“Thanks for telling me, Emma. Get back inside now, before your mother starts to worry.” Raymond watched Emma scurry down the porch steps and disappear into the blowing snow, her small figure swallowed by the white.
He shut the door behind him and leaned against it for a moment, listening to the wind howling through the trees outside. Something moving under the snow? He didn’t like the sound of that. Still, curiosity—mingled with an old instinct to protect—nudged him into action.
He slipped on his heavy coat, wrapped a scarf around his neck twice, and jammed a wool hat over his thinning hair. By the time he pulled on his gloves and stepped out into the cold, the storm had begun in earnest.
The air hit him like a wall. Wind whipped sideways across the yard, and snowflakes danced furiously in the glow of the porch light. Each step down the icy path took effort, his boots crunching through the accumulating snow.