"Tell me something true that isn't sad," Ruth said over the last of the carrots.
Walt thought. "I can still whistle the entire theme song to that western Eleanor made me watch seventeen times. I pretend I can't. Margaret knows I'm lying."
Ruth whistled the first four notes. Walt finished the phrase despite himself. They sat there grinning like conspirators who had stolen something harmless and sweet from a locked year.
Snow arrived properly the second week of December, heavy and wet, bending the shelterbelt trees until the world looked hushed and newly invented. Walt woke to a white yard and a wind that found every seam in the old house. He spent the morning clearing paths and breaking ice in troughs, breath pluming, fingers aching inside work gloves. Midafternoon the phone rang—Ruth, voice bright against the static.
"The Sanders lane is drifted shut. I'm stranded with three books, a fiddle, and half a loaf of bread. This is either romantic or a cautionary tale."