The Wolf in Winter Read Online Free PDF Page A

look?” Jude asked.
    “She looked well. She’s pretty, you know that? Hard, but pretty.”
    Yes, he thought. I know that. Pretty, and more than pretty.
    She is beautiful.
    So he took the bus north, but by then all trace of her was gone. There was talk, though. She had been offered a job. He learned that a young woman living and working at the Tender House, a shelter forhomeless mothers and their children in Bangor, had spoken with her. His daughter had seemed excited, or so Jude was told. She had money in her hand. She was going to take a shower, buy some new clothes, maybe get a haircut. There was work for her. A couple, a nice older couple, needed someone to help maintain their house and their big yard, perhaps cook a meal or two as well, or drive them places when the need arose. For the sake of their own security, and to calm any concerns that the girl might have, they told her that they’d drop by the local police department on the way to the house, just so that she could confirm that they were on the level and meant her no harm.
    “They showed me a picture of their house,” Jude’s daughter told the young woman from the Tender House. “It’s beautiful.”
    What was the name of this town? Jude asked his informant.
    Prosperous.
    Its name was Prosperous.
    But when Jude traveled to Prosperous, and went to the police department, he was told that no such girl had ever passed through its doors, and when he asked on the streets of the town about his daughter he was met with professions of ignorance. Eventually, the police came for him. They drove him to the town limits, and told him not to return, but he did. The second time he got a night in a cell for his troubles, and it was different from the cells in Portland or Scarborough, because he was not there of his own volition, and the old fears came upon him. He did not like being shut in. He did not like locked doors. That was why he roamed the streets.
    They drove him to Medway the next morning, and escorted him onto the bus. He was given a final warning: stay out of Prosperous. We haven’t seen your daughter. She was never here. Quit bothering people, or next time you’ll be up before a judge.
    But he was determined not to stay away. There was something wrong in Prosperous. He felt it on that first day in the town. Living on the streets had made him sensitive to those who carried a bad seedinside them. In Prosperous, one of those seeds had germinated.
    He shared none of this with others, and certainly not with the police. He found excuses to remain silent, although one in particular came more naturally than others: his daughter was a drifter, an addict. Such people routinely disappeared for a while before turning up again. Wait. Wait and see. She’ll come back. But he knew that she would not return, not unless someone went looking for her. She was in trouble. He sensed it, but he could not bring himself to speak of it. His vocal cords froze on her name. He had been on the streets for too long. The illness that caused him to leave his family had left him unable to open himself up, to express weakness or fear. He was a locked box inside which tempests roiled. He was a man enshadowed by himself.
    But there was one whom he trusted, one to whom he might turn: an investigator, a hunter. He worked for money, this man, and with that realization came a kind of release for Jude. This would not be charity. Jude would pay him for his time, and that payment would buy Jude the freedom he needed to tell his daughter’s story.
    This night, his final night, he had counted his money: the handful of notes that he had hidden in a box in the damp earth of the basement; the small savings he had entrusted to one of the social workers, reclaimed that day; and a bag of filthy bills and coins, just a small fraction of the loans that he had given out to others and now repaid at a quarter on the dollar by those who could afford to do so.
    He had just over a hundred and twenty dollars, enough