Excerpt from Winterkill by Karen Wunderman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"What's to think?" Kate said, dismissing the topic.

"Well, don't you think it's pretty strange that they just disappeared overnight, and nobody knows where they went or why?"

She didn't answer.

"I think it's strange, Daddy," Nicky offered. "It's scary, too."

"Oh, now, little girl, there's nothing to be scared about. There's always a perfectly logical explanation when things like this happen."

"Sure there is, Nicky," Kate added, throwing Ben a sarcastic look. "We just don't know what it is."

"Well, what could it be, Mom?"

"Ask your father," she mumbled, her maternal duty done, and started clearing the table.

"Well?" Nicky waited for her answer. "Daddy?"

Ben was eyeing Kate as she moved around the kitchen, her mouth hard-set, her eyes clear and unguarded. Something was troubling her, and he always felt he should know what it was. But he never knew. Not anymore.

"Daddy, why did we move here?" Nicky asked in a high-pitched voice, realizing she wasn't going to get an answer to her last question, thinking maybe she should keep trying until she got one. She always had to do that in this house.

Kate heard the question, hesitated a minute to see how Ben would react, then continued clearing the table when she saw that his response was normal, almost cheerful.

"You want to know why we moved here?" He looked out the window, smiling and nodding his head a bit, as if he'd been challenged to a game--one he was good at, one he knew he could win. "Want to make it a bedtime story tonight?" he asked.

He and Kate exchanged knowing glances.

"It's a deal!" Nicky answered, and she spit on her hand and extended it to make it binding. Ben spit on his own hand, and they mashed wet palms together to forge a bond they seldom felt anymore.

Ben excused himself from the table and adjourned to the privacy of the study while Nicky helped Kate clean up. The dishes were done, the kitchen restored to an organized state of country clutter, and Nicky went outside for the last few minutes of twilight.

She wandered down the short hill in back of the house to the apple orchard, where the old trees held out their arthritic limbs to her, black against the evening sky. She pulled her small body up into her favorite tree and settled into the crook of a branch, just right for her small bottom. Her hand worked its way into her pocket. The hard berries. The deer. She winced, wondering if it had suffered much, and she strengthened her grip on the berries. In front of her the sky was turning red like a spreading pool of warm blood. She could swear she felt its heat oozing over her. Slowly, like a bruise, the red turned to purple, and finally to black, and the heat was gone, along with the slight breath of the breeze. It was just quiet and cool. She yearned to tell someone about the deer, about what she'd done and where she'd been, but there was no one she could tell, except maybe Lisa. Her solitary knowledge of her secret increased her burden measurably, ten-fold at least. Maybe if she vowed never to go where she wasn't supposed to go again. She withdrew from her pocket four of the hard, red berries, clutched them tightly to her chest, squeezed her eyes shut as if making a wish, then released the berries to fall to the ground. Swinging her legs from her perch, she could feel the huge mountains behind her back, but she could see neither them nor the colorless moon rising behind them. She let her body swing down to dangle limply from the branch by her knees, arms hanging loosely in the air. Her shirt fell around her head, and she felt a pleasant chill as the cool night air brushed her bare skin. Upside-down thoughts were somehow easier to take.

From Winterkill by Karen Wunderman. Copyright 2002 Karen Wunderman, all rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author.