Cold Spell

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There were plenty of reasons to love winter.

Warm fireplaces. Stews. Christmastime. In her head she listed everything pleasant about the season, yet she still pulled a handmade quilt closer around her body, like a shield that could protect her.

It rarely snowed here—Atlanta usually settled for a motionless, quiet winter, with the sort of cold that crept into her bones and was hard to shake. Before Christmas the cold seemed a necessary price for the holiday, the presents, the celebration. Now in January, still months to go till spring, the weather was hateful. It felt like an enemy bearing down on her, something not to be trusted. Something she should fight.

There were plenty of reasons to love winter, but Dalia did not.

She shivered, let one hand slink out from under the quilt to the end table—it was beaten and dented, one leg steadied with the X volume of an otherwise-missing encyclopedia set. Her fingers fumbled to pick up a penny, which she held over the candle for a moment, till it got just hot enough to burn her fingers. She leaned toward the frostbit window and pressed the penny against it for a moment, then pulled it away. It left a perfect, watery circle, like a ship’s porthole. She peered out. Was he there?

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