which were in general grittier than the ones in Lake Placid, and without the cluster of shiny-faced tourists trying a little too hard to have a good time. Someone appeared from the Lakeview Deli across the street, carrying a cardboard carton of steaming drinks. One of the men handed me a cup. It was cocoa, hot and sweet, not the black coffee the guys almost certainly were drinking. This was their concession to my being a woman, one who had just seen a dead man, someone she knew, under the ice. Fine by me, because in all the ways that mattered, the guys treated me as an equal. Id covered their softball games and dart tournaments and ice-fishing contests, taken their photos and spelled their names right, so to them I was okay. And maybe cocoa was just what I needed now. I took another sip and walked over to the guys. I nodded at them. They nodded back. Its Tobin, right? Tobin Winslow? I said. They nodded again. How . . . I began. They shrugged in unison. Takes a while for that much ice to form, said one.


Im from the South, where a dusting of snow means that schools close, life comes to a standstill, and everyone stays home until the white stuff disappears. It had been a rude adjustment to live somewhere so cold that lakes freeze into solid masses that people walk on, cut holes in for ice fishing, and drive sled-dog teams across. It took my first long winter here to learn to gauge the weather and dress in layers so I wasnt cold to the bone most of the time. We stood there, no one saying anything. It wasnt all that rare in the Adirondacks for vacationers to get stranded in a sudden snowstorm on what they had thought would be a pleasant afternoon hike and freeze to death before anyone could find them. Far too often a local would drink too much on a Saturday night and drive off the road and die in a deep ravine. And sometimes, in the middle of a jobless, loveless winter, someone would write a note, put his mouth around a shotgun barrel, and thumb down the trigger. Or go out for a long walk and never be found. Someone cried for them, or no one did. Someone cleaned up the mess, and life went on. And with all the lakes here, people find plenty of ways to drown. In winter theyll take a Ski-Doo out when the ice isnt thick enough and go under. Maybe they have the time and presence of mind to toss a child or grandchild to firmer ice before they sink, maybe not. Or in spring someone will go boating without a life jacket and drown under a bright shining sun, in water so cold it saps your will to keep moving until you give up and slide under, maybe on the way down thinking of the rest of your life youll never have. Last summer Id nearly drowned in Lake Champlain, and sometimes in my dreams Im back in that water, cold and alone, wondering if Ill ever take a breath of air again. Matt came over and nodded at us, shaking his gloved fingers hard to warm them. A police car drove up and a policeman got out, walked over, and peered down at the ice for what seemed like a long time. Then he looked up and beckoned to Matt. Another policeman arrived, then a rescue squad. They all walked

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over, looked down at the ice, retreated to talk it over. Finally Matt came and asked me if I would take photos of the body before they started trying to remove it. When Id been the sports editor here, Id covered everything from kayaking to boxing to luge to snowshoe races. But Id never photographed anything under ice, and it was tricky with the sun reflecting off the surface. I concentrated on exposure and tried not to think about this being the body of a man Id known. After Id taken multiples of every shot I could think of, I nodded at Matt. The men moved in with saws and began to cut the ice around the body. I kept shooting. It was something to do, and I needed to do something. Someone brought me another steaming cup from the deli, and I gulped it down. This time it was coffee. I kept clicking. It seemed to take a very long time to free the block of ice, lever it out, and wrestle thick flat canvas bands under it to slide it toward shore. By now a crowd had gathered at the edge of the lake. I kept pressing the shutter button as the body slid along in its ice coffin. I saw it but didnt see it. I let the camera see it for me. If I had simply heard that Tobin had died in a car crash downstate somewhere, I dont think I would have mourned him. But that dark shape in the chunk of ice sliding past hit me in a way I wouldnt have expected. Jessamyn had cared for Tobin, and somewhere were friends hed grown up with, gone to school with, shared his rich-boy escapades with. Somewhere there was a family who would mourn his death and the extensions of him that would never exist: wife, children, grandchildren. And no mother is ever ready for a phone call telling her that her child has been found frozen into a lake. The good thing about weather this cold is that tears freeze before they fall, so you can brush them away without anyone noticing. On the shore, paramedics were having a discussion with the police, apparently adamant that this giant chunk of ice was not going into their ambulance. Finally someone drove an oversized



pickup out onto the lake, which always makes me nervous. It seems to break one of the immutable laws of naturewater isnt meant to be driven on, and theres water on the other side of that ice, cold and dark. Every man on the crew went to help hoist the slab of ice and slide it into the pickup bed. Probably they werent all needed, but wanted to feel they were doing something. Off drove the truck, to a heated municipal garage, I imagined, where theyd wait for the ice to melt from around Tobins body. Or maybe someone would chip away at it. There were people around here skilled in ice sculpting, and I supposed this would use the same basic skills, sort of in reverse. Matt appeared at my side, and I was cold enough that I could almost sense the heat coming from his body. Were going to go to the tavern, Troy, he said. Do you want to come? I shook my head. I knew the guys needed to unwind before they went home, where their wives and children would want to hear the story. This would be told and retold in years to come, an almost apocryphal tale to keep kids from venturing too far on thin ice. It would be an easier story to tell, I thought, if you hadnt been there, if you hadnt seen Tobins body being sawn out of the lake. If you hadnt known him when he was alive. There would be a lot of beers downed this afternoon. The guys would talk about Tobin, how much he liked to drink, the crazy things hed done, how he had ended up under the ice. Maybe it would be good to hear all this, but I couldnt handle it. I needed to get home. Most of all, I needed to tell Jessamyn before she heard it on the street.


chapter 4

Its about twenty minutes to Lake Placid, if you dont get stuck behind tourists. With my car heater blasting on high I had just about stopped shivering by the time I got home. But I was still cold, too cold to go looking for Jessamyn. I ran water in my tub, as hot as I could stand it, and crawled in and lay there, all of me submerged but my face, steam coming off the water, and thought about Tobin, under the ice. My dog, Tiger, lay in the doorway watching. Shes half German shepherd and half golden retriever, and just about the best dog on the planet. It seemed to take forever to warm up. I toweled off and dressed as fast as I could, but I was moving slowly, like in one of those dreams where you just cant get anywhere. The walk up to town took longer than usual. Jessamyn was working at a restaurant up on Main Street, where she regularly had the weekend shift. Tourists come into town determined to spend money, and theyre happy to drop it on tips for a smiling waitress. And Jessamyn could play charm-thetourists as well as anyone. This was your standard steak and seafood restaurant, with the requisite Olympic kitsch: hanging ice skates and hockey sticks, photos of ski jumpers and bobsledders. I kicked snow off my boots



at the door and stamped more off in the foyer. It was the afternoon lull before the dinner rush, and I saw Jessamyn refilling coffee cups for a table of tourists and laughing as if theyd said something incredibly witty. I waited until she headed back my direction. Hey, Troy, she said, surprised. Did you want to eat? She knows I dont often eat out, and if I do, its Desperados, where the food is cheap and the service fast, or The Cowboy if someones visiting from out of town. I shook my head. Can you take five minutes? I asked. She narrowed her eyes. She knew I wouldnt be here if it wasnt important. She set down the coffeepot, told the cashier shed be right back, and grabbed her jacket. Outside she crammed her gloveless hands into her pockets and looked at me. There was no easy way to say this. I would rather have told her at home, but word travels fast. Somewhere in town somebody probably was already telling the story. I took a deep breath, and spoke. I was over in Saranac Lake todaythey started building the ice palace. They found a body in the ice. Now her eyes shifted. Id learned with her this didnt always mean she wasnt telling the truth; sometimes it just meant she was uncomfortable. I made myself say the next words. It was Tobin, Jessamyn. She seemed to stop breathing. She stared at me, eyes wide, and swayed on her feet. I took a step toward her, but she righted herself. Her face was chalk. Youre sure? she whispered. I nodded. She didnt ask any questions. She just stood there and breathed: in, out, in, out. When Tobin had disappeared this last time, she had held out hope for a long time that he would return as usual. But as weeks turned into months, even she had given up. I think both of us had assumed hed gotten tired of playing Adirondacker. Id pictured him back at whatever posh home he had come from, living off


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family money or making the motions of going into Daddys business, and frequenting bars more expensive and sophisticated than here. Id imagined hed dropped the Carhartts and flannel shirts into a Goodwill bin, or given them to the hired help. Our breath formed little clouds. I didnt want you to hear it from someone else, I said. The words were thin in the cold air. I need a drink, she said.

She told her boss she was taking the evening off, and after one look at our faces he knew not to protest. If Jessamyn was passing up a prime winter Saturday evening slot, there was good reason. Hed call in someone whod be happy to take her shift and the fat tips that came with it. We walked down the street wordlessly, our feet crunching on the packed snow. When we reached ZigZags, she opened the door, and I followed her in. She nodded at the bartender; Id seen him around town but didnt know his name. He served us efficiently, refilling her glass when she gestured to it, and topped up my Diet Coke without asking. She didnt cry; she just drank. She asked the bartender if he had any cigarettes, and he handed her an open pack and didnt say anything about smoking not being allowed. There were no other customers. She smoked four in fast succession, lighting one from the butt of the other. I didnt complain about the smoke. I didnt remind her how hard shed told me it had been to quit. I just sat there. She spoke only once, and I had to lean in to hear her. Damn him, she whispered. I didnt know if she meant damn him for dying, or damn him for things hed done when he was alive. I didnt ask. Eventually I went off to the bathroom, and on the way back asked the bartender if he had any foodI figured that liquor and shock werent a good combination on an empty stomach. I thought



he might find some pretzels or nuts, but he came back with two thick sandwiches on sturdy plates and sat them on the bar in front of us. Maybe hed heard about Tobin, or maybe he could just tell when someone needed to have food set in front of them. Jessamyn picked her sandwich up almost unseeingly and ate most of it, then put it down and emptied her glass. Lets go, she said, and stood. She pulled some bills from her pocket and dropped them on the bar. I caught the bartenders eye with a look that said If its not enough, let us know, and he nodded. I grabbed my jacket and followed her outside. It was snowing softly, the flakes falling on our faces and sticking in our hair. Dusk was settling. We walked to the house in silence. As Jessamyn turned to climb the stairs to her room, I saw a tear trail down her cheek. Maybe shed cry up there, or maybe shed just go to sleep. But I knew she needed to be alone.


chapter 5

It was past Tigers dinnertime, so I filled her bowl and left her in the kitchen while I climbed the steep stairs that led to my rooms. I have an outer room I use as an office, a tiny bathroom, and a small bedroom, all nicely separate from the rest of the house. I turned on my computer and clicked on my portable radiator. This is the only heat up here, plus whatever makes its way up through the stairwell and vents in the floor. But at night I have a down comforter and the warm weight of Tiger in the crook of my knees, so I do all right. I sat at my desk. I could feel the heat from the radiator, but I didnt want to. I wanted to feel numb. I wanted to forget the grinding sound the block of ice with Tobins body had made as it had slid past me, the grunts of the men struggling to move it into the truck, the look on Jessamyns face when Id told her the news. And I wanted to forget that glimpse of Tobin Winslows face, frozen into the ice. But I couldnt. I pushed my cameras memory card into my computer, let Photoshop start uploading the photos, and turned away as they began flashing past. I rummaged in my dresser for some thick wool socks, pulled them on, and went down to the kitchen to brew some tea. Then I climbed under my covers to warm up.



There, while I sipped my tea, I realized I needed to talk to someone. This still doesnt come naturally to me. But I do have people I can call: my brother, Simon, in Orlando, with his cool, logical policemans brain. My friend Baker, in Saranac Lake, with her kids and more routine life, always calm and pragmatic. Alyssa, a reporter in Burlington whod been there for the worse parts of last summer. And Philippe, in Ottawa, whom Id come oh-so-close to falling for. But it was Jameson I wanted to talk to. He was a police detective in Ottawa Id met after Id dived from a Lake Champlain ferry to rescue a small boy who turned out to have been kidnapped, a small boy whose father was Philippe. Jameson had seemed to consider me a prime suspect in the childs abduction, or at least an accomplice. He could be insufferably rude; he was brusque and direct. I trusted him absolutely. Something was tickling the back of my mind, a memory of the week Tobin disappeared, of seeing Jessamyn coming in the kitchen with a fat lip and a stiff way of moving. Walked into a door, shed said. I hadnt believed her. Id once worked with a woman who would come in with heavy makeup that didnt quite cover the bruises on her faceI fell off the porch, shed say, or something similar, and we would nod and pretend to believe her. But in the afternoon roses would arrive from her husband, and I knew that husbands dont routinely send flowers whenever youre careless enough to fall off a porch. The phone rang three times before he answered. Jameson, he said, as he would at work. Hey, its Troy. Something changed on his end, as if he had shifted in his chair. Troy. How are you? Something happened today, I said. He knew I wouldnt be calling about something mundane, and I knew hed want to hear it from the beginning. So I told him about my roommate and the guy she had dated, a guy who had disappeared regularly, who


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may have mistreated her, whose body had just been found frozen in Lake Flower. He listened without a word. Fully dressed? he asked when I stopped. I closed my eyes, and I could see the contorted figure in the block of ice. One arm, off to the side, fingers splayed. A shiver ran through me. Yes. Coat. No hat. No gloves, at least on the hand I saw. He was a drinker? Oh, yeah. And he smoked weed, I think. He never seemed entirely sober. Ive never seen the logic in drinking to excessit makes people act stupid and feel bad later. But plenty of locals drink hard and regularly, and many vacationers seem to think its a requirement for stepping foot in town. More than once Ive hollered out my bedroom window at two a.m. at firemen here for a convention and so drunk they couldnt find their way back to their motel. Maybe visiting horse-show people got plastered as well, but didnt wander the streets being loud about it. Maybe they sat around in their trim riding jodhpurs and neat buttoned shirts and got quietly, desperately, privately drunk. Even I knew if someone had imbibed enough they might think it a great idea to amble across a half-frozen lake. Alcohol seems to go a long way toward convincing people theyre immortal. Theyll do an autopsy, Jameson said. Even the basics will take a few days; tox screens take longer. Then theyll likely know if its anything besides him just falling through the ice. But tell your roommate not to talk about this. To anyone. Not even casually. What about the police? Silence for a moment as he negotiated between his sense of duty and what was best for Jessamyn. She doesnt want to impede the investigation, he said finally. She should tell them whats relevant: when she saw him last, who his friends were, but nothing thats not factsnothing they can misinterpret. Not without a lawyer.


Okay, I said, and suddenly it was. Without me having to spell it out he knew I was worried, and he knew why. If I had noticed Jessamyns fat lip and pained way of walking, other people would have too. It wouldnt be a giant leap for someone to assume that Tobin had been the one to hurt her, and that she might have decided to do something about it. Because the Jessamyn before Tobin came along wouldnt have put up with anyone raising a hand to her. Let me know what they find out, he said. I will, I said, and hung up. I did realize that on some level there was a thread of something deeper between Jameson and me, but neither of us seemed to want or need to acknowledge it. Jameson was single, and that was the extent of what I knew about his personal life. And of course he knew how intertwined my life had been with Philippes last summer after Id rescued his son. It was getting late, and had gotten colder. But I needed a walk, and Tiger could use one. Its one of the great things about dogs theyre always ready for an outing. I pulled on my wool-lined Sorel boots, zipped up my parka, and wedged my neck warmer under my hat so only my eyes and nose were exposed. This is my secret to beating the cold: blocking the little crevices that let the cold creep in. This, plus my puffy insulated gloves. I didnt bother with a leash, because Tiger always walks or runs beside me. No credit to me; she was born that way, pretrained. I let her know what I wanted, and shed do it. We headed out past Town Hall and the police station and turned onto Mirror Lake Drive for the three-mile loop around the lake. I love this walk at night, especially in the winter. Almost no one is out; the air is still; the snow and ice crunch underfoot. As you move along you can forget the bad stuff that happened during the day. Or almost, anyway.

I dont often have female roommates, because usually its guys who show up looking for rooms. And guys are easier to live with.

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They dont care if you dont feel like talking and they dont get involved with your life, except around the edges. They never want to make the house rules or take over running things, and they dont complain about the dcor or much of anything. But Jessamyn hadnt been the typical female roommate. She didnt want to take over anything. She didnt want to always be doing things with me. She didnt want to tell me her problems or hear about mine, and she was tidier than most of the guys. Tobin Id seen a lot of, because he was often at the house, and nothing had given me a reason to change my impression of him. Not that Id told Jessamyn. She hadnt gotten where she was in life by listening to good advice. Few of us have. As I walked I pictured Tobin, drunk or foolish or both, crunching across the early winter ice of Lake Flower until he fell through, or passing out or falling asleep, then sliding under as the ice gave way. At least then, I thought, he would have been spared the shock of plunging into the frigid water and that final awful moment when he knew he wasnt going to be able to save himself, that today had been his last tomorrow. Or he could have been ice diving. Its crazy, but people do it. Id seen it during Winter Carnivalunofficial, of course. Someone dives through a circular hole cut into the ice, a rope tied to one leg, and comes up through a second hole nearby, presumably after drinking enough to decide its a good idea. Maybe Tobin had missed the second hole and had no one to haul him out. Or tried it without a rope, or the rope came loose, or his friends lost hold of it. It would be a terrible secret to keep through the winter, waiting for the body to be found. But because of Winter Carnival and the vagaries of the lake, it had appeared sooner rather than later. It didnt yet cross my mind that someone might actually have a reason for wanting Tobin gone. My eyelashes were beginning to freeze. I broke into a jog, taking choppy, short steps, all you can do in clunky boots on icy ground. Tiger kept pace without missing a beat. I switched to a brisk walk when I reached town, passing restaurants and gift



shops, the Olympic Center and then the speed-skating oval with its skaters in tights and long blades, bent low, gliding around the track. In the kitchen, Brent glanced up and nodded. He was working his way through a plateful of spaghetti and a paperback copy of Of Human Bondage, a book Ive never been able to make myself finish. Brent, like most of my athlete roommates, was quiet and dedicateda biathlete who spent long hours skiing, lifting weights, and dry-firing his rifle at a tiny target taped on his bedroom wall. Hed lived in the Olympic training center a while, but I suspected thered been too many boisterous bobsledders and snowboarders for him. I wondered if I should tell him Jessamyns boyfriend had been found frozen in the ice of Lake Flower. But its a hard thing to work into conversation: Hows your book? Say, did you hear Tobin Winslow was found dead today? I nodded back at him and climbed the stairs to my room. I pulled on the sweatpants and old pullover I sleep in, and thought about e-mailing or calling Philippe. But I didnt feel like talking, and this wasnt something you could rattle off in an e-mail. Id tell him about it, but not now. I grabbed my favorite Josephine Tey novel, and forced my eyes to follow the words until I could go to sleep. It took a while.


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