"Then don't ask me to come back up the mountain as if the mountain were the point," Ellen said. "Ask me to dinner next week. Ask me to show you the hot springs road I wrote about, the one with the mud. Ask me to sit in that cabin again when it isn't an emergency and see what we say to each other when we have a choice and a working ankle and a deck with all its hearts."
Ray considered this with the same care he had given her bandage in the clinic. A truck passed, chains chiming. "Dinner next week," he said. "Thursday. There's a place in Durango that doesn't try too hard. No fondue. No talking glaciers."
"Thursday," Ellen agreed. "I'll bring the missing cards if I find them."