And then I say it again, because I told myself lies for so long, and now my body is still and my breath is steady and I feel alive with the truth.
Before I know what’s happening, Mabel is pulling me close. I think I remember what this feels like. I try not to think of the last time we held each other, which was the last time I was held by anybody. Her arms are around me so tight that I can’t even hug her back, so I rest my head on her shoulder and I try to stay still so that she won’t let go.
“Let’s sleep,” she whispers into my ear, and I nod, and we break apart and lie down again.
I face away from her for a long time so that she won’t see my sadness. To be held like that, to be let go. But then the ghost of me starts whispering again. She’s reminding me of how cold I’ve been. How I’ve been freezing. She’s saying that Mabel’s warm and that she loves me. Maybe a love that’s different than it used to be, but love all the same. The ghost of me is saying, Three thousand miles. That’s how much she cares. She’s telling me it’s okay.
So I turn over and find Mabel closer to me than I’d realized. I wait a minute there to see if she’ll move away, but she doesn’t. I wrap my arm around her waist, and she relaxes into me. My head nestles in the curve behind her neck; my knees pull up to fit the space behind hers.
She might be asleep. I’ll only stay here for a couple of minutes. Only until I thaw completely. Until it’s enough to remind me what it feels like to be close to another person, enough to last me for another span of months. I breathe her in. Tell myself I need to turn away.
Soon. But not yet.
“Don’t disappear again,” she says. “Okay?”
Her hair is soft against my face.
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I start to turn, but she reaches back for my arm. She scoots her body closer into mine, until the full lengths of us are touching. With each breath, I feel winter passing.
I close my eyes, and I breathe her in, and I think about this home that belongs to neither of us, and I listen to the fire crackling, and I feel the warmth of the room and of her body, and we are okay.
We are okay.
chapter fourteen
THREE ORANGES. A bag of wheat bread. A note that reads, Out Christmas shopping. Don’t steal anything—I know where you live! Two mugs in front of a full electric coffeepot.
“Power’s back,” I say, and Mabel nods.
She points to the note. “Funny guy.”
“Yeah. But kind of sweet.”
“Completely.”
I don’t think I’ve ever fallen asleep in a dark place and woken to see it in the light for the first time. Last night I made out the objects but the color was missing. Now I see the windows, that their frames are painted a forest green. If it weren’t completely white outside, the shade of the paint would match the trees. The curtains are patterned with blue and yellow flowers.
“You think Tommy picked these out?” I ask.
“I hope he did,” Mabel says. “But no, I don’t think so.”
“Do you think he killed that deer?”
She turns toward the mantel as though the deer could speak and tell her.
“No. Do you?”
“No,” I say.
Mabel opens up the bag of bread and takes out four slices.
“I guess we can go back when we’re ready,” she says.
I pour us each a cup of coffee. I give her the better mug. I take the seat with the better view because I’ve always cared more about what I’m looking out at than she has.
The kitchen table’s legs are uneven; every time we lean forward it tilts. We drink our coffees black because he has no cream and we eat our toast dry because we can’t find butter or jam. And I look outside most of the time that we sit here, but sometimes I look at Mabel instead. The morning light on her face. The waves in her hair. The way she chews with her mouth the slightest bit open. The way she licks a crumb off her finger.
“What?” she asks, catching me smiling.
“Nothing,” I say, and she smiles back.
I don’t know if I still love her in the way that I used to, but I still find her just as beautiful.
She peels an orange, separates it in perfect halves, and gives one of them to me. If I could wear it like a friendship bracelet, I would. Instead I swallow it section by section and tell myself it means even more this way. To chew and to swallow in silence here with her. To taste the same thing in the same moment.
“I swear,” Mabel says, “I feel like I could eat all day.”
“I bought so much food. Do you think it went bad last night?”
“Doubtful. It’s freezing.”
Before long, we’re washing our breakfast dishes and leaving them on a dish towel to dry. We’re gathering up blankets from last night and setting them on the coffee table, folding the bed back in until it’s only a couch again. We’re standing in the empty space where the bed was, looking out the window at the snow.
“You think we’ll make it back?” Mabel asks.
“I hope so.”
We find a pen and write on the back of Tommy’s note, include lots of thank-yous and exclamation points.
“Ready?” I ask her.