Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 11 of 32

Chapter 11: Ten Years

Gabe sat down hard on the step below me.

"You gave Clint the beacon."

"At the hospital. That night. He asked for Dale's things for his wife, and I had it in my pocket."

"So it never got to the investigators."

"Not from me."

He took the report out of my hands and stared at the last page.

"Searchers detected no signal," he read again. "Of course they didn't. It was switched off and sitting in a lieutenant's lap."

"He wouldn't have known what it meant. He was half frozen."

"But you knew it was off."

"I was twenty and hypothermic and I thought the slide did it." I pressed my cold hands against my eyes. "Gabe, I've been married to him twice. I never once thought about that beacon."

"Why would you? Everybody told you Dale died a hero."

We sat on the steps until Gran banged on the window and told us we'd catch our deaths.

"I'm going to ask him," I said, before we went in. "Face to face. Not on the phone."

"When?"

"The fourteenth. The memorial."

Every January fourteenth, the battalion holds a service for Dale at the post chapel.

This year was ten years. There'd be a bigger crowd than ever.

Gabe looked at me for a long moment.

"I haven't been since the first year," he said. "I couldn't stand there while they said he died looking for Clint."

"Will you come?"

He nodded once.

"Yeah. I'll come."

New Year's came and went.

The captain with the mustache took the video down the morning after the party.

He posted a two-line apology under my name. His wife, I heard later, had made him write it at the kitchen table.

Clint's lawyer didn't drop the custody petition.

I didn't expect him to.

I walked every morning, and then I jogged, and then, at five weeks, my doctor let me carry a light pack up the trail behind the cemetery.

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