She came around the table and kissed him then—first real kiss, soft, tasting of coffee and resolve—and rested her forehead against his. "I'll write. And I'll call when the rates aren't criminal. And I will come back for my fiddle case if nothing else, because I left a spare string in it that belongs to you."
"It belongs to whoever needs it," Walt said.
The rest of January moved like a slow train. Ruth taught two last lessons to kids in town. She played at the Methodist fellowship hall for a fundraiser. Walt helped her pack the Ford: clothes, notebooks, the cream prairie dress folded in tissue, the cropped suede jacket she wore even when it wasn't quite enough for the cold. On the last morning he stood in the Sanders driveway while frost smoked off the roof and she tuned the fiddle one more time in the open air, just to hear it.
"Play something," he said.
She played the reel from Thanksgiving, then something slower, then stopped mid-phrase and laughed. "If I keep going I'll never leave."