I AWOKE IN SHADOWS, NOT RECOGNIZING WHERE I WAS. THE air was cold, smelled foreign. Like ashes. And cedar. And pine. I tried to sit up; my head felt like a sack of sand. Dim light seeped through the window blinds. Dusk. A dying fire. I blinked, orienting myself. “Molly? Nick?”
No answer. I got up, searching. “Nick? Molly?”
My voice hung forlornly, drifting through the empty room. I went to the window. Tall pines ringed the farmhouse like frozen sentries, rigid at attention. But no Nick. No Molly. I crossed, weightless, to the kitchen.
Yes, there they were, out back. Trekking through the glowing snow toward a woodpile. Behind them, through the open doors of a shed, I saw a pair of yellow snowmobiles, ski equipment, snowshoes hanging on the walls. A snowplow hunkered beside the shed like an oversized dog. Nick’s toys.
I wandered into the bathroom and splashed my face with water, waking up. The mirror shocked me. Dark semicircles underlined my eyes. My skin was pasty, my lips chapped and rough. I looked hollow, but I felt better, more alert. Slapping some color into my cheeks, smoothing my hair back, I went for my jacket and joined them outside.
“Mommy’s up!” Molly squealed. “We’re getting firewood.”
Cheeks glowing, she climbed through thigh-high snow, hand in hand with Nick.
“Feeling better?” Nick half-smiled, welcoming me, and we walked the snowy countryside around his house. The cold, fresh air revitalized me, and when Nick stopped to tighten a bootlace, I couldn’t help it. I creamed him with a snowball. Right between the eyes. A battle ensued, a flurry of dusty white ammunition, flying arms and legs, and laughter. Molly ambushed us both by pretending to be hurt, then blasting us with two fierce chunks of snow when we came to her aid. We all froze our fingers, noses, and toes. We tumbled. We played. The horrors of the day before—of the past month—got lost in a frosty flurry. For the first time in years, I felt mischievous, silly, goofy. As the sun set, I rolled with Molly down hills of frozen white down, hung upside down over Nick’s shoulder, landed in pillows of soft snow. By the time it got dark and we came inside, a lost part of my life had been restored. partly because of Molly. Mostly because of Nick.