The Winter Lodge Read Online Free PDF Page A

grandparents, a few of Jenny’s mother, Mariska, who was eternally twenty-three and beautiful, frozen at the age she was the year she went away. There was also an abundant, fast-changing array of Jenny’s school portraits through the years.
    As a little girl, she used to run up and down the hall, making noise until Gram told her to simmer down. Jenny always loved that expression: simmer down. She would stand with her hands on her head, making a hissing sound, a simmering pot.
    She liked to make up stories about the people in the pictures. Her grandparents, who faced the camera lens with the grave stiffness typical of immigrants freshly minted from Ellis Island, became Broadway stars. Her mother, whose large eyes seemed to hold a delicious secret, was a government spy, protecting the world while in hiding in a place so deep underground, she couldn’t even tell her family where she was.
    Somebody—a firefighter—was yelling at everyone to get back, to stay a safe distance away.
    Other firefighters ran up the driveway with a thick, heavy hose on their shoulders. On a raised ladder that unfolded from the engine truck, a guy battled the flaming roof.
    “Jenny, thank the Lord,” said Mrs. Samuelson, rushing to greet her. She wore a long camel-hair coat and snow boots she hadn’t bothered to buckle, and she cradled Nutley, her quivering Yorkshire terrier, in her arms. “When I first noticed the fire, I was terrified you were in the house.”
    “I was at the bakery,” Jenny explained.
    “Mrs. Samuelson, did someone get a statement from you?” Rourke asked.
    “Why, yes, but I—”
    “Excuse us, ma’am.” Rourke took Jenny’s hand and led her past the fire line to the rear of the engine. An older man was giving orders on a walkie-talkie, and another was rebroadcasting them with a bullhorn.
    “Chief, this is Jenny Majesky,” Rourke said. He kept hold of her hand.
    “Miss, I’m sorry about your house,” said the chief. “We had an eight-minute response time after the alarm came in, but this one had been going long before we got the call. These older homes—they tend to go fast. We’re doing our best.”
    “I…um…thank you, I guess.” She had no idea what to say when her house was going up in smoke.
    “Your neighbors said there were no household pets.”
    “That’s right.” Just Gram’s African violets and potted herbs in the garden window. Just my whole world, everything I own, Jenny thought. She was shivering in the wintry night despite the layers of warm clothes and the roar of the flames. It was amazing how hard, how uncontrollably, she shook.
    Something warm and heavy settled around her shoulders. It took a moment for her to realize it was a first-aid blanket. And Rourke McKnight’s arms. He stood behind her and pulled her against him, her back to his front, his arms encircling her from behind as though to shield her from harm.
    With an odd sense of surrender, she leaned against him, as though her own weight was too much for her. She shut her eyes briefly, hiding from the glare and the sting of the smoke. The fire was warm against her face. But the acrid smell nauseated her, made her picture everything in the house feeding the flames. She opened her eyes and watched.
    “It’s ruined,” she said, turning her head and looking up at Rourke. “Everything’s gone.”
    A guy with a camera, probably someone from the paper, stood in the bed of his truck and aimed his long lens at the scene.
    Rourke’s arms tightened around her. “I’m sorry, Jen. I wish I could say you’re wrong.”
    “What happens now?”
    “An investigation into the cause,” he said. “Insurance claims, inventory.”
    “I mean right now. The next twenty minutes. The next hour. Eventually they’ll put the fire out, but then what? Do I go back to the bakery and sleep under my desk?”
    He bent his head low. His mouth was next to her ear so she could hear him over the roaring noise, and his body curved protectively over