“They’re making a mess,” she says, and she’s right. When we first got here, the view was like a postcard. Mountains in the background, beyond our pristine snow-covered lawn that runs downhill until meeting a stand of pine trees, where the river lies. “It was so pretty,” Alice says. “So white and still. Can we go out and take a walk before they mess it all up?”

I glance toward the staircase and don’t hear the detectives.

“Sure. Sadie probably could use a walk anyway.”

We put our coats on. Alice pulls her red hat firmly over her ears, and we head out and around the house.

“Let’s take the path to the river,” I say. That way we can avoid the deputies, who seem to be concentrated closer to the house. But before we can set off, a deputy waves me over to where he stands halfway down the sloping lawn. I trudge through the snow to reach him while Alice and Sadie wait for me by the path.

“Where do these doors go to, Mrs. Bradley?” He’s pointing to metal double doors that are recessed into the side of the slope. You can’t see them from the house.

I shove my hands deep into my pockets. “The basement.” The first time Jay brought me to the mountain house, he was eager to show me around. He asked if I was okay to go down into the basement, and I’d said, of course. I wanted to be like everyone else, be the normal woman I thought Jay deserved, so with my arm through his, we descended the wooden staircase. But when that moist, fetid air hit me, I went into a full-blown panic attack, and Jay whisked me back upstairs. I was humiliated, but Jay simply dried my tears and held me in his arms until I stopped shaking. I haven’t been down there since.

“Are they locked?”

“They should be. The keys are in the house if you really need to get in there.”

“I’ll let the sheriff know.” He nods and walks back toward the deputies.

Alice and I head off through the pines and down the path. The snow’s only about three inches deep, so it’s not too hard to navigate. Sadie takes the lead, tilting her head in the pine-scented air periodically and pulling in deep breaths. I’m cold, but this is a good diversion. We can hear the voices of the deputies, growing distant now, as we make our way through the woods along the winding path.

The sound of the river reaches us sooner than it does in summer. It’s running faster too, as if in a hurry to get to the bottom of the mountain. And the leaves that would muffle its sound are, of course, dead and buried under the snow. We see it sooner as well through the barren trees.