Ice Cold

37

DANIEL WAS STANDING ON THE TARMAC, WAITING TO GREET THEM when Sansone’s private jet taxied to the executive air terminal. The same high winds that had delayed their flight to Massachusetts were now lashing Daniel’s black coat and whipping his hair, yet he stoically endured the gale’s full force as the jet came to a stop and the stairway was lowered.

Maura was first off the plane.

She walked down the steps, straight into his waiting arms. Only weeks ago, they would have greeted each other with only a discreet peck on the cheek, a chaste hug. They would have waited until they were behind doors, the curtains drawn, before embracing. But today was her homecoming, her return from the dead, and he pulled her against him without hesitation.

Yet even as Daniel held her, joyfully murmuring her name, pressing kisses to her face, her hair, she was aware of her friends’ eyes watching them. Aware, too, of her own discomfort that what she had tried so long to conceal was now in the open.

It was not the biting wind, but her awareness of being watched that made her pull away from Daniel far too quickly. She glimpsed Sansone’s darkly unreadable face, and she saw Jane awkwardly turn to avoid meeting her gaze. I may be back from the dead, she thought, but has anything really changed? I am still the same woman, and Daniel is the same man.

He was the one who drove her home.

In the darkness of her bedroom, they undressed each other, as they had so many times before. He kissed her bruises, her healing scratches. Caressed all the hollows, all the places where her bones were now far too prominent. My poor darling, you’ve lost so much weight, he told her. How he’d missed her. Mourned her.

It was not yet morning when she awakened. She sat in bed and watched him sleep as the night lifted outside the window, and she committed to memory his face, the sound of his breathing, the touch and the scent of him. Whenever he spent the night with her, dawn always brought sadness because it meant his leaving. On this morning, she felt it once again, and the association was so powerful that she wondered if she’d ever again be able to watch a sunrise without a stab of despair. You are both my love and my unhappiness, she thought. And I am yours.

She rose from bed, went into the kitchen, and made coffee. Stood at the window sipping it as daylight brightened, revealing a lawn laced with frost. She thought of those cold, silent mornings in Kingdom Come, where she had finally faced the truth about her own life. I am trapped in my own snowbound valley. I am the only one who can rescue me.

She finished her coffee and went back into her bedroom. Settling down beside Daniel, she watched him open his eyes and smile at her.

“I love you, Daniel,” she said. “I will always love you. But it’s time for us to say goodbye.”