Jack pushes off the wall, empties his cup in the trash.
“Anyway, I’m going home,” he says. “You need anything, you call.”
“Tell them she’s okay,” I say. “Tell Cotton and Brodie I’ll call them in the morning.”
“I will,” he says.
He pauses at the door.
“Hey, Irish,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“You did good,” he says.
My throat tightens.
“I didn’t catch him,” I say.
“No,” he says. “You did somethin’ harder. You caught her.”
He tips his hat, then slips out into the hallway, leaving me alone with the beeps and the girl in the bed.
Tallulah makes a soft sound and shifts, burrowing closer.
I set the paper aside and curl around her as best I can without jostling the IV.
Outside, snow keeps falling.
Inside, the woman I love is alive.
Henry can plan, pivot, can turn his attention to whatever new story he thinks he’s writing.
We’ll be ready.
Twiggy
(Fourweekslater)
I used to hate January.
It always felt like the hangover after a party I hadn’t wanted to go to in the first place. Gray slush, dead tinsel, resolutions I knew I wouldn’t keep.
Lucy Falls in January is different.
It’s still cold. The snow is half-melted and slightly dingy. The Christmas lights are mostly down, except for the ones Cotton refuses to remove.
But there’s a quietude here that doesn’t feel like an ending.
It feels like…a reset.
I’m standing on the back porch of Cotton’s house in a stolen sweater—Bran’s—and fuzzy socks, watching my breath curl out in little clouds.
Down in the pasture, one of the mares flicks her tail. Saoirse is trying to make a snowman out of what’s left of the drift by the fence, Brodie hovering like he expects the snow to suddenly become sentient and attack her. Cotton is yelling something about mittens from the kitchen door.
Behind me, the screen door creaks.
Arms slide around my waist.
