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He nodded toward Main Street, the direction of the hardware store, the direction of everything, including her, up to a point.
They walked.
* * *
Main Street under the first snow of December was the most beautiful she’d seen it.
The shop windows threw warm light onto the white sidewalks, and the street lamps made orange halos in the falling snow, and the maple in Founders Square was bare and white-dusted and the gazebo stood behind it with snow on its roof and everything was still in the way of a snowing night, the whole world turned down to something quieter and more essential than it usually was.
Their footsteps made soft sounds in the snow.
Their breath made clouds.
Their arms brushed occasionally and neither moved away, because they’d stopped moving away from things a while ago, or she had, and she thought he had too, and they walked in the rhythm they’d found, the same pace, the same unhurried forward motion, and she was aware of him beside her with the awareness she’d had for four months, the awareness that lived in her peripheral vision and her heartbeat and the quality of the air when he was near.
She looked at the hardware store sign as they passed it.
Colter Hardware. Est. 1958. White with snow on top now.
She thought about all the people in this town who had been gently, patiently, completely unsubtly pointing her in the same direction for four months.
“Shane,” she said.
“Mm.”
She kept her eyes forward. “Thursday.”
He was quiet beside her. Not the absence of something quiet. The full kind.
“The window,” he said.
“And the other thing.”
She felt him slow slightly, not stopping, just the change in pace of someone who was going to say something and was choosing it.
“The other thing,” he said.
“You said my name,” she said. “Not Ms. Hayes. Just...” She stopped. “I know you know what I mean.”
“I do,” he said.
The snow came down around them, quiet and steady. Their footsteps in it.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “Since Thursday. And before Thursday. For a while.” She paused. “I know you have too.”
He didn’t confirm it. He didn’t deny it. He was quiet in the way he was quiet when something was true and he was deciding what to do with it.
“I know,” she said again, more quietly. “I just... I know.”
They walked.
Founders Square was ahead of them, the bare maple, the snow-roofed gazebo, the same place they’d stood in October firelight when everything had almost been something and hadn’t been, and now the snow was on everything and the stars were hidden behind the clouds that were still delivering it and the whole night was white and quiet and close.
She stopped walking.
He stopped a half step later.
She turned to look at him.
