I hear the reception door and Doris appears in the frame. She looks at Reid. "You heading out?"
"For today," Reid says.
Doris looks at him the way you look at something that doesn't compute. "It's not even noon."
She looks at me. Back at Reid. At our joined hands. And with a knowing smile says, "Right. See you tomorrow."
"You don't have to," I tell him, once Doris has gone back inside. "I'm fine."
"I want to show you something,"
We take a new path, rising through the trees. The ground underfoot is soft and gives slightly with each step, wet pine needles and dark earth, and the cold works through my jacket in a way that feels good now, clean rather than punishing. Reid's hand is still in mine. I'm aware of the specific warmth of it, the weight of it, the way he holds on without gripping.
The trees open as the path climbs, the sky coming in between the branches in wider and wider pieces, until we come out onto a ridge and stop.
The valley is below us. Enormous and open, green and white and grey-blue in the distance, the mountains ringing it from every side, and the light is moving across it in long slow sweeps where the clouds are breaking further west.
I don't have words. The scale of it takes mine and gives me nothing back.
Reid stands beside me. His shoulder is close to mine and his hand is still in mine and we share this without speaking.
"After I got the call about my sister," he says, "all I could think was to get to the boys as fast as I could."
I listen.
"It wasn't easy when I arrived. Two boys grieving. I was grieving too and still adjusting to civilian life. All of us adjusting to this new painful reality." He pauses. The wind moves across the ridge, cold and steady. "I saw a grief counselor for a while." He looks out at the valley. "One thing stuck. She said emotions are like seasons. They come whether you want them or not. But, they don't stay forever. If you wait long enough, the sun comes back."
He pauses.
"Like today," he says. "It was raining this morning."
I look at the light on the valley floor, the way it moves across the snow and the dark trees, slow and indifferent and beautiful.
He squeezes my hand once.
Then the quality of his voice changes. Something lifts in it, the weight of what he was carrying shifting aside to make room for something else. "When the boys were being impossible and I didn’t knew what to do," He nods at the open air below us. "I'd come up here and I'd roar."
I look at him.
"At the valley," he says. "Whatever was in me. I'd send it out."
"You're not serious."
"Completely."
He turns to face the valley and opens his chest and roars. Loud and long, from somewhere deep, and it goes out across the open air and the mountains take it and the echo comes back smaller and then it's gone and there's just the wind.
He looks at me.
"Your turn," he says.
"I can't."
He steps behind me. His hands settle on my shoulders, large and warm and steady, and he brings his mouth close to my ear. His voice low.
"Let it all out," he says.
I face the valley. The enormous open indifferent space of it, the mountains holding it from every side, the light moving across everything below that doesn't know or care what I've been carrying.
