Page 27 of A Killing Cold

“Your family will be expecting us,” I point out.

“We have weeks here. There’s plenty of time for togetherness.” His thumb makes circles against my bare skin.

“Okay,” I say. We’ll stay in. We’ll talk. I’ll find the right moment. I’ll tell him about the photograph, about the cabin. I’ll tell him everything.

Just not yet.

11

Connor vanishes around five and comes back laden with produce. He has no idea how to cook for only two people; the leftovers from our date nights feed me for a week.

“Step one: pour wine into chef,” he says, as he does every time, and pauses for my obligatory chuckle. He fetches us long-stemmed glasses. Wine comes with a history lesson in Connor’s kitchen. “Only a small number of bottles were made that year, because of a hailstorm that wiped out the crop mid-harvest,” he informs me. “You’ll find it’s quite peppery, with notes of currant.”

“I notice it’s a red wine. You can tell, you see. Because of the color,” I say, matching his arch tone, and he narrows his eyes at me in mock annoyance. He carts his own glass over to the cutting board, where he swaps the Syrah for a chef’s knife and sets to rapidly deconstructing a pair of onions. The rhythmic noise of the knife against the wooden cutting board is the only sound for a minute or two. Our dinners are like this sometimes—neither of us sure what to talk about, worrying suddenly that our ability to hold a conversation has fled entirely, that the novelty has worn off. And then somewhere between the third sip and the tenth something unlocks.

“Are you enjoying the Miller?” he asks. He tilts his head toward the book on the table. I flinch at the sight of the photograph’s edge, resist the urge to tuck it in more thoroughly.

“Adore it,” I say. “It’s gorgeous.”

Of course books were the first thing we talked about. After introductions, followed by an awkward pause, Connor asked—lurchingly, with no preamble at all—if I’d read Vonnegut. OnlySlaughterhouse-Five, I had to admit, but Connor had read them all, kept a set of signed first editions. He wanted to talk about them. Not what happened in them butaboutthem, about Vonnegut, about stories and what he could do with them, and from Vonnegut we ranged from George Saunders to Virginia Woolf and Jennifer Egan, and then I admitted that since I’d graduated, I’d read mostly popular fiction, books either about kissing or death, and he said all books are about kissing and death when you get down to it, and I told him that was the sort of thing that sounded deep but wasn’t really once you thought about it for more than two seconds, and he told me that later he was going to ask me if he could kiss me, and then without taking a breath continued our discussion of which of Cormac McCarthy’s books we preferred.

We still talk about books. He makes fun of my lowbrow taste; I crack jokes about Jonathan Franzen he pretends to take personally.

He’s smiling now. “Ask me to pick out a ring, I’m helpless. Ask me to pick out a book, though…” He gives me a satisfied look. “See? I do know you.”

The photograph peeks out from between the pages. I say nothing.

Connor twists a fistful of herbs to strip the leaves from the stems. He draws the tip of a blade to part meat from bone, scrapes a grater across the flesh of a lemon for the zest, halves it with neat knife strokes. The wine is a red darker than blood and it stains his lower lip as he drinks it, pours us both another glass. My reflection is obscured in the glass, just the hint of a silhouette. I tilt it, distorting the image further.

“Has it always just been family, at the winter retreat?” I ask him.

The meat is in the oven. Connor props his palms on the counter, leaning toward me slightly. “It can get a bit claustrophobic,” he says, not quite an answer. “Usually at least in the summer some friends get invited. It feels more casual. More like a vacation and less like a summit.”

“So no guests at all in the winter.”

“Only family. And the very-soon-to-be family,” he confirms.

I wet my lips. “So there wouldn’t have ever been a… a family friend? No other kids for you to play with at Christmastime growingup? No epic snowball fights by the pond?” I ask, trying to keep my voice bright, curious. Without an agenda.

He frowns a little. “No. Definitely not. Although…” He stops himself.

“Although what?” I ask. I can feel my pulse fluttering at my neck. Quick as the thrum of an insect’s wings.

“Nothing,” he says. “We never have guests at Christmas.” The oven timer beeps. He turns away, more quickly than is quite natural. “Why do you ask?”

Tell him, I think. But he closes the oven, turns to me. His gaze is warm. My breath catches. I want it to be true that he knows me. I want this—here in this cabin with just the two of us, where for a moment his family doesn’t matter and neither does my past.

“No reason,” I say.

I run my finger along the edge of the photograph, pushing it deeper among the pages and out of sight.

12

I sleep poorly that night, and if dreams trouble me, they’ve faded by morning. Connor brings me coffee in bed, kisses my forehead, and tells me that he’s already told his female relatives that I won’t be joining them for the second day of skiing.

“You’re my favorite,” I inform him.

“I am pretty great,” he agrees. “I’ve got Male Bonding with Trevor, Nick, and Grandpa today. You’ll be okay here?”

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