Page 131 of These Tears

‘Welcome to the north, Leah!’ he crows between chuckles. ‘Where liquor hits hard, but love hits harder!’

Elias manifests beside me like a spectre, takes the tumbler from my hands and pours himself a shot into the same glass. He doesn’t spare me a single glance as he downs the poison without flinching as if it were water.

Anders doesn’t seem to notice that Elias has completely ignored the second tumbler I’d set out for him. Then again, the gentleman has no idea about the one-glass rule. I’m suddenly painfully aware of it.

My ears start burning.

For the rest of the evening, I get nothing from Elias. Not a glance my way, not a word attached to my name.

The conversation moves on to ice-fishing and when the first real blizzards might seal the road.

Real blizzards?

My toes curl at the thought of the one from yesterday. I can’t imagine something worse than that.

Anders mentions snow fences, dead batteries and which cousin lost half a shed roof last November. He speaks of it all with cheerful resignation.

Outside, dusk presses early in shades of blue and black, though the month has barely begun.

As soon as I realise snow has started to fall behind the glass, that small firelight in the hearth starts feeling like the only habitable inch left in the world.

And it’s a damning one.

When the white-bearded man finally claps his thighs and mutters something about sledge dogs needing rest, we shuffle outside.

Before climbing onto the sledge, Anders pauses, one hand on the handlebar, beard ghosting in the wind.

‘You’re coming for dinner,’ he says, not so much offering as decreeing. ‘Because if you don’t come to the Nielsens, the Nielsens come to you.’

He winks. The dogs bark.

Then the sledge swooshes off into the dark.

The front door closes with a heavy thud behind us.

And just like that, reality starts creeping back in.

Uninvited and unforgiving.

I’m still patting snow from my hair when Elias grabs his gloves from the shelf by the door and heads towards the back exit.

Through the window, I see him covering the snowmobile outside, then pocketing the keys.

Right side. Outer coat pocket.

I have no idea how to drive the thing, no idea which way the track runs, and no confidence that I would survive ten minutes in the dark without putting it into a tree.

But keys are keys. And hope, clearly, sometimes lives in pockets.

I glance northwards where I remember he’d said the cliff lies. Then to the right, where the forest thickens and the supposed town lies somewhere beyond.

I tuck it all beneath my mental rug where it can wait for the next rash decision.

When Elias returns for the chickens, my eyes follow him. I help clumsily where I can. He doesn’t correct me or thank me. As if I were an apparition he knows is here but has decided to tune out.

By the time the last hen is reluctantly returned to its rightful prison, darkness has swallowed the windows completely.

Elias walks past me without a word, trailing the scent of cold sweat and iron.