"I was bringing this to my editor," she said.
She pressed it into his hands. He unwrapped a small brass compass. The lid clicked open on a hinge worn smooth by someone else's thumb. The needle trembled, then settled, pointing somewhere through the wall toward true north. Engraved faintly on the inside of the lid, almost erased by use, were two initials he could not quite read in the lamplight.
"Your editor gets lost a lot?" Ray asked.
They sat by the fire under one wool blanket as snow piled against the window. The blanket smelled of cedar and mothballs. Their knees almost touched. The storm, shut out, became a kind of music—continuous, without melody, the sort of sound that made speech feel optional and therefore more valuable when it came.