Page 95 of Out of the Cold

Lucy traced a drop of condensation on her water glass with her thumb. “I was sort of seeing someone, someone really great, but it ended.” Now the tears came, but she didn’t let them fall. “I’m kind of a mess.”

“I’m really sorry,” Amelia said, her eyes full of sympathy. Like she’d been there.

The food arrived then, a welcome distraction that allowed her to rein her emotions in. When the waiter left, they talked about their favorite books when they were kids, and Amelia had her laughing with stories about learning to ski.

She felt better as she drove home, but it lasted only until she pulled into the driveway and saw Gabriel moving past his window.

She sat in her car, unable to find the energy to go inside. Why bother when he wouldn’t be there?

The car cooled, and she still didn’t move. Eventually she started to shiver, and her hands grew numb. Hilde was probably inside barking like crazy, beside herself.

The thought propelled her out of the car and into the house, where Hilde greeted her with a frantic dance of joy. For the zillionth time since she’d gotten her dog, she sent up a little prayer of thanks that Hilde was in her life.

All she had to do was keep her head down and survive living within sight of Gabriel’s cabin. Not only bear it, but write something that would make people’s hearts sing.

And also figure out the rest of her life. Which looked pretty empty from where she was standing.

But as awful as things were, she didn’t regret any of it. She couldn’t, not when she loved him. She was glad now that she never used that word. She’d wanted to wait until she knew they could survive outside their little bubble. But she’d been saying it to him in so many other ways.

Now she needed to survive until her book was done.

Hilde didn’t help. She didn’t know they were supposed to be keeping their distance. If they were outside at the same time, her ears perked up and she took off toward him.

Lucy didn’t have the heart to call the dog back every time, though she couldn’t watch them together, either. But once when he was out chopping wood and she was inside, she picked up her binoculars and trained them on him. But she couldn’t tell anything from this far away. Couldn’t see whether he had dark circles under his eyes, like he did when she first arrived. The only thing she knew for sure was that he’d stopped shaving.

She put the binoculars down and didn’t look again.

She wrote, went on long treks, and contacted everyone she knew in San Francisco to let them know she was looking for a place, alone or with a roommate.

“Come back home,” Cara said. “You have so many people who love you here. You can stay with me until you find something.”

Oddly enough, the offer wasn’t even tempting. She wanted to go home to visit at some point, but her reasons for leaving Florida hadn’t changed.

She was going to make another go of it in San Francisco, and she was going to be fine.

***

Gabe woke up in a sweat, his heart pounding. Another dream about digging Ricky out. It had been like this every night since he’d ended things with Lucy. All day he managed to feel nothing, and every night everything he was trying not to feel came back with a vengeance.

He was right back where he’d been before Lucy, only now sometimes he dreamed she was the one trapped under the snow.

A thousand times over the past few weeks, he’d nearly knocked on her door. But what came after that? He wanted to be the man she thought he was, but he was stuck in a time warp, where every day was the day Ricky died.

He still couldn’t stop himself from noting what time she left for her afternoon treks and what time she came back. It wasn’t his job anymore—it never had been—but there was no shaking the compulsion to make sure she was okay.

It usually took him until late morning to shake off the emotional hangover of his dream, and today was no exception. But he plowed through sales figures for the newest line of apparel, grateful to have something that absorbed his attention.

He was on the phone with Eddie, reviewing the results, when he saw Lucy heading down the front steps, dressed for her daily snowshoe. Oddly, Hilde wasn’t with her.

“Gabe, are you there?”

“Sorry, Eddie. Could you repeat that?”

She came home an hour later, much sooner than usual, and a minute later his cell phone rang.

“Lucy?”

“Please come over,” she said, her voice shaking. “I need help.”

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