Page 58 of Bittersweet & Strange

“Boone?”

My voice carries beyond the kitchen and disappears into the corridor without an answer. I wipe my hands on a cloth and step away from the counter.

I check the sitting room first, expecting to find him curled into one of the chairs with a book deliberately raised high enough to block me from view, but the room is empty. The greenhouse is next because he has begun disappearing there whenever he wants distance from me. Yet when I push through the door, there is nothing but damp warmth, green leaves, and the faint scent of earth.

“Boone.”

Still nothing.

I move faster now, taking the stairs two at a time and crossing the corridor toward his bedroom, where I find the door standing open and the room beyond it empty. The bed is untouched, the blankets smooth. I check the bathroom.

Empty.

I search rooms I know perfectly well he has no reason to enter, opening doors to spaces that have remained untouched for years because some irrational part of me expects to find him behind one of them. Perhaps he’s hiding simply to punish me for refusing him. With every empty room, my movements become faster and less controlled until I’m no longer walking through the castle but nearly running, calling his name louder each time and receiving nothing but my own echo.

Then I reach the entrance hall and see the front door.

It isn’t wide open.

It’s worse than that.

It isn’t completely closed.

A narrow blade of winter daylight cuts across the stone floor, illuminating tiny crystals of snow that have blown inside and begun melting in the warmth of the castle.

I stop so abruptly that pain shoots through my knee.

I stare at the door, but my mind refuses to accept what I’m seeing. Boone knows what lies outside. He knows how deep the snow is and how quickly the weather can change. More importantly, he made a deal.

He wouldn’t.

Except I already know he did.

I cross the entrance hall so quickly that my hip clips the table beside the staircase, sending something crashing to the floor behind me. I don’t turn around to see what broke. My hand closes around the iron handle, and I wrench the door open hard enough that it slams against the stone wall.

Cold air hits me with enough force to steal my breath.

“Boone!”

My shout carries across the grounds and toward the trees, swallowed by the immense white silence surrounding the castle.

Nothing answers.

I step outside without bothering to retrieve a coat. The cold immediately cuts through the thin shirt I was wearing in the kitchen. That’s when I see the footprints pressed into the fresh snow beyond the steps, leading away from the castle in a straight line. The moment I see which direction they take, I know where he went.

The stable.

I’m moving immediately, taking the stone steps two at a time and nearly losing my footing when my boots hit packed snow at the bottom. The cold burns through my clothes as I cross the grounds. I barely feel it because all I can see are those footprints stretching ahead of me. Each one is proof that Boone walked away from the castle while I stood in the kitchen believing he was upstairs sulking.

“Boone!”

Still nothing.

The stable doors are closed when I reach them, but the latch hangs crooked against the wood instead of sitting properly in place. I shove one of the doors open so hard it strikes the interior wall, startling the horses still inside. The familiar warmth and smell of hay rush over me as several heads lift above their stalls.

I look immediately toward the stall at the far end.

Empty.