Pam Jenoff - The Winter Guest

Quickly she reached down with both arms and, using her legs to brace, pulled him from the water onto the incline of the bank. “You have to help me get you to shelter,” she said. But his eyes were half-closed and she had no idea if he understood.

She checked the now-empty path once more. The men knew about the chapel. Did she still dare to take the soldier there? Though the men had already checked it, they could still come back. But she could not take him to her house—even if he could make the journey, the road out of the forest to their cottage was open and exposed. And leaving him out here meant certain death. There was no other choice—the chapel was his only hope.

She wrapped the soldier’s arm around her shoulder, cold water dripping from his hair and seeping into her collar. Bracing herself anew, she maneuvered him back onto the path. The force of his weight brought her to her knees once more. “Help me,” she pleaded, her voice a whisper. She held her breath as he dragged himself slowly the last few meters down the path, certain the men would return to discover them.

At last they reached chapel. It was no bigger than Helena’s cottage, but taller with an elongated knave. A wood-shingled roof overhung the building like a cap drawn close around the brow. The top of the steeple was completely gone, the mounted cross threatening to topple at any second. She had discovered the abandoned chapel as a child and played around it many times despite her mother’s admonishment lest the roof cave in and crush them. She had often wondered who would have cared enough to build a chapel, not big enough for more than a handful of worshippers, here in the woods, instead of just going to the church in town. And why had they stopped coming?

Helena opened the door and peered inside. The air was thick with the scent of moldy wood and damp earth. She had not been here in years and the structure had deteriorated further with time. The floor had rotted to a few remaining planks over dirt and much of the roof had peeled away, revealing the gray sky above.

Helena turned back to help the man through the doorway, propping him against the nearest wall. Her hand brushed against something hard at his waist and she pulled back his shirt to reveal a pistol that had somehow survived his ordeal. She did not know why she was surprised—he was a soldier, after all. For a moment, she considered taking it, then decided to leave him his one defense, if it even still worked. She ran her hands over his torso, feeling for other injuries, not sure what she would do if she found any. Then she pulled her hands back, wondering if he minded the intimacy of her stranger’s touch. But he lay with his eyes closed, still laboring to breathe.

She shivered, not entirely sure it was from the cold. There was something exciting and dangerous about him that made her take a step backward, that made her want to run and yet unable to look away at the same time. She peered in her satchel, pulling out the small loaf of bread she had tried to feed to her mother and placing it on the ground beside him. He needed a fire, but there was no wood and nothing else to burn.

“I’ll get help,” she offered. But even before he shook his head she knew that it was impossible. There was no one to be trusted and telling anyone would only put them both in danger. She looked around desperately. There was nothing more she could do for him here, and if she waited longer it would be dark and she would be unable to make the rest of the trip home.

She started to stand and he clung to the hem of her skirt in a way that might have been improper if he’d had the strength to mean it. Don’t go, the helpless look in his eyes seemed to say. She took his hand from her dress and placed it back on his chest, struck by the warmth of his fingers, and the strong muscle beneath the torn uniform. “I’ll be back,” she promised. And then she turned on her heel and ran.

4

“I’m going to see Mama again today,” Helena announced two days later as she fed breakfast to Karolina. She held a spoonful of coarse oat cereal suspended midair a few inches short of the baby’s open mouth, watching for Ruth’s reaction.

Ruth stopped dressing Dorie, the skirt stuck awkwardly over the child’s head. “Why? Is she worse?”

“She’s fine.” Helena immediately recognized the lack of truth in her response. “Fine” would have meant Mama recognizing her own daughter or chewing a mouthful of bread. Helena didn’t like to lie.

But Ruth tended to view the world as she wanted to see it. “When Mama comes back...” she would often say. At first Helena had wanted to correct her—how could she possibly believe that would ever happen? Denial was Ruth’s means of survival, though, and there was no harm in pretending as long as she didn’t rely on it. So Helena sometimes spared her from the worst.

“Me!” Karolina squawked, grabbing the spoon. As the child tried to feed herself, Helena considered telling Ruth about the soldier she had found. Ruth was better with salves and bandages and such, and she might have some other ways they could help the man. But something stopped her.

“Her doctor wasn’t there last time and I wanted to ask him about her medicine,” Helena added instead, stretching the story. She had never gone to see Mama more than once a week before. Surely Ruth would see through the lie. But Ruth just yanked the skirt over Dorie’s head, then sat the child in the chair to braid her hair, which had more than a hint of red to it, without reaction.

Helena took the spoon back from Karolina and scraped a last spoonful of cereal for her. “Drink your milk,” she said, more sternly than she intended. Waste could not be tolerated, even by the children.

“Mook,” Karolina offered. She had been a quiet baby for so long they had fretted something might be wrong, a deficit caused perhaps by the trauma of her parents’ disappearance. But she had begun speaking a few months earlier, gathering new words each day and trying them on for size. She took a sip from her cup, then smiled brightly, searching her sister’s face for praise. She was, like Ruth, too dependent on the approval of others—approval that seldom came anymore for any of them.

Helena looked across the crude wooden table at Michal, who had finished eating and now rested his chin on his hands, staring into the space. None of the children played during meals as she and Ruth had in happier times, giggling and whispering until their parents would scold them. Rather, they sat and ate gravely, as though they realized the scarcity of food and were unwilling to take it for granted.

The wind blew more strongly today than it had in months, howling around the house like a wolf looking for an entry point. Helena’s thoughts shifted to the soldier, alone in the cold, damp chapel. She had helped him without thinking, the same instinct that had prompted her to bring home a wounded squirrel she’d found as a child. Though his ripped uniform had not born any markings, she suspected that he was American, or perhaps British. Her heart skipped as she remembered the bit of pale flesh that she had glimpsed through the fabric. Enough, she admonished herself. This was not a schoolgirl’s crush, like Ruth always seemed to have on various boys when they were younger—this was about the soldier’s survival. Was he in pain? Was he even still alive? Helena had wanted to get away sooner to check on him. But Karolina had come down with a brief, soaring fever the night she’d returned, and Ruth couldn’t handle the three children alone when one was sick.

What if she didn’t go back to the chapel? She had brought the soldier to safety, and surely that was as much as anyone could expect from her. Anything else would put their family in danger. But he was already dependent on her, and without her help he would die of cold or starvation or something worse.