Page 3

The creek gets louder the closer we get, that low, steady sound cutting through the snow and the dark. I've always loved this place because she loved it. Because it mattered to her. Now every step toward it feels like betrayal.

My legs slow before I mean them to. I look at the water, at the snow gathering along the bank, at the place where she asked me to bring her when the time came.

The time came.

I almost turn around. The thought comes fast enough that my body shifts with it before I can stop myself. I could carry her back inside and put her back in our bed beside the tree, pull the blankets up around her, and hold onto the lie a little longer. Pretend, for just a while, that this isn't happening.

Her hand tightens weakly in my shirt.

I stop and close my eyes before I carry her the last few steps and lower myself to the ground near the edge of the creek. The snow soaks through my jeans almost immediately. Cold bites into my knees, my thighs, my hands, everywhere the blanket doesn't cover them.

But I don't care.

I settle her across my lap and pull her closer until her body is tucked against mine, one arm behind her back, the other wrapped around her legs. Her head rests beneath my chin, and I press my mouth to her hair because I can't stop touching her.

For a while, neither of us speaks.

The creek moves beside us. The snow falls. My wife breathes.

I count each one now because I can't help it.

One.

Two.

Three.

A pause that's too long.

Four.

A breath.

My chest hurts so badly I wonder if something inside it has split open.

“I remember the first time I saw you,” she says.

Her voice is quiet, but there's a steadiness in it that doesn't belong to the rest of her body anymore.

I look down at her and smile because forgetting that day is never going to happen.

"I'd just gotten home from school,” she says. “I remember dropping my bag by the door and hearing voices in the kitchen. I didn't think anything of it at first.”

I know what memory she's reaching for. Her father's kitchen. The ugly tile floor he kept saying he was going to replace and never did. The smell of coffee. Knox running his mouth while I leaned against the counter, pretending I wasn't half dead from working at the garage all morning and riding too hard the night before.

Then she walked in. I didn't know it was her at first. I only remember turning and seeing this girl standing in the doorway with her school bag sliding off one shoulder. She looked at me like she recognized something. I looked away because she was Knox's kid sister.

“I walked in, and you were standing there like you belonged,” she whispers. “Like you'd always been there. Like it was the most natural thing in the world for you to be in my kitchen.”

My throat tightens.

“You didn't even notice me,” she says. “You were talking with Knox, leaning against the counter like you'd done it a hundred times, and I just stopped.”

“I noticed you.”

Her eyes shift toward mine.

“Not right away,” I admit. “But I did.”