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“I’m not taking your only coat.”
“Fucking hell, Frankie! Do you have to argue about everything? Take the fucking coat.”
“Why are you yelling at me?” I snatch the heavy suede and swap it with mine.
“Why did you have to kill him?” His tone is quiet, but his eyes are not. They scream at me, flashing and spitting blue flames.
It pulls me out of my guilt-ridden fog and puts me right in his face as my anger returns like a swarm of hornets.
“He was going to rape your brother. Again.” I throw out my hands. “He was pure, irredeemable evil!”
“Yeah. I lived with that evil my entire life. But your actions made our survival impossible. I refuse to tough this out with some insane hope that it works out. I don’t even want to try.”
My heart falls to the floor. “We will work it out.”
“How, Frankie? Do you have a magic wand?”
“I need time. I’ll figure it out.”
“Nothing to figure out. It’s so basic. There’s no complicated math. Do we have enough food to feed four people? Can we burn enough buildings to keep warm? Can we learn how to fly a plane without instructions? No, no, and no. Do you understand what it means to endure an entire winter of subzero temperatures and starvation? It’s worse than death. It’s slow and excruciating and cannibalistic.”
“We’re not going to eat each other.”
“The hunger pangs, the endless shivering, it’s already unbearable, and we haven’t even reached the breaking point. When we do, we’ll start looking at one another and sizing up the meaty parts.”
“Stop.”
“Why put ourselves through that? It only delays the inevitable. I want this to end. Think about it. In the end, it all goes away.”
“Maybe it is easier to give up. It’s going to suck in ways I can’t even imagine. Your feelings about all of it are valid. But tough times don’t last. Tough people do. You’ve overcome so much already. You survived Denver and Gretchen and twenty-three years of arctic winters. You’re the most resilient man I know. And smart as hell. You’ve got this, and you’re not alone.”
He stares at the fire, grinding his jaw. But he’s listening. Waiting in the clouded breath of my pause.
“It’s okay to feel this way.” I inch closer and rest a hand on his rigid arm. “It’s a sign you need to pause and take care of yourself. This is temporary, but your life is precious and permanent.”
“I don’t know how to do this.”
“You take a breath. And another.” I watch a shiver wrack his too-thin body and wish he hadn’t given me his coat. “We stick together. Take it one day at a time. That’s how we do this.”
Unresponsive, his eyes remain on the fire, half-mast and growing heavier. He needs to sleep. How long has it been since he’s eaten? Exhaustion, lethargy, depression—all symptoms of malnutrition.
“Stay here.” I wrap his hunched form in blankets. “I’m going to grab something for us to eat.”
I rush to the kitchen, not wanting to leave him alone for long.
No one else will die because of me.
My mother raised me to help people, to heal them. If she knew what I did, who I’ve become, would she forgive me? As her cancer slowly devoured her, she told me, “Fear is death. Temerity is life.”
Maybe that’s why I’ve always had such a foolhardy disregard of danger. Especially when the people I care about are in trouble.
Returning to the bedroom with a can of soup and my medical supplies, I find Wolf in the same position.
“Eat.” I pass him a spoon with the soup and get to work on the frostbite blistering his face, ears, and hands. “Do you want to talk about what happened with the snow machine?”
“No.”
I’ll get the details from Leo. I can’t believe he’s been away for four days, and now he’s out there again without eating or resting or letting me give him medical care.
“Do they have to take the remains all the way to the hills?” My chest tightens as I apply a salve to his frostbitten fingers. “Can’t they just toss the body in the river or leave it in the tundra?”
“You killed a man today, the man who raised me, and you’re discussing the disposal of his corpse without an ounce of mercy or humanity. It changed you.”
A bright flare of anger whips through me. “When you killed your mother, did it change you?”
“Yes.”
“Terrible things have happened to us and because of us. But those things don’t define who we are. Only we can do that.”
“I’m tired.” He gives me the uneaten half of the soup and rolls away to lie beneath the blankets.
After I eat and use the bathroom, I join him on the mattress. Wordlessly, we close the gap between us, chest to chest, seeking body heat. With my cheek against the soft thrum of his heart, I savor the pulsing beats, the flow of life.
