Chapter 12: The Thaw

The voicemail ended on my brother's laugh, and the helicopter noise rushed back in.

I played it again.

Then a third time, with my hand over my mouth, so that Marcy wouldn't have to hear me.

Marcello sat across from me and said nothing.

He had heard every word.

His face was turned to the window, but I saw his shoulders move once.

"Marcello," I said.

He looked at me.

"I'm asking."

He took my hand between both of his.

He held it all the way back to the lodge, and neither of us said anything.

His mother was waiting in the great hall.

She stood by the fire in her black shawl with Gwen beside her, gray with sleeplessness, in a borrowed sweater.

The guests had all gone to their rooms.

The place felt like a church after a funeral.

"Marcy will sleep in my sitting room," his mother said.

"The doctor from the village is coming up the road. Gwen has agreed to stay."

"Thank you," I said.

"Do not thank me."

She crossed the stone floor and stopped in front of me.

She was a head shorter than I was, and she looked up with her black eyes.

"I told my son you would ruin him," she said.

"You stood in my chapel with a weapon pinned in your sleeve, and you shamed a hundred people."

"It was a drive, not a gun."

"It was worse. It was a reason."

She took my left hand and turned it over.

I had no ring on it. The pale line where the emerald had been had almost gone.

She opened her own hand, and in the palm lay a thin gold band, worn smooth, with a single small diamond.

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