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“I did not know that story,” he said, in my ear.

“I forgot it.”

“You did not.”

“I forgot it on purpose.” I wiped my face. “I gave a kid a granola bar. Big deal.”

“It was the first time you shared your food with a friend.”

“It was the second, “ I said, unsteadily. “The first was you.”

He kissed my temple.

Across the room, my father was standing at the edge of the dance floor with a glass in his hand, watching. He caught my eye. He didn’t smile. But he lifted the glass, an inch, an almost imperceptible salute, and something in my chest turned over like a coin.

I lifted mine back.

Chapter 38

MAKSIM

The Wedding Night

The cabin sat at the far end of the lake, a quarter mile from the barn, in a stand of snow-laden pines.

Mrs. Pendleton had chosen it with a private, satisfied air, and she had given us a small envelope containing a key and the instruction that we were “under no circumstances to be disturbed before Tuesday.” It was a low log building with a stone chimney and a wide porch. A fire had already been lit, and a lantern burned in the window, and somebody had laid a path of pine boughs across the drifts with tiny candles guttering at intervals in jars of colored glass.

“Your mother,” I said, “has thought of everything.”

“My mother’s a menace.”

“She is a tactician.”

“She’s going to want details. “

“She will not receive them.”

“She’ll get them out of Jenny.” He shivered. “She’ll get them out of Tyler. “

We stood on the path in the snow, in our wedding clothes, with the music of the reception faint and golden behind us, and the ice-blue moon overhead. He had taken off his jacket at some point. His shirt was open at the collar. His breath came out in clouds, and the snowflakes caught in his hair, and I thought, with a distinct and private astonishment: this is my husband.

He looked at me.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“You’ve got a face.”

“I am simply admiring.”

“You’ve been admiring for three hours.”

“I intend to continue for some time.”

He grinned, and then he swept me up. I do not know how else to say it. He put one arm behind my knees and another around my back and lifted me off the ground with a shout, and started to carry me through the snow toward the cabin steps.

“Lex! Put me down!”