"The red one needed to go."
He picked it up and set it on the mantle next to Gran's photo, like that was where it had always belonged.
We broke for lunch after that: grilled cheese on the cast iron and tomato soup on the back burner, the kind of meal that had no pretensions and was exactly right for a cold December morning. He ate two sandwiches without comment, which I took as high praise.
We put the afternoon into a green chile beef chili; he browned the beef while I handled the chiles, the two of us working the same counter without getting in each other's way, which was either domesticity or something close enough that I wasn't going to name it. By three o'clock the Hill Country outside had gone gray and cold and the whole house smelled of roasted chiles and woodsmoke. Scorch had spiked the cider without being asked and I had let him, and we were settled in the main room with the tree glowing between us and the day going quiet the way it went quiet out here, all the way down to the mesquite.
My phone buzzed on the end table. Faith's name on the screen.
"Did you get snow?" she said, before I got a word in.
"Still coming down. Just barely."
"We got sleet and a thirty-minute power outage," Faith said. "I want a full report on how much better yours was."
"Considerably," I said.
"That smile is in your voice."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Three years," she said, certain. "I know exactly what I'm talking about."
We talked the way we always talked—easy and real, the three years of shared shifts and everything the night floor could throw at two people still underneath all of it. She told me about a patient who'd tried to discharge himself on Christmas Eve by hiding under a gurney. I told her it wasn't the worst escape attempt I'd ever seen. She knew exactly what I meant.
Scorch came back from the kitchen and settled in beside me. He had something in his hand.
I stopped mid-sentence.
"Whitley?" Faith said. "Why did you stop talking?"
It was a small black box. He held it with the steadiness that had always been his. The same patience that had been there since the moment I walked into Room 407.
"Faith," I said. "Hold on a second."
"I'm not going anywhere," she said.
He opened it.
A diamond solitaire on a plain gold band. He turned toward me with those eyes steady on mine.
"I love you," he said. "Said it the first time and it was the best thing I'd ever said." The corner of his mouth went up, warm and sure. "Still is. Marry me, Whitley."
My eyes went hot and I kissed him—hard and real, both hands in his hair, nothing held back—and he pulled me in and kissed me back like the evening was entirely ours and he intended to make full use of it. From the phone came a small, wet sniff.
We both went still.
"That," Faith said, her voice thick and wrecked and completely delighted, "was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard in my entire life."
"You were supposed to hang up ten minutes ago," I said.
"I know," she said. "I'm not sorry. Now go put that ring on, and call me tomorrow; I want to hear everything." A pause, quiet and real. "I love you, Whitley."
"I love you too," I said.
She hung up.
Scorch set the phone face-down beside him and turned back to me. "So," he said. "Is that a yes?"
