Chapter 51
Carrie
“He’s real.”
I crane my neck, focusing on wrapping my fingers around the mug offered to me. “What?”
“You kept saying, ‘I don’t know if he’s real, what if Matthieu’s not real?’ And I’ve been telling you every time you wake up,”
Jess says, taking a breath. “He’s real, he’s recovering. You can see him . . . if you want to.”
I’m still in the hospital, but in a different ward. I’m in a room all my own, and I’m waiting for the all-clear to get discharged. Jess is fussing around me as Tom hovers by the door. She keeps turning to him, giving swift orders as she turns back the blanket on the bed, smoothing out the folds around me. My breath hitches, and I stare down into the mug, turning her words over and over. I was moved an hour ago, Jess pushing me in a wheelchair, Tom walking behind us with a bag of my things against his chest. I didn’t like being in a wheelchair, but apparently it’s hospital policy for transporting patients between wards.
They discussed over my head when their daughter, Elodie, needed picking up from school. Which clubs she was doing today, what extra items she needed in her backpack. I zoned in and out, the world of the hospital around me still a fuzzy blur of light. I was still bewildered by their presence, by both of them being here. Just thinking about it clogged up my throat, making my chest ache.
“Now? Can I see him now?”
I ask, looking at Jess hopefully. “He—he doesn’t know anyone else in Woodsmoke. I should have stayed with him. We should be here together. I don’t even know if he has any family left to call.”
“We know,”
Tom says from the doorway. “I tried, went through his phone, talked to him when he was awake briefly. But he just kept asking for you. Saying we’d left you on the mountain.”
I close my eyes, a sigh brushing my lips. I keep feeling like the world will tilt and fall into a dream at any minute, and I still can’t handle much more than the basics of eating and sleeping. I want to get out of this hospital, back to the cottage, back in my own space, to process it all. “How long have I been here?”
“Two days,”
Jess says. “The doctor said that time will feel weird, like it could be months, or minutes, that you’ve been here. Or you might think you’re still . . . up there.”
I sip the tea, remembering that the cup is in my hand, a slight tang of chemicals lingering at the edges. “I won’t believe we both actually left the mountain until I see him. I need to see him. All of this . . . I don’t know.”
I drop my gaze to the tepid tea in my hands. “Nothing feels real.”
I catch Jess’s glance at Tom out of the corner of my eye. She raises her eyebrows at him, then looks to me and nods. “Okay. We’ll go now.”
Tom leaves to pick up Elodie, and Jess wheels me to another ward, inquiring for directions along the way at a nurses’ station. I can feel slumber dragging at me, tugging at my hand, but I shake it off. I can’t slip away yet, not until I’ve seen him, not until I’ve touched him. I need to know it’s true—that we both survived the night.
He’s on an open ward. Some curtains divide up the space, but the curtains around his cubicle are thrust open. A small shudder rushes through me as Jess and I approach, relief and a strange dread mingling beneath my ribs. I lean forward when I catch sight of his features, his eyes staring into the middle distance. My fingers flutter at my throat, choking down a sob.
He’s real.
I didn’t dream him up from the frost and my own longing. Cora’s worries, the frost tale, none of it was true. He didn’t disappear as the frost thawed. My heart beats harder, straining against my chest. I reach for him, my hands clutching at thin air, then his blanket, then his face. Tears leave salty tracks down my skin, and he blinks, then locks his eyes with mine.
All there is in that moment is him.
“Carrie,”
he says, his voice flecked with cold. As though the frost crept inside him on that mountain and hasn’t melted since. “You’re here.”
“I—”
My throat closes up before I can get my words out. I bury my face in his shoulder, sobbing and sobbing, tears soaking into his skin. I really thought he might die up there. I thought that, if I left him at daybreak to find help, he wouldn’t be alive when I returned . . . or that I wouldn’t have been able to find him at all.
“I’m going to leave you two to, er . . .”
Jess says over my head. “I’ll be back in a bit.”
I stay there for a few moments, aware of the rattle of his breath in his lungs, of my own tiny sips of air as my sobbing subsides. “I thought you were going to die, your leg was so bad, and there was blood, and you had a fever . . . I, I can’t believe—”
“I’m here. We’re both here,”
he says, stroking my hair. “Could have lost my leg if it wasn’t for you. Could have lost more than that if you hadn’t found me, if Jess and Tom hadn’t called search-and-rescue to get out there . . .”
My eyes trail down to his leg, now bound in plaster. I shudder again, picturing how it was when I found him. “You’re safe, that’s all that matters.”
I burrow my face back into his shoulder, breathing in his scent, the evergreens and fir and midnights enveloping my senses. Then I move away, wiping my face, and smile at him. “Have they told you how long you’ll be in for?”
“They’ve not been specific . . . it depends on the leg. I picked up an infection—that’s why I’m attached to this bag and all these tubes.”
He shrugs, and my heart lifts at the corners. “It is what it is.”
“I can visit you every day. Bring you whatever you want, or—or need.”
I sniff, grabbing for his hand. “It doesn’t matter if it takes time. I’m here.”
Matthieu’s eyes crinkle, then he carefully pulls his hand away. “Listen, Carrie . . . we need to talk about what happened. How it happened. You coming after me like that . . . I’ve never been so scared in my life. You could have died, Carrie.”
“You could have died—”
“That was my risk. My stupidity.”
He takes a breath, glancing around us. “Pass me my wallet? It’s right there, yes, that’s it.”
I scoop up the old leather wallet that I’ve seen before, sitting on the bedside table next to a water jug. He opens it, pulling out an old, battered Polaroid, and hands it to me.
I gasp.
“This . . . this is Henri?”
“Yes.”
I trace the shape of his features, the haunting eyes. They’re so much like Matthieu’s, but different. More pronounced. “Did he sit for a photographer when you visited Woodsmoke?”
Matthieu’s forehead creases into a frown. “He did, on a family visit in the autumn before he disappeared in the mountains. A local reporter was writing a story about the hiking trails and thought a photo of Henri would be a good lead image for a short interview. Why?”
“Cora . . . my great-aunt? She collects things. Photos, memorabilia, anything she’s worried will get lost and forgotten in Woodsmoke.”
I pass the Polaroid back to Matthieu. “Henri is in a photograph in her hallway.”
“We gave the reporter a photo of Henri taken at a fair,”
Matthieu says, replacing the picture in his wallet. “You know, one of those touring ones with the old-fashioned sweets stalls and merry-go-rounds? I was forever taking Polaroids with a camera I got for my birthday from my parents the year before. So I took this one of him while he sat there, posing, and I kept it. They used the photo in the newspaper article,”
Matthieu says with a sigh. “And I’ve seen it in Cora’s collection. I know she’s got it. I told her to keep it when I went to ask her if she could bring him back last winter.”
All the air leaves my lungs at once. “What?”
He looks at me then, sadness straining his features. “This was when my brother disappeared, when no one could find him and all I had was that Polaroid photo to show around. All the folks here told me to go and see Cora Morgan. They avoided my gaze themselves. They were sympathetic, but wary. The police searched, but it’s a vast range and they never found a body. My family . . . we didn’t believe what we were hearing from folks here, the whispers about missing people and bargains. It sounded like superstition. Folktales. But after Mum died, I couldn’t shake it off. I had to know. I had to return and put that ghost to rest in my mind. So I found Cora last winter and went to see her. Went to ask her if Henri could still somehow just be lost . . . and still alive . . . all these years later. If she could find him.”
I press my lips together, reaching again for his hand. “So you came back . . . for answers?”
“Yes. And this is the part you’re not going to like,”
he says, moving his hand away, just an inch.
I draw back my hand, closing it into a fist. Waiting. “Go on.”
“Cora refused. She told me not to go looking for those who are lost to the mountains. She told me to leave and not return. So I asked around and learned that there was another Morgan woman living here, her sister. I offered to help Ivy with the cottage, and I was hoping she’d know, that she’d have some answers that Cora wouldn’t give me. And she did, in a way. She told me some more about the old tales, the old ways. At first, I couldn’t believe her. But after a while, I began to see that Henri’s disappearance couldn’t be explained in the usual way. That there might be some explanation that wouldn’t seem reasonable or logical anywhere but in Woodsmoke.”
“So you started searching the mountain,”
I say. “For evidence. For signs. Checking the trails, marking your routes . . .”
“I came back for a second winter, hoping Ivy would be able to give me more clues. That finally I could at least find his body. I figured, if I scoured every trail, every path, I’d find something. I even searched along the ones we hadn’t walked together, just to see if somehow he had disappeared somewhere I’d never seen.
“Henri left in the night. We were staying at a guesthouse, had a whole route planned for the next day, and he wasn’t there when I woke up.”
Matthieu shakes his head. “It was the worst moment of my life. I was so scared. I felt so powerless and young and utterly alone. That was . . . thirteen years ago.”
“Oh, Matthieu.”
“So I came back. But then, when you told me that Ivy had passed, I didn’t bother going to Cora again to ask for her help. I knew she would be as tight-lipped with an outsider as she’d been the last time, not telling me anything about the old tales or suggesting why he could have gone missing. I figured, since you were Ivy’s granddaughter, a Morgan, I might learn something from you . . .”
He shakes his head again. “It felt deceitful at first, offering to help with the renovation. Staying close to you, earning your trust. But I felt like it was all right, because I was doing it for Henri. I was doing it to find closure. And I didn’t hide the fact from you that he had gone missing. I was just selective about how much I shared with you. But then, of course, I didn’t expect you to be, well, you. Carrie Morgan. The woman you are.”
I frown, looking down at the cast on his leg. At the hospital blanket, then at my own hands. “I don’t know what to make of all this.”
“There’s nothing to make of it. I should never have returned to Woodsmoke. There aren’t any answers here. And if I hadn’t met you, maybe I would have given up and moved on by now.”
I sniff, finally looking up and search his eyes for the man I’ve been falling for this winter. “Was it real between us?”
“Yes,”
he breathes, at last reaching for my hands. “Yes, Carrie. And that made it so much more complicated. How could I leave when you were here? And yet . . . how can I stay when all I feel around me is Henri’s ghost?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t stay in Woodsmoke. I want to, for you. But I feel like I failed him.”
I nod, biting my lip. His hands are so warm, cradling my own as I process everything he’s told me. Everything about Matthieu now slots into place, the puzzle pieces clicking quietly. I can see the full picture now, the sadness he’s dragged around with him. The hope. And in a way, the frost tale is true. This man I met as the frost formed will leave as it thaws. He’ll break my heart and take it with him when he goes.
“Did you ever intend to stay?”
I ask softly.
“I hoped, in time, I might be able to leave Henri behind, especially as you became sure about staying, but . . .”
He sighs. “Look at what I’ve done. And putting you in danger . . . that cannot happen again. Ever. Carrie, I have to leave. I have to figure this out in my own way, in my own time. I don’t think I’ll ever find Henri’s body or any answers about why he left that morning, and I have to make my peace with that.”
I nod quickly, sniffing back tears. “You’ll be haunted until you come to terms with his death.”
“Yes,”
he says softly.
I brush a tear away, then another, not able to look at him. How can I hold this against him? But equally, how can I convince him to stay if every corner of Woodsmoke reminds him of what he’s lost?
“Do you want me to visit you again here? Or is it better if—if—”
“We say goodbye now?”
I don’t trust myself to speak.
“I don’t want to say goodbye. I love you. This winter together, what we have . . .”
He swallows. “I want to say I’ll be back, but I need time.”
I stifle a small sob, but nod and move closer, leaning in so I’m resting beside him, my head beside his. His fingers stay entwined in mine, and we lie there together as the hospital moves around us, as lives begin and lives end, talking about the cottage and ice-skating and our midnights. We talk until I see he is growing tired. I watch his eyes close and the world drift away from him. Then I press a kiss to his cheek, wishing our lives could have been different. Wishing Woodsmoke, my home, my anchor, wasn’t the one thing standing between us.
Wishing more than anything that he didn’t have the burden of this ghost.
“Goodbye,”
I whisper, turning away and feeling my fragile heart begin to crack.