Epilogue
Jessie
Rob wasn't wrong about the light.
We stood at the edge of the lake in the cold that pressed against every exposed inch of skin, and the ice stretched out in every direction, and right at the center, where the last open water had finally closed over sometime in the night, the blue came through exactly as he'd said it would — deep and clear and otherworldly, like looking through the surface of something into what held it up.
I'd officially moved into the cabin in November.
My Vancouver sublease had run its course — Claire had needed the place back anyway, which made the decision easy; the supply run schedule had become something I planned around with the same logistical attention I'd once applied to field camp resupply.
Rob had cleared a second shelf for my books without being asked. I'd reorganized the workbench and he hadn't said a word, just watched me do it with the quiet, attentive look he had when he was filing something away.
The raven carving was finished. It sat on the windowsill.
"You were right," I said.
"I'm occasionally right about things." He stood behind me, one arm around my shoulders, chin tucked near my temple.
"About the light specifically." I looked out at the ice. "Everything else too, but the light especially."
He made a sound that wasn't quite agreement and wasn't quite modesty, something in between, the sound of a man who'd learned not to argue with facts.
Six weeks ago Alaric had mentioned, very casually, that a colleague of mine from an MSF posting twelve years ago had recently arrived in Havenwood, a trauma surgeon named Daniel Park, newly returned from the field, looking for exactly the kind of position the region needed and couldn't fill.
I'd put in a call. Alaric had put in a call. Daniel had arrived last week.
He was staying temporarily in one of the Crescent Row cabins.
Alaric had introduced him to a woman named Celia at the Havenwood council offices, in a move so transparent that even Rob had noticed.
"He's doing it again," Rob had said, watching from across the room.
"Of course he is," I'd agreed.
We'd let him. Alaric was rarely wrong.
The ice held the blue. The mountains held the sky. Somewhere behind us, a raven made its sharp, declarative sound into the winter air, and Rob's arm tightened around my shoulders, easy and certain, and I thought about all the places I'd stood in my life, and how none of them had felt like this.
Like the place I'd been traveling toward all along, and only needed a collapsing bridge and a very stubborn bear to finally reach.
The End
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