A Warm Heart in Winter(45)

Z stroked the felt with his hand, feeling the coarse nap. “I guess I thought the work was over.”

“It’s never over. If we want to be conscious in our lives, in ourselves, the work is always necessary.”

“Physical therapy forever.”

“So that you can function better and feel better and be healthier. You can’t undo the injury, but you can always work with what you have.”

“I wish I didn’t have to.” He looked back at her. “Shit. That sounds lame.”

“No, that sounds very human.” Mary shook her head with a little laugh. “I mean vampire.”

Silence eased into the space between them, and in the back of his mind, he thought that Mary’s ability to be comfortable in the quiet was one of the many reasons she was the right therapist for him.

Taking a deep breath, he returned the pallet to where it had been and placed the lid back on top. Then he pushed the box into its previous position.

He stayed where he was for a couple of heartbeats. Then he got to his full height and offered his dagger hand to his brother’s precious shellan.

“Care to hit Last Meal?” he said as he helped her to her feet.

“I want you to keep something in mind.” She stared up at him. “You know all the hours we’ve spent together?”

“Yes?”

“Were they so bad?”

“You mean, did I like them? No. I’m sorry, but that would be a no.”

Mary shook her head. “Not what I asked. Were they so bad?”

“No.”

“Could you do it all over again? Like from the start ’til this moment right here?” She pointed to the concrete between them. “From when we first met down here to now?”

He thought about the conversations. Some had been like pulling teeth. Some had been kind of easy. Others had wiped him out emotionally. One—or no, two—had actually made him vomit.

A few they had even laughed through.

“Yes,” he said. “I could do it all over again.”

Mary put her hand on his forearm. “Then you have exactly what you need to continue to heal and survive and thrive. If you can look me right in the eye, and say, yup, I got this. I can continue talking. I can keep learning about myself and my place in the world. I can express my doubts and fears, in a supportive environment, and know that I’m not dirty. I am not filthy. I was abused. I was a victim. And none of it was my fault—nor did it change the purity of my soul or the depth and beauty of my heart. If you can keep working those tendons and ligaments and joints? You will be okay, no matter how many times you feel as you do tonight.”

Z took another deep breath. “You know, I try to say those words in my head. When I get like this, when I doubt . . . what I am inside.”

“Good.” She patted his arm and dropped her hand. “Someday, you’ll believe them.”

He considered his chaotic, nasty thoughts. “How do you know that for sure?”

She leaned in and kept eye contact with him. “Because, my friend, they’re true.”





At ten a.m., Elle stepped out of the kitchen and into her father’s garage. Hitting the go button on the right side’s door, she blinked as the thing opened slowly, brilliant sunshine streaming in and illuminating her father’s car, the lawn mower, the row of trash rollers. The post-blizzard glare was so bright she had to shield her eyes with her arm, but things adjusted quick enough.

Not surprisingly, she totally bypassed the BMW.

On the far wall, there was a whole bunch of sports equipment, most of which was her father’s: Bats, gloves, balls, the volleyball net that was rolled up around itself, in-line skates, hockey bags. As she went over to the sprawl, the square-toed, hard-soled shoes she’d put on made sharp slapping noises. She’d had to put on three pairs of socks to get them to fit, but like she cared?

The cross-country skis were in an organized lineup at the end of the steel shelves, each pair mated together with bands at the top and the bottom, the poles more loosey-goosey and at a tilt.

She picked the Rossignols because the shoes had the same brand on them and the others said Head.

Getting the stuff out into the yard was a two-tripper, the thin, lightweight skis impossible to control along with the poles, assuming she didn’t want to scrape the side of her dad’s car—and she’d already been through enough with that sedan, thank you very much.

When everything was in the front yard, she entered the code on the exterior pad and closed things up. Taking a look left and right, she saw . . . a fuck ton of untouched snow. Nothing on the street had been plowed yet, not the road, not the sidewalks, not the driveways, although there were a couple of men just getting out their snowblowers and starting to work on their properties.

Like a dad-bell had gotten rung and it was a race.

Overhead, the sky was an impossible blue, so resonant and clear that she couldn’t reconcile it with the storm that had raged through the night. But maybe that was the point. The blizzard had wiped the slate clean, cleared it all.

Would that it had worked its magic in her own life.

Clipping the toes of the shoes into the bindings, she palmed the poles and started off. It was slow going at first, her balance bad, no rhythm to anything. She had only cross-country’d like twice before, but she was on the varsity track team, so at least aerobic capacity wasn’t part of her problem.