“Gus is going to be so smug,” I said.
His chest moved with a long exhale of breath that was nearly a laugh. “For the rest of his extremely long and apparently very healthy life.”
“We’re definitely grounding him.”
“Absolutely,” he said, and pressed his mouth to the top of my head. “Tomorrow.”
Then he rolled me beneath him again.
EPILOGUE
It had snowed overnight.
Enough to dust the pine branches and soften the edges of everything outside the cabin windows. The kind of snow that made the world feel like it was keeping a gentle, unhurried secret. The light coming through the glass had that muted, diffuse quality it only got when the ground was white, the whole world turned down to a hush. I’d been awake for a while. Not restlessly, not the way I woke up on shift when every sound was something to catalogue and assess, but in the easy, unhurried way I’d been waking up all week. Aware of the quiet. Aware of the cold pressing against the outside of the glass. Aware of the warmth of my wife still asleep against my side, her breathing slow and even, her hair against my shoulder.
My wife. I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of that. Of knowing this woman, my best friend, the center of my world, was mine, wholly and completely. That unshakeable foundation of friendship made everything else so much deeper and richer. And in the quiet here, I could admit to myself that I was grateful to Gus for his meddling, because I had no idea if we’d ever have been able to get out of our own way without it. Not that I would ever admit that to him on pain of death.
This trip was what we’d needed. I understood that now in a way I hadn’t fully appreciated until we’d gotten here and exhaled for the first time in what felt like months. Not merely a few days away in the abstract, but a full week where nobody needed anything from us, where the station wasn’t calling, where the hardware store was being managed by someone else, and where Gus was, for the first time in longer than I wanted to think about, in his own house under his own power and not our immediate responsibility. That last one had been the hardest to let go of. But we’d managed it.
Ellie stirred, shifted, and I stroked a hand down her bare leg. She gave a big, shuddering stretch before relaxing back against the warmth of me beneath the blankets.
I pressed a kiss below her ear. “Snow.”
She turned her head toward the window, blinking once at the pale light. “Oh.” A pause, soft and unhurried. “That’s pretty.”
We lay there for a while watching the fat flakes swirl through the air beyond the window, our legs tangled together simply because we wanted to be touching. No hurry. No agenda. Outside, the pine trees held their white cargo with the patience of things that had been doing this for a very long time and intended to keep doing it long after we’d packed up and gone home to Alabama. Inside, the cabin was warm. It smelled like the wood fire we’d let burn down to embers sometime in the small hours, that low, sweet scent of ash and pine resin that had already started to feel like this place, like this week, like us. A hallmark of this time out of time.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
We both looked at it. Neither of us moved for a second, just staring at it the way you stared at something you’d been half expecting.
“It’s eleven o’clock in the morning,” she said.
“He’s been up since six,” I said. “By his standards, this is monumental restraint.”
She checked the buttons of my flannel shirt that she’d claimed sometime in the night to make sure nothing was exposed, and reached for the phone with the resignation of a woman who had known this man her entire life and had long since made her peace with his particular brand of relentless. I dragged on a t-shirt. Gus’s face filled the screen the moment she accepted the video call—broad and familiar, wearing the good flannel he reserved for occasions that warranted it. He looked pleased with himself for having waited until a civilized hour and expected to be commended for it.
“There she is,” he said warmly. “How’s the snow up there?”
“How do you know it snowed?”
“Looked it up this morning. Good couple of inches. Nice.” His eyes tracked sideways. “Where’s Daniel?”
I leaned into the frame. “Hey, Gus.”
“Danny boy.” He looked between us with a slow, satisfied assessment of a man examining his own handiwork. “You both look rested.”
“We are rested,” Ellie said. “That’s what happens when you go on vacation and people leave you alone.”
“Mm.” He settled back in his chair, and I knew from the way he got comfortable that he had things to say and intended to take his time about it. “Mrs. Petty came by yesterday with a casserole.”
“That was kind of her.”
“It was. Very kind.” He paused. “She also brought her granddaughter along. Visiting for the holidays, apparently.” Another pause, which was doing absolutely none of the work of appearing casual. “Nice girl. About the right age for?—“
“Grandpa.”
“I’m only making an observation.”
