Her husband’s face clouded. The muscles in his arm tightened. For a crazy moment she thought he might hit her.
“I say I’m sorry all the time because I want you to forgive me,” Claire said.
Peter didn’t hesitate. “I can’t,” he said. “How could I?”
“Never?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Claire.”
“Never is a very long time,” Claire said as if she could see the endless years of his anger unfolding right there before her.
“Hello?” Connie called from downstairs.
“Okay,” Peter called back to her.
He looked at Claire.
“We need to go,” he said.
She watched him put on a fresh shirt, rebuckle his belt. She thought about what she was most sorry about: that she’d been caught. If that water main hadn’t broken, if Peter hadn’t come home that day, everything would be different.
As Claire sat up, a wave of dizziness came over her. Once again, she cradled her stomach protectively. She thought it had happened that first time in the parking lot. Miles had claimed her. He had given her this. The baby moved, pushing against her hand as if to tell her that, yes, she was right.
The snow had stopped. With the temperature hovering somewhere around ten below zero, the tree branches and telephone wires hung heavy, encased in ice.
Shivering as she got into the car, Claire paused. The sun, just coming up, glistened on the frozen world.
“Beautiful,” she murmured.
Peter, already in the driver’s seat, leaned toward her open door. “What?” he said.
“It looks like a fairyland, doesn’t it?”
“I have the heat on,” he said. “Come inside and warm up.”
It was the kind of cold that settles deep into the bones. Still, Claire took in the sight of all that snow piled high in front of houses and higher still on street corners where plows had dumped it. A mailbox stood almost completely covered, just its rounded blue top poking out from the snow. When Claire spoke, her breath came out in small puffs.
“Get out of the car,” she said. She reached her hand inside, across the front seat. “Let’s walk in the snow.”
He looked up at her, considering. Without turning the car off, Peter stepped outside. She hurried to meet him, placing her gloved hand in his. They used to do things like this, she thought. Once, they had stood in the rain on Lexington Avenue, kissing under his wide umbrella. A gust of wind had lifted the umbrella and turned it inside out. Peter had tossed it aside, and continued kissing her, the rain soaking their hair and faces. As they walked up the street, Claire splashed deliberately in a puddle, and Peter followed her, the two of them laughing and wet. In her apartment later, they’d taken a hot shower together, wrapping themselves afterwards in the thick white robes she’d brought home from hotels in Paris and Rome. Peter ordered Chinese food, General Tso’s chicken and pork fried rice that they ate as they watched Gunsmoke on the small black-and-white television. Claire remembered thinking that she could live with this man forever, that she could be happy with him.
“Have you ever seen so much snow?” Claire asked Peter.
Now that he’d come out of the car she wasn’t sure where to go. They stood on the sidewalk, Peter shifting his feet to keep warm.
“That was some blizzard,” he said. In the early morning light, his features softened and made him look younger.
Claire smiled at him, then she held her arms out at her sides and dropped into the snow.
“Claire!” Peter said. “Now you’ll be all wet. You’ll catch cold.”
She lay there for a moment, pushing her body deeper into the snow, making an impression there. The sky above her was a dark blue.
“Claire, really. Get up.”
She lifted her arms, and swept them up and down. She had not made a snow angel since she was a child. They were glorious, snow angels. And this one, she thought as she moved her arms through the snow, would have two giant wings, wings that would appear ready to take flight.
“Claire,” Peter said again.
Satisfied, she reached her hands toward him. “Help me up.”
Peter pulled her to her feet.
“What were you thinking?” he said.
But Claire was studying the place where she’d lain, the snow angel she’d made. It looked like nothing, not at all like the beautiful angel she’d thought she’d created. Not like something that might lift from the ground and soar. Ridiculously, hot tears sprang to her eyes. She could feel the cold wet snow seeping through her wool coat now, making her shiver.
“See?” Peter said.
When their eyes met, he looked baffled rather than angry.
Claire got into the car, holding her hands in the wet gloves up to the vents blasting hot stale air.
“You’ll catch a cold,” Peter said again, turning the heat on higher.
“You don’t get a cold from being cold,” she said softly.