SATURDAY, JANUARY 30
I am wakened by a hand on my shoulder, shaking. Gently. A whisper. Warm breath on my ear. I hadn’t slept well, too aware of the wind seeping through the chinks in the walls, of the plummeting cold, and the snow that was falling, not like a blanket, but like a burial shroud.
“Come look,” Ephraim says, and I feel him reach for my hand.
He pulls me to my feet. Steps close as I wobble, his hands roving over my thin shift. Through my hair. Down my back. Across my bottom. A laugh, and then he leans over and pulls a blanket off the bed. Wraps it around my shoulders as I stand unsteadily beside the bed, still wondering why he’s woken me.
Ephraim leads me through the dim house, our fingers intertwined. He’s lit the candles and built the fire, but it can’t yet be five in the morning and the household is still asleep, everyone in their beds, except for Barnabas who snores on a pallet by the fire. Or perhaps he only pretends to sleep. As I blink away the cobwebs in my eyes, I see his head shift toward us as we walk by, but his eyes remain closed.
A light sleeper, then, I think. A cautious man.
The chessboard lies beside him on the floor, unchanged from last night.
When we reach the door, Ephraim nudges me to the side, then pulls it open. Before me stands a wall of white nearly to the lintel. Only six inches of pale, pewter clouds can be seen above the snowdrift. I’ve seen drifts pile up to three, maybe four feet. But only once before have I seen anything like this.
“It’s still coming down,” he says. “Not as heavy as earlier. But it doesn’t show any signs of stopping.”
I reach out a hand, palm flat, and press it into the snowbank. It is soft, but frigid, and my hand sinks in, leaving a print. I am awake now, aware of what my husband has been trying to say these last minutes.
“It’s like it was in Oxford,” I tell him.
He nods. Smiles. “So you remember, then?” “Like that is a thing I will ever forget.”
Ephraim Ballard takes my hand and leads me back to bed.
Thirty-Five Years Ago
