Chapter 24: Both Sides of the Door

On the fourteenth of February, Eli drove me up Larch Ridge in the plow truck.

June stayed at his house with Rhonda, who had taken a week of leave and had announced that she was never giving the baby back.

The road was plowed clean to the pavement.

Every turn I had once passed in the dark, with my husband's hands at ten and two, looked ordinary in the afternoon sun.

The cabin sat at the end of the drift with smoke coming from the chimney.

"You lit the stove," I said.

"This morning."

"Without asking me."

"I asked your sister," Eli said. "She said you'd say yes."

I laughed.

The porch steps had been sanded. The wood box now sat on the right side of the door.

I climbed the steps by myself, with the key in my fist.

It was a new key, a bright brass one. Eli had changed the lock the day the deed came through.

I had asked him to do something else, too.

I put the key in the deadbolt and turned it.

Then I looked at the inside of the door, where he had put a plain thumb-latch, and a second one beside it.

Both sides opened with a hand.

Nothing in this house could be locked against the person standing in it.

"Hallie," Eli said, behind me.

"Come in."

The cabin was warm.

The couch sat in front of the stove, and the big front window showed the whole white valley going gold.

I went to the window and put my palm flat against the glass.

It was not cold.

I stood there a minute, and I let myself remember.

Then I turned around, and Eli was watching me from the middle of the room with his coat still on.

"The doctor cleared me on Tuesday," I said.

"I know. You told me."

"I'm telling you again. It's been seven weeks, and I'm saying it. Come here."

He crossed the floor.

He took my face in his hands and kissed me, and it was nothing like the careful kisses in the kitchen and the truck.

I opened my mouth under his, and he made a rough sound in his chest and pulled me against him.

My hands went under his coat and his shirt, up over his stomach, and he sucked in a breath at the touch.