Snow Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the university contained two collections of books and manuscripts needed in my present research. Or—or was it because some unregenerate part of me had—
    Setting my teeth, I settled my head once more on my pillow, with an emphatic thump, I was older, and, I hoped, wiser. Maybe I was an anachronism in my generation, but then I had never felt any kinship with people of my own age. What had a psychotherapist friend of mine (who had once tried to get me to sortout my badly confused inner self) said? Children were programmed from birth and it was the hardest thing in the world to reprogram them. Each must want to be another person with all his or her heart and soul.
    I was satisfied—I had to be—with the Erica Jansen I was. With that Erica, I felt as safe as a hunted animal deep in some warm hole. As long as I did not try to venture forth, but just turned around and around where I was, then I thought—I knew—I could bear waking up each morning to face life, dark and colorless though it might seem to others.
    But what had brought Mark Rohmer to Ladensville again?
    I wrenched my thoughts, fought them. Tomorrow it will not matter at all. You’ll be firmly settled in that bastion of propriety, in Miss Elizabeth’s house. Holding to that, I somehow did achieve a measure of dream-haunted and unrefreshing sleep.

3
    I was out of the inn before breakfast the next morning, scuttling off in a way I knew was a disgrace to my self-respect, restraining my inclination to keep looking over my shoulder only by stern effort. If I expected Mark Rohmer to rise up between me and the outer door, I was disappointed. Though in punishment for my foolishness I shivered enough while waiting for the reluctant arrival of the taxi.
    In the daylight, the Abbey held no mystery at all. The bushes, which last night had appeared only screens to hide what writers of horror tales (who have flogged their imaginations into utter fatigue) call “the unmentionable,” were only shrubs, sadly weighted now with soft snow. When I was deposited with suitcase and flight bag at the door, my main thought was of hunger,though to expect breakfast waiting would be too much. I could stop at the coffee shop later.
    My chilled finger punched the bell button with perhaps too much vigor. But I was eager to get under cover, and I begrudged the moments there on the doorstep, as a chill wind curled around me. At last the door opened with a decided creak, and I found myself facing a dried wisp of a woman. In her youth she must have been as tall as Miss Elizabeth Austin, but age, and perhaps years of labor, had bowed her forward, hunching her thin shoulders. Her hair was a frizz of gray and black, the most of it pinned up under a cap, while her black dress was covered with a bib apron. Through granny glasses (which were no affectation of the moment’s fashion but really of another time) she peered at me. And there was no welcome in her face. I found myself a little at a loss, facing that hostile stare.
    “I’m Miss Jansen. Miss Elizabeth rented me a room last night—” I fought to sound not apologetic, as if I were pleading for shelter.
    She made no answer save a duck of her head as she pulled the heavy door farther open to let me clump in, bags in hand. I was feeling that I must cease to drip on the carpet as soon as possible. I shed my boots with all the speed I could muster while the woman stooped and picked up, before I could stop her, my baggage. She went on to climb the stair slowly, as if the ascent tried aching joints, while I hurried to join her.
    Once more we paced down the upper hall and I was finally installed in the same room Miss Elizabeth had shown me last night. As the elderly maid put down my luggage, she fumbled in the pocket of her apron andwithdrew a slip of paper which she held out to me before turning to go out the door.
    I unfolded the piece, plain torn from a phone tablet, and read:
    “Please call—564-2201—Theodosia.”
    “Please.” I