Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Rocking Chair

"Get out of my grandfather's chair," I said.

Amber didn't move.

She shifted the baby to her other side and pulled her cardigan over herself, slow and modest.

"He's almost done eating. You remember how it is." She smiled. "Oh, I guess you don't yet. You only had yours on Friday."

Behind me, the floor creaked.

Gabe had come in, with the dog handler and the kid behind him carrying flattened boxes.

Amber's eyes went over them and came back to me.

"You brought movers. That's smart. Clint said you'd want your things."

"Clint gave you a key to my house."

"He gave me a key three years ago." She said it gently, like she was breaking bad news to a child. "For emergencies. My apartment's so small, and he said this nursery would just sit empty for weeks."

"So you moved in."

"I came to help him get ready. For both babies."

She stroked her son's head with one finger.

"Mallory, I know this is hard. I'm not trying to take anything. I never was."

"You're sitting in my nursery."

"Clint and I have something you can't understand," she said. "Dale died on that mountain looking for him. He died with his beacon on, searching for Clint in the snow. Clint has to live with that every day."

Behind me, very quietly, Gabe set his box down.

"He'll always come when I call," Amber said. "It's not about love. It's about what he owes. You'd be kinder to yourself if you just accepted that."

I heard a car door slam outside.

Then men's voices on the porch, and boots in the front hall.

Clint came down the hall in uniform with the two captains from the hospital behind him.

He saw me and stopped.

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