Chapter 11: Snowed In

We went on Saturday, in his truck, by the county road.

I did not ask why he took it.

He did not say.

It was an hour and ten minutes through flat white fields, and the sky came down lower the farther we went.

Past the barn at the stop sign he turned right, away from the lake road, and took a gravel track through a stand of bare oaks that I had never seen.

"There's a back way?" I said.

"There's always a back way."

The cabin stood at the end of the track, a low gray building with a green tin roof and a porch that had sagged in the middle.

My mother's yarn was still tied to the brass key.

I put it in the lock and the door opened with a groan.

Inside it smelled like cold wood and mouse and old coffee.

A woodstove sat in the corner and a couch with a patchwork quilt stood in front of it.

On the mantel, in a frame with a cracked corner, was a photograph of my mother holding up a fish.

She had my hair and my freckles.

She was laughing at whoever held the camera.

I stopped in front of it with my hand on the mantel.

Gabe stopped in the doorway.

"I'll get wood," he said, and went out.

By the time I had the stove lit, it had started to snow.

It came sideways at first, small and hard, then in big wet flakes that covered the windows.

By dark the track was gone.

Gabe came in with his arms full of logs and snow on his shoulders and shut the door against the wind.

"We're not leaving tonight," he said.

"I know."

He stacked the logs without looking at the mantel.

I put on water for tea and found two chipped mugs with a cartoon crab on them.

We ate canned soup on the rug in front of the stove, with the quilt around us both, the firelight on his beard.

He had not spoken in twenty minutes.

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