“Don’t say that. It’s a cellular call, for God’s sake.” Pause. “Can you make it?”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight. I’m here tonight.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Just can you make it.”
“Yes, but-”
“Good.” Click.
“-the ice.” But the ice. Would he try to cross before she arrived? No. Not having the key to Brenda’s, he would wait in the warmth of his car. But what if he didn’t? Francie didn’t know Ned’s cell phone number; the rules made it unnecessary. She tried information-unlisted.
Francie exited at Mass. Ave., crossed the Charles, drove north. But what if he didn’t wait in the warmth of his car? Was she willing to let him die to follow the spy-craft rules? No. She called information, asked for Ned Demarco in Dedham-she didn’t know the street-found the home number, too, was unlisted. She stepped on the gas. Some time passed before she realized Ned wasn’t in danger: she’d locked Brenda’s wrought-iron gate and he had no key to that either, couldn’t drive down to the river. But she stepped on the gas anyway.
Francie drove north into winter. The roads were bare but lined with snowbanks that rose higher and higher as she crossed into New Hampshire, the tree branches sagging lower and lower, weighted down with white. Had there ever been this much snow so soon? Behind her the long tail of headlights, like a wake of yellow phosphorus, slowly dwindled down to one lone pair. Not long before she turned onto the last and most minor of the roads that led to Brenda’s, it, too, disappeared.
Is something wrong?
Just can you make it.
Francie came to Brenda’s gate-and found it wide open. Had she left it unlocked last night in her distress? What other explanation was there? She looked once more in her rearview mirror, saw nothing but bright moonlight shining on a black-and-white wilderness: deep, crisp, even, but ahead of its time. She drove through.
Ned’s car, an all-wheel sedan, had cut two well-defined tracks in the snow. Francie followed them down to the jetty, found the car. But Ned wasn’t in it, and the inside of the windshield was already frosting over with the freezing breath he had left behind. In the moonlight-the dazzling moonlight of a full moon in a clear sky over clean snow-she saw footprints leading across the white river. She followed them.
Reasoning that where he had gone, she was safe to go, that the river had had one more day to freeze, that she had to see him, Francie walked across the river and didn’t think once of the night before. She reached the other side, still in Ned’s footprints, their inch-deep walls black-shaded in the moonlight, took the path under the elms to the dark cottage-at least she hadn’t left it open, too-and climbed the stairs to the porch.
Ned stepped out of the shadows. She jumped. “What the hell were you thinking?” he said.
Francie put her hand to her breast. “The call?”
“Yes, of course, the call.” He came closer, his face strange in the stark light: much older, its future lines blackened by the night. “How could you do something so-so flippant?”
“It was meant to be funny.”
“Funny?”
“And a private message as well.”
Ned’s voice rose, lost its beautiful timbre. “Message? What message?”
“Ned-I’m sorry.”
“Me, too, believe me, since I’m the one at risk. But what was this message that was so important? Tell me now. You have my full attention.”
He was even closer now, in her space, as if they hadn’t been lovers, and a droplet of his spit-tiny, insignificant, barely felt-landed on her cheek. Unintentional, he wasn’t even aware it had happened, but all at once Francie remembered the deal she’d made under the ice with the god she didn’t believe in, and she felt her whole body stiffening, and words came out of her mouth unedited, unconsidered, but from deep within: “Maybe we’d better call this off.”
“What did you say?” He stepped back, as though struck by a sudden gust.
Francie didn’t repeat it; she just watched his eyes, dark and still.
Ned spoke again, his voice nearer its usual range. “I didn’t mean to get into something unpleasant, Francie. I just wanted an explanation.”
She shook her head. “I’m starting to see what I should have seen already. This is too much for you, Ned-it’s making you unhappy.”
He stared at her. His eyes changed, grew damp, reflected the moonlight. “What are you saying?”
“You don’t need this.”
“You’re telling me my needs?”
“I think I know you, Ned.”
“Do you?” The dampness spilled over his lower eyelids, onto his face. She had never seen Ned cry, had never seen any man cry, except at funerals and in the movies. “You can be goddamn arrogant sometimes,” he said, his voice quiet and thick. “You think I don’t know what you’re really saying?”
“What am I really saying?”
“And now you’re going to toy with me, too. You’re really saying this is making you unhappy, you don’t need me.”
“Please, Ned. No psych one-oh-one.”
His face crumpled. “When did you stop loving me?” Ned pushed past her, hurried down the stairs, down the path toward the river. Somewhere behind the house a clump of snow fell from a tree and landed with a thump. Ned stumbled on snow-covered rock, kept going. Francie went after him.
He didn’t walk back across the river to the jetty but straight out into midstream, in the direction he’d come paddling from in his kayak the very first time. Francie caught up to him out in the middle of the river, in the middle of all that whiteness, as bright as day on some planet where the skies were always black.
She touched his shoulder. He stopped at once. “It’s dangerous,” she said. “Come back.”
He turned, stood before her, hands at his sides, moonlit tears streaming down his face. “When? Just tell me that. When did you stop?”
“Never,” Francie replied, and put her arms around him.
“Oh, Francie,” he said, taking a deep breath, letting it out slowly, a white cloud-the only one-rising in the night. He nuzzled against her, leaned on her-she felt his weight. “Do you know how rare this is?” he said. “Wouldn’t there be something wrong with two people who could just throw it away? We’d be… diminished.”
Francie held him tight. Ice cracked, but far away.
“You do love me?” he said.
“Yes.” He was right: she’d never felt this for any human being, knew she never would again. Now she was crying, too.
They walked back to the island. Francie unlocked the cottage. They went upstairs to the little bedroom, to the world under the down comforter. They lay still for a long time, holding each other. A long, healing time to get back to their places in the relationship; Francie, at least, couldn’t find her old place, but the new one was not far from it, and maybe better. The lying-still phase came to an end.
After, Francie said, “There will have to be some changes.”
“I know.”
“I have to be able to call you. Somewhere, sometime.”
“All right. I’ll figure something out.”
“And there’s someone I have to tell. I won’t say it’s you, if you don’t want, but I have to tell.”
“Who?”
“My best friend. She already knows, anyway.”
Ned’s body tensed beside her. “How does she know?”
“Nora knows me. She hasn’t said anything, but she knows.”
“Nora?”
“You’d like her.”
Pause. When it came, his response was a surprise. “Maybe I’ll meet her someday. After… after Em’s grown
