"Neither do I," Ray said. His voice was low, close to her hair. "That's the first honest thing either of us has said since the tea. Maybe since the moose."
They stood like that until the radio crackled again—base confirming the road crew's progress, a dispatcher wishing anyone listening a merry Christmas in a voice cracked by static and sincerity—and the world began, reluctantly, to reconnect itself to maps and schedules and the idea that doors led to places other than more snow.
Ellen pulled back first, not because she wanted to, but because wanting and timing were different animals. She sat again, elevated the ankle, and asked Ray to tell her something ordinary about Durango in summer. He did—the smell of the railroad, the tourists with their cameras, the way the Animas River looked when the light went copper in the evening—and the ordinary talk became a bridge across the hour until the plow's distant growl entered the valley like a mechanical animal clearing its throat.