Sam stood across the small room from her husband, Paul. To her eyes he appeared unsettled, unhappy, lost in his thoughts. With nothing left to say, she watched him turn and walk out the door into the bright light of day.     

    Instantly the thought of Paul vanished. With it went the clenched tightening in her stomach. Still Sam considered how she thought more of him at certain moments. Especially now, as the wind wound around the leafless trees, and the sweet scent of cedar perfumed the house. She envisioned his broad shoulders, eclipsing everything else. His chestnut-brown hair, trim and spiked, always commanded her attention, as did those green eyes speckled with gold. Eyes she could make out in a blizzard. Even in the one nearly a week ago. But then she would pause, the wind outside would still, and she caught the worried look in her gaunt face, her graying hair and two tired blue eyes reflected back from the mirror. Hanging next to it, she noticed herself in the photo of the two of them together: her sparkling eyes, a fuller face, rosy complexion and shiny blonde hair.

    Outside the small room’s window, snow whitened everything, silenced everything but the wind. To Sam it existed as a constant reminder of the time of year and the place where she lived: the coldest days of January in the iciest part of Michigan’s north.

    On the stove, the tea kettle hissed (for some reason the kettle never whistled), drawing her to it. Her cup, the one Paul had bought her while away in Montana, the one with a painting of a howling wolf on a mountainous ledge, the one she almost dropped onto the hard kitchen floor, awaited the boiled water. A tea bag filled with chamomile, flowery fragrant, her favorite, sat ready in the cup. Pouring the sizzling water into the cup, the steam washed up and over her face and tingled her opening pores.

    Steam from the shower had misted through the open bathroom door on that morning many calendar pages ago. Shafts of sunlight had sliced through it as “My Best Pages” by The Byrds played softly on the CD player. Across the table from her, a freshly showered Paul sat; his hair still wet. Nestled between his two big hands was a teacup. “What makes you happy?” he said, and sipped his pekoe tea. “Real happy?”

    She gazed at him as if buying time to answer. The tattoo on his forearm was of her face. It was permanent, a bond nothing could break. At least she had believed that. Yet this moment belied her belief, tested her faith. From across the room, the click, click, click of the wall clock’s second hand dragged around its face. Neither a happy face, nor a sad face. More of a poker face. It was the same as her expression at the moment, although she churned unhappily under her skin. She wanted to show something. In her eyes. Across her lips. In her tone. Instead her tears fell like stones, when finally she said, “You staying here.” The steam drifted between them.

    He ran a hand across his prickly mane and said, “You know I can’t.”

    “I know,” she replied in a hushed voice.
    
     “Do you?”

    Not answering, she sipped some tea.

    She sat across from the empty chair; her tea still steaming up and enveloping her face in a warm garden-fresh aroma. Truth was she hadn’t known then. She didn’t know now. Time moved on. It always did, distancing her from experiences, from joy, from pain; but time had done little to have given her a reason as to what she should have said, what they could have done to keep him from going. She stared across the table to the chair where he had once sat. Its emptiness. Its quiet made her long for him more.

    Her thoughts shifted and her mind settled on her younger sister Trish, who still sought an answer.
    
    “Just for a few weeks,” she had said during her last visit a few days ago. “That’s all.”

    “I’ll think about it,” Sam had replied.

    “Please do.”

    As snow had fallen outside the window, she put her hand to her mouth and began biting her nails.

     Through the panes of glass she watched flakes of snow dancing through the air. The sight helped erase her sister’s conversation from her thoughts. A winter of snow, she mused. Days upon days filled with a garden of white, awaiting the arrival of spring. Before long, Crocuses would burst onto the land in their purplish glory. And with their appearance, things would change. At least she hoped for this as she sipped more tea. Its warmth spread throughout, thawing her from within. Thoughts of him sharpened. Her need to bite the nubs that were now her nails intensified. 

     Sam had looked up from her red manicured nails. Paul’s battered suitcase had rested at his booted feet. She had wanted to reach out to him, to grab him. With all her might, she wanted to stop him. But she stood as still as the air in the room. Say something, she thought. Anything. To finally confess what she planned to do to keep him close. But she remained wordless, watching as he grabbed the suitcase and then stepped to the door. Before it he stopped and faced her. In his eyes, she witnessed pain and frustration. Then as quickly as those emotions had appeared, they vanished, replaced by a knowing look that grabbed her, held her; it signified that nothing could change what was happening. Not a word. Not a deed. Not a thing. He turned, opened the door and walked out through it. She stood frozen, still unable to chase after him, still unable to stop him, still unable to do anything but watch the door close as she inhaled the cedar scent and listened to the howling wind.

     The wind raked the tree branches against the side of Sam’s house. To her, it sounded like her cat Mo scratching inside his litter box. It represented another moment of another winter since he left. Another winter spent without sharing a word, a smile, a tear with him; without any touch or embrace. And yet the clock kept ticking, kept circling the dial, wiping the present from its face with every movement; but not the past, never the past. She stared at the clock, and with a sigh of acknowledgement sipped the last of her tea. Placing the cup down, the howling wolf staring at her, she became aware of car tires crunching across the snowy ground. She stood slowly, an anxious air filling her lungs as she stepped to the window. Peering out, she watched the blue SUV stopping just beyond her front gate. Its engine hushed, the driver’s side door pushed open; and she watched as Trish stepped out and trekked up the shoveled path to the front door.

    Sam opened the door before Trish arrived. The frigid air rushed in advance of her sister, yet Sam felt little of it. Or so it seemed to her as Trish walked past her and into the house. Shutting the door behind her, Sam embraced her younger sibling.

     “Some tea would be nice.” She smiled. “Sure would stamp out the damn cold.” 

     Sam nodded and went to get her a cup.

     “You know what I was thinking about driving over?

    “What?”

    “How you taught me to roll snowballs big enough to make a snowman.” She removed her wool gloves, placed them on a small credenza against the wall.

    “Why recall that?”

    “From time to time I remember the things taught me when we were kids.” She removed her coat and draped it across the back of a dining chair. “Like swimming for one, down in Pine Pond. Riding a bike for another. Or tying my shoe laces.”

    Embarrassed, Sam blushed and said, “That seems so long ago.”

    “Just twelve or thirteen years.”

    “Still, what’s the point?”

    “I felt you raised me, that’s the point,” Trish said in a hurt tone. 

    “Mom and Dad did their share too.”

    “They always appeared to have a lot more on their minds than raising me.”   

    Through the kitchen doorway Sam turned and looked at her sister, nearing 23 years old, pretty as a pin-up; so Swedish, like their late mother, with her creamy skin, her cornsilk blue eyes and her blonde locks that were never out of a bottle. “At that time, they probably did,” Sam said. Her voice masked the pain at the thought of her mother’s early death not long after those days. 

    “I get it now, but then I didn’t.” 

    “Anyway, I still don’t see how it’s relevant to today.”

    “It is,” Trish said, “ because now I feel like I am raising you.”

    For a few moments, silence held the room; until Sam mustered up her voice and said, “Is that how you see it?

    “What do you think?”

    In the kitchen, Sam’s face flushed. Her jaw stiffened. She closed her eyes and listened to the clock tick. She let out a long breath and then said, “How’s everyone?”

    Trish peered into the bedroom through its open door and spied the clothes piled on the floor, the soiled plates near them, and the unmade bed. “Jim’s good,” she said. “Kids are all right.” Her sister’s approaching footsteps filled her ears and she faced her, seeing the cup of tea in the extended hand.

    “It’s a mess,” Sam acknowledged. Her cheeks grew red and hot.

    “Not again.” She stared at her. “Why?”

    Sam turned from her sister’s stare.
    
     “I thought after you were released, this was behind you.”

    Sighing wearily, Sam cast her eyes at the floor. Painful images flashed before her: a sterile white wall, two stoic eyes of her psychiatrist and three small crimson scars slashed across her right inner wrist. She blinked a few times to make them vanish. 

    “Have you thought any more about staying with us?” Trish asked; her tone steady yet pleading. “You could spend time with the kids. They’d love it. I’m sure you would too.”

    Sam fought to not scream and in a forced level voice replied, “I’m still deciding.”

    “How much longer do you need?”

    “As long as it takes.”

    Each grew quiet. Sam drifted away and followed the whistling wind. Her eyes shifted to the window. The whiteness outside illuminated the panes of glass.

    The sun had shone bright that spring afternoon. A day that had been bereft of any breeze. Fragmented light beamed through trees and danced across the grassy knoll. Blue Jays perched on branches above and whistled a cheerful tune. Yet Sam focused little on these sights or sounds. She was aware that Trish and her family sat on her right, aware of the voice, a man’s, orating. His words flowed from his mouth. Each carried its own power. Each exploded on the ears of Sam, who sat still; her fingers worried the folds of the flag resting on her lap. The spoken words ended. A moment of silence followed, broken by the pop, pop, pop of the rifles fired by the soldiers on the knoll. Sam heard each shot but never looked at the men in uniform. Behind her dark glasses, she shut her eyes and tightened her fingers around the folded flag. Sam fingered the cloth napkin on the table. “I still see him leaving,” she said. “His boots. His bag.” She stared at the napkin. “I still hear the door shut.”

    Trish absorbed the words. “He didn’t walk out on you.”

    “But he did.” A few tears washed over Sam’s eyelids and dripped down her cheeks.

    Trish stood and stepped behind her sister, placing her hands on her sister’s shoulders. Bending, she rested a cheek on Sam’s hair; an act each had done for the other for as long as either could remember.

    “Sam, you know the truth,” Trish said in a soft, comforting voice.  

    Sam felt an ache winding around her like a noose. She struggled against it, fought it as hard as she could. But in the end, she stopped, exhausted by it, giving in to it and the darkness attached to the pain, the hole within her.

    Later as darkness fell, after Trish had driven home, Sam sat on the couch in the small den. Outside the wind howled like a wolf on a cliff. Although she couldn’t see through the window out into the blackness, she knew it was snowing still. Wrapped in a wool blanket, she saw Paul standing in the archway that led to the kitchen. She wanted to stand, go to him and embrace him. She wanted to, but instead she sat and gazed at him in his uniform. From his buzz cut head to his boots, he was her man. He would always be her man no matter what others said or did. Yet she uttered the words that she had to say. “You’ve got to leave.”

    “I know,” he said in a voice that was thin and uncertain. He appeared uneasy, as if he wanted to say more, something, anything, but he stayed silent and then he looked again at her.

    A weak smile crossed her lips. A distant memory filled her mind. In it she saw a shovel throwing dirt on wood. A scratching sound that pulled her back to the present as outdoors tree branches at the mercy of the wind clawed at the house. Pulling the blanket tighter around her, she felt the words force their way up from the darkness within. They found her voice and struggled up her throat and through her lips. “Please go. Now.”

    With rueful eyes, he whispered, “You sure?”
    
    She peered at him without a word.
    
     After a few moments, he leaned over, grabbed his bag and left as he had done before. He never looked back.

    With the wind’s fury in her ears, she sighed. She knew in her heart that this time he had left for good. Her eyes darted around the room; searching, seeking, and then she tugged the blanket hard around her.