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CHAPTER FOUR BLIZZARD
I always half expect to wake up to that green when we stay out here.
Just a little fleck of it. The symphony of crickets. The humidity that would cloy to purple sheets. The empty bed and vacant kitchen and floorboards that expanded in cracks throughout the night. But that green. So bright and deep, not even sunlight could diffuse it. It clung to the walls and lit up your lungs with clarity. Beyond it the roads, the rivers, the wide stretches of sand and never-ending ripples of blue that met the faint hemisphere of open skies. To get out of bed was a gracious, involuntary act. Another day to be embraced by it. Blissfully unaware. Comfortably alone.
Or so I had thought. It was hard to reminisce; even harder not to miss it.
I lie amongst the covers, tentative to taste the cold that awaited once I pulled them back. Rather motionlessly, too—merely my breath, my head lolled to the side for the window view. The bitter grey, flecks of snow, bare branches tapping sadly at the speckled panes. The wind is lonely. Alex's side of the bed cold and bare. Everybody must have been up for hours.
How those three managed out here, so isolated in this state of eternal winter—no sign of green any lighter then brittle fern—I still couldn't fathom.
I lay until the sleep wears away from my head. I don't know how long that stretches. Out here, it could be hours against the reality of it being fifteen minutes. When I eventually brave the bare room for layers, I tip toe out into the cabin across the rickety wooden floors, still cold even in thick socks and padded boots. The kitchen and living room sits stagnant amongst all its clutter, quiet and unused. Even when I knock on Maisie's door, gently pushing it open, the covers are pulled back and vacant. There is a small clutter of dishes on the bench, a clock somewhere, the squawk of something even lonelier in the distance.
Claire, always a step ahead in good nature, had left an assortment of breakfast bits on the bench. I'm tentative to unravel it all out here, where there was so much quiet within the woods that the slightest rustle or unravel felt like shouting. I dip a butter knife between jam. Old habits.
