The Photographer's Return novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Winter

Milo looked at Casey.

Then at me.

Then at Bean, who had frozen with a bagel halfway to the ducks.

"Do I get the top bunk?" he said.

"No," said Bean.

"Yes," said Casey.

"Dad!"

"It's his room, Bean. You get the top bunk when you sleep over."

Bean narrowed her eyes at Milo.

"Fine," she said. "But I'm in charge of the jay trap."

Milo turned to me.

He was holding his breath again.

"Yes," I said. "For good."

We moved on the nineteenth of December, the day after his school let out.

Everything we owned fit in the back of Casey's truck and my white hatchback.

Two suitcases. Eleven negative binders and a blue one. A box of fish-shaped dumpling molds Milo had insisted on packing himself.

By the time we came over the summit, the sky had gone the color of wet cement.

"It's going to snow," Bean announced from Casey's passenger seat, over the phone on speaker. "I can smell it."

"You can't smell snow," Milo said from mine.

"Yes you can, Palo Alto."

"Don't call me that."

"Palo Alto, Palo Alto."

"Mom, she's doing it."

"I hear it, baby."

They argued about smelling snow for twenty miles.

By four o'clock the boxes were in the cabin.

The kids were on the deck, bickering about whose turn it was to bring in wood.

At four-fifteen, the first flake landed on the railing.

They both went completely silent.

Then another. Then a hundred, then a thousand, falling straight down out of the gray in fat, slow pieces.

Milo had never seen snow fall.

He stood on the deck with his mouth open and his tongue out.

Bean stood next to him with her tongue out too, so he wouldn't feel stupid.

I took the picture before either of them could stop me.

At six, Bean's aunt picked both kids up for a sleepover in Kings Beach.

"Trampoline's under two feet of snow," she told them. "We'll build a fort instead."

Milo was in her car before she'd finished the sentence.

He rolled the window down at the last second.

"Bye, Mom! Bye, Casey!"

Then he rolled it back up, and they were gone into the white.

Casey and I stood on the crooked deck in the falling snow.

Since August we'd had stolen kisses in the darkroom and a hundred phone calls and never one whole night.

There had always been a child, a hearing, a four-hour drive.

The cabin was quiet behind us.

The woodstove was ticking.

The snow was already sticking in his dark hair, and the gray at his temples was going white.

"Nobody has to drive anywhere," I said.

"Nobody has to drive anywhere," he said.

He kissed me on the deck, slow, his cold hands on either side of my face.

Then not slow.

I pulled him in through the door by his flannel, and kicked it shut behind us with my heel.

He backed me against the stacked boxes. One of them said FRAGILE in Milo's handwriting.

We both started laughing.

He kissed me through it.

His mouth found mine before I could catch my breath.

I laughed against his lips and felt him smile too.

He pulled back just enough to look at me.

Snowmelt dripped from his hair onto my cheek.

"You're shaking," he said.

"It's the cold."

"It's not the cold."

He kissed me again and his hands slid down my back.

One palm pressed flat against the small of my spine.

The other found the hem of his old gray sweater and tugged it up.

I lifted my arms before I told them to.

He pulled the sweater over my head and dropped it on the floor beside the boxes.

Cold air hit my bare skin and I sucked in a breath.

His eyes moved over me slow, like he was reading a map he had waited months to unfold.

"God, Sylvie."

"What?"

He shook his head once and reached for the button of my leggings.

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