Chapter 8
She didn’t think she could sleep, so she rode out to the sledding hill in Gogan. She just thought she’d sit there for a while,
watching the flecks of snow whirl and spin past, while the adrenaline subsided.
But some kid had left an inner tube leaning against the brick wall of the disused mill building. She spotted it in the passenger-side
mirror and watched snow collect in the lower curve. Finally, she got out.
The cold air stung her scarred lungs, was like a chest full of splinters. But it was a good hurt. Her life was full of good
hurt now: sore back, stiff joints, a bum knee. When it was particularly bad, she used a cane, had been leaning on that cane
when she walked Allie up the aisle to greet Tana, waiting with her son, under an arch of roses. Erin had married Allie the
first time and she married her the second, her eyes gem-bright with amusement, her voice full of barely suppressed laughter.
There had been a lot of laughter that night.
Gwen limped now to the inner tube, put her mittened hands on it. She looked up into the snow, flakes catching in her eyebrows,
kissing her cheeks: snow like falling ash.
“You want to go for a ride, old chum?” she asked. “One more time?”
“I wasn’t doing anything else tonight,” he said, the version of Arthur who went everywhere with her.
She carried the tube to the edge of the hill and looked down it, into a long dark. It would kill her leg, trudging back up with it. She placed herself gently in the center of the tube and reached over the side and pushed.
The darkness rushed up at her. She shut her eyes and let Arthur hold her.
Sure, it would hurt walking back up out of the darkness. Her life was full of good hurt, these days.