Sarah pulled out a wooden chair and sat down at the table opposite him. She felt a strange hollowness in her chest, as if she had been pushing against a heavy iron door for years, only to have it swing open all at once. "We are really just two people in a cabin now," she said. "Just two tired people in a very cold cabin," Damien agreed. He reached across the scarred wooden table and rested his good hand over hers for a brief second. "We made it, Sarah." By December, the real winter settled over the mountain. The days shrank until the sun barely cleared the tops of the southern pines before sinking back into the gray clouds. The snow rose until it covered the bottom half of the cabin windows, turning the light inside as dim and green as water in a deep pond. Damien no longer needed the sling for his left arm. Every morning after they ate their oatmeal or fried dough, he stood in the center of the floor and did slow exerci

Sarah woke instantly at the sound, her hand going straight to the cold steel of the pistol she kept inside her boot beside the chair. Across the small space, Damien was already sitting up on the cot, alert and silent in the red glow from the stove grate. "Just a tree," Damien whispered after a long moment of listening to the howling wind. "The snow load is too heavy on the branches." Sarah slowly let go of the grip of her gun and rubbed her eyes with both hands. "Old habits," she said softly. "They take a long time to die," Damien replied, lying back down beneath the pile of coats and blankets. "Go back to sleep. The cabin roof has held for fifty years; it will hold tonight." On the fourth morning, Sarah woke to an eerie, complete silence. The wind had died away to nothing, leaving the mountain wrapped in a quiet so deep she could hear the faint ticking of her wristwatch. She got up, pulled down the