Work Text:
With a frown puckering his lips, Gilbert leans forward in an effort to catch her eye. “C’mon, Carrots,” he says in that ever-soft cloying tone of his. “Look at me, won’t you?”
“I really, morally, cannot,” Anne says, gaze locked lifelessly upon the horizon, ultra-green against the crushed grey of cloud cover. “Gilbert, my dear heart, if I were to look upon your face on a day like today, I would be accomplice to the greatest waste of potential since Diana decided the published works of Debussy make a better musical fixation than the experimental piece I suggested channeling the great and variegated tones of a broom skipping over a tiled kitchen floor.”
To that, Gilbert says nothing, but knuckles a tear off the height of her cheek, skin wind-chapped and dry. Anne resolves to fetch him some sort of salve, something with honey, something thick that he can let soak in while sitting by the fire tonight, flicking through one of the daring adventure-romance novels he likes so very much. Winter break from Queen’s is in many ways a gift, but Anne finds the most enjoyment in watching Gilbert sit amongst the draped strands of evergreen and tinsel along the mantle, candlelight flushing his cheeks, eyes darting across the pages of the stories he hasn’t the spare space of mind to read while at school.
In other ways, winter break is not a gift, not at all; today, the weather is so very silver, so very still and cold, that it brings to mind the inside of a coffin. Anne ventured outside to convince herself otherwise, to find a great and stunning example of life in all this slate and unburden her sunken heart, and found nothing, an expanse of nothing, no snow or frost even, but rather a lint-pocket sky and grass that makes no sound when stepped upon, no life at all.
Except for Gilbert. Merry in his red and black coat, hat perched crooked on his head, Magen David swinging around his neck. A jaunt of a boy.
“It’s so perfectly mournful, is all,” Anne says. She sniffles, then wipes her nose on her sleeve. The wool makes her sneeze.
“Bless you,” says Gilbert politely.
“Thank you,” she says. He is looking at her with a very specific sort of attention, so she speaks. “Do you ever see something that makes you feel, explicably and entirely, morbidly sad?”
He tucks a loose curl behind her ear. “I suppose,” he says. “Yes. Sometimes Bash still says Mary’s name like he expects her to be there and to answer. Then he realizes his mistake and looks into the air like it’s offended him.”
“That is heart-breaking,” she says, “hugely and atomically upsetting. That being said, it’s not at all what I meant.”
“Explain it to me?” he says.
“I was thinking of a barren landscape, which brings to mind other barrennesses,” she says. She kicks her legs straight out in front of her. A damp chill soaks through her socks. “A spotless dog. Untoasted bread.” Her lip quivers. “A snowless December.”
“It’s only the end of November yet.”
“The end, yes, the end.”
“It will snow, Anne,” he says. “Is that why you came out here? To request it from the sky?”
“No,” she says. “No. If nature has chosen today to project a mood so crystallizingly dreary, so be it; I, too, will be dreary in turn. That is why I came outside into this tundra of tenacity alone.”
“Ah.” There is a smile in the syllable. “So when you said looking at me would be a waste…”
“I meant you’d ruin my perfectly glum countenance.” She sighs, letting her eyes fall shut. “If I could, I would distill this mood and keep it in a bottle, Gil. It would be shelf-stable, it’s so entire in its longevity, in its marrow-deep trueness. I could take a sip every time I might need it, like cough syrup.”
“And why, might I ask, would you need this mood again?” he says, dropping his chin on her shoulder. The brim of his hat pokes into her temple. “You are so vivacious, Anne. It irks me to see you so still.”
“Perhaps my next story will be one of all-encompassing sorrow,” she says, dropping a hand mindlessly onto his spine-curve. The tips of her fingers drag along the pilled wool of his coat. “I do feel I write best about sorrow when I’m sorrowful, the same as I write joy best when I’m joyful.”
“I like it very much when you’re joyful,” he says.
She huffs, turning to glare at him.
“What?” he says, eyes widening a fraction.
“You’re a menace,” she says. She squints at him, then shoots to her feet. “Unbelievable. I’ll never publish another piece authentically derived from personal emotional turmoil, Gilbert Blythe, and it’s your fault. You’ve ruined me for sadness.” He gives a shout of laughter and lays back in the grass, cheeks pinking. “I can no longer mope in peace. I can’t even have a good cry without you following me around and—and—”
“And?” he says.
“Sullying my sorrow with your big old cow eyes,” she says, kicking his knee ever so gently. His head is craned to meet her gaze, lips spread in a goofy sort of grin, and he squints into the pale light. His knees are all akimbo against the grass, ever awkward in build but graceful in practice. “Come on. Up. You are an unbelievable inconvenience to me.”
“Come where?” he says, but he’s already following her down the worn dirt path.
“I have a fleeting fancy to string cranberries,” she says. “But that means nothing; by the time we’re back at Green Gables, I might’ve decided to dry apples instead.”
“Both are fine by me,” he says.
“Argh!” she says. “Damn you, Gilbert Blythe, and damn your inadvertent loveliness, too.”
Gilbert tucks her ears under the fold of her hat. “You’ll catch your death out here, you skinny thing,” is all he says.
The fact of the matter is that Anne Shirley-Cuthbert is to Gilbert Blythe as the pulse is to the wrist: without her, he is certifiably lifeless. These three years that she has been in Charlottetown and him in Toronto have not changed that; if anything, they’ve made him all the more certain.
He ponders this as he scales the trellis towards her bedroom window, frost biting at the dips between his fingers. Gilbert thinks fine of himself, he supposes, and he is beyond pleased to have his little family, Bash and Dellie and Hazel, but Anne—perhaps she is not his pulse, but a finger dropped onto the spot it patters, the gentle force without which the beat cannot be felt.
He knocks on the window with a delicate knuckle—three taps slow, two fast. The curtains are thrown back so quickly that Gilbert cannot help the shock of pleasure he feels; she was waiting for him.
Through the glass, a single candlestick casts an orange flicker on her cheek. A grin spreads her lips wide, generous and entire in the way everything Anne gives tends to be. Hi, she mouths.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” he says, just loud enough to be heard. “Let me in before I break my neck.”
She slides the glass aside, careful to keep it from creaking and waking Marilla. Her hand clamps around his forearm to steady him as he clambers over the sill, then drags him into a merry kiss of greeting. He meets it gladly. In her pajamas, with her hair in nighttime braids, he has a familiar desire to hold onto her. Simply to have her close.
“Good night, Gilbert Blythe,” she says, breathless, still smiling. “Whatever could you intend, crawling into the window of an innocent like me, and at this most peculiar hour?”
“My intentions are nothing but pure,” he says, flopping onto Anne’s bed. It gives an almighty wheeze under his weight, and a second when she drops beside him, elbow curled under her ear. “You know me. This head is full of purity. Prayer and—and sunflowers, all day and night.” She is knuckling his cheek, his jaw, toggling his earlobe between two fingers. “Maybe not so pure,” he amends, scooting closer. He tugs her over, rolls her on top of him, and shoves his face into her neck. “In my dedication to full disclosure. I must admit. I’d quite like to kiss you.”
She fulfills his desire presently, practicedly, and with enthusiasm. It’s a journey that takes them unto Anne’s pillow, under Gilbert’s many layered sweaters, and then beneath the tent of Anne’s worn sheets, where they share breath and snicker into each other’s mouths like they’re children and new to this particular manner of sharing.
“You, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert,” Gilbert says, “are a dream.”
“Except different,” Anne says, “and better.” Her fingers push his fringe off his forehead. He allows his eyes to close, bliss steadying the movement of his atoms, slowing it, balancing it. “Do you want to know why?”
“Mm.”
“I’ll still be here when you wake up,” she says, and Gilbert grins. It’s the best promise she could give.
“Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green,” Anne sings under her breath as she stabs the wooden spoon through a chilled hunk of butter, punctuating the downbeat with a jab of effort, “here we come a-wand’ring so fair to be seen!”
“Morning, little bird,” Matthew says, looking at his feet as he hobbles through the door.
“Good morning, dear Matthew,” she says, an absentminded grin flitting to her mouth. “I’m making biscuits.”
“Did you check the liniment bottle?” he says after a beat.
She dips her fingers into the measuring cup of water and flicks the drops at him. “That was uncalled for.” She is granted a glimpse of his secret smile as he turns away, tucked under the corner of his scarf for safe-keeping. “Stay warm!”
He grunts his assent, the sound half-lost to the whistle and whine of the front door swinging shut. The short moment it hung wide was enough for a wave of furious, brisk winter air to huff its way inside. Still snowless, this Christmas, despite being more than chilled enough to invite it.
“Love and joy come to you,” she sings, then stabs the dough with the spoon, “and to you your wassail too, and God bless you and send you—snow, please,” she looks up to the water-stained planks of the ceiling, ready to beg. “Please, oh gracious Lord, send snow to Avonlea this winter. I will be a perfect saint in exchange. I will learn to snuff my more incendiary temperaments and will keep my derisions to myself. I will be patient for it.” She scrunches her eyes shut. “But let it come before the end of Hanukkah, at least! If you’re merciful and you love me and you want me to be really and truly happy!”
“Anne!”
“Sorry!” Anne says. She stabs the dough with the spoon, young and cowed in a way she will perhaps forever be. “Sorry, Marilla. Sorry, God.” Whispered, peeking up at the ceiling through one eye, “Please please please!”
“Ah,” Gilbert says.
“Ah,” she echoes, eyes enormous in her round face.
“Pull,” Gilbert says.
“Pull,” she says.
“Ah-pull,” he says.
“Ah-pull,” she says.
“Apple.”
“Ah-pluh.”
Gilbert grins, then bounces her on his knees. Dellie grabs onto his trousers with two tiny fists, inexplicably strong and sticky. “You’ll get it eventually,” Gilbert says.
“Ah-pluh sauce!” she says. She is dressed, today, in an array of Minnie May’s pristine hand-me-downs and clothing sewn by Marilla and Hazel; in deep green and snowy white and a pink hair band and a new pair of yellow socks crocheted by Bash, she is a paint box. He twists another two sections of her hair around his finger and lets the resultant curl join the rest. The kitchen is thick and sweet with the scent of stewing apples to go with the dinner latkes, then on their porridge for the rest of the week.
“My daughter is very smart,” Bash says, drying his hands on the fronts of his pants as he comes from the bathroom. “If she says it’s ah-pluh, I believe her.”
“Your dad gives you too much credit,” Gilbert says.
“I’m very smart,” Dellie says. Sometimes Gilbert cannot believe how old she is, especially when he comes home from school and finds her doubled in size, tripled in vocabulary. She walks and runs. She reads a little, and she can write her name. She will not touch sprouts, but she devours stew fish the way Bash makes it, with lots of pepper and green seasoning.
“You’re very smart,” Gilbert says, smiling helplessly. He bounces her on his knees again, then dips his hand into the pot of hair cream and starts with another twist. He likes being a part of this. He brings them his Hanukkah, and they bring him wash day. “Remind me what one plus three is.”
She counts on her chunky young fingers. “Four!” she crows, proud, shoving her hand under Gilbert’s nose to show off her very mathematical observation.
“Excellent,” he says. He pretends to bite her fingers; she squeals and hides her hands under her arms.
Bash slides two plates of porridge with apples onto the table. “Eat up, oh ye geniuses,” he says.
“Thanks,” Gilbert says, then slips the spoon between two of his cleaner fingers to offer a bite to Dellie, who accepts graciously.
“Mmm.”
“Good?” Gilbert asks. “Tell your dad.”
“Good, Daddy,” Dellie garbles around her sticky mouthful.
“Good, sweetheart,” Bash says. He leans over the table to kiss her on the head. While he’s there, he flicks Gilbert’s temple. “Gil is not so heavy-handed with his compliments, it seems.”
“I am very generous. I just haven’t had any yet. Dell?” Dellie clumsily scoops a spoonful for Gilbert and pops it into his mouth. The apples are hot, caramelized, cinnamon-spiced. The porridge is porridge. But those apples. “My applesauce is especially excellent this year,” Gilbert says, and laughs when Bash swats him over the head with a dish towel. “How do you—wait, stop, I have a joke, stop! How—how do you like them apples!”
“That’s the—?”
“Yes, that’s the joke! Stop hitting me, it was funny! Dellie, Dellie, h—help!” She clambers up Gilbert’s shoulders, hair half-finished but laugh thrilled like a waterfall when it trips, like wind stroking a field of wildflowers. He grabs her legs to keep her steady and stands from the table, scampers out of Bash’s range and past the windows with their sentinel candles lit, the garland on the staircase, Bash and Dellie’s stumpy Christmas tree, the pre-wrapped presents and the trunks of winter blankets and his father’s hanukkiah freshly shined and everything else, their home, their home, he’s home. Oh, how he loves it here.
“Will you skate?” Anne says before the door to the Barry residence has opened all the way.
Diana answers with a sneeze that just might be audible in Vancouver.
“Oh,” says Anne. A mild disappointment washes over her, tempered by her distaste for the true and entire frigidity of the world today; this is, she supposes, an excellent excuse to stay warm. She marches past Diana into her foyer, then kicks off her muddy shoes, drops her skates, and tosses her coat over the banister. Diana, in sleep clothes and layered sweaters, nose irritated pink and face peach-splotchy with fever, is ever a vision. Diana will always be beautiful to Anne, will always be Anne’s first and best love, but sickness is serious, so Anne rolls her sleeves and says, “Go on to bed, then. I’ll follow you there.”
Diana tightens a shawl over her shoulders. “I don’ mean to bother you. It’s just Mi’ddie Mbay is at school and Mbother and Father are visiting with Aundt Josephinde.”
“You have never been a bother to me, Diana Barry,” Anne says, and shoos her again. “I’ll put on some water for tea, go on.”
So Diana goes, and Anne patters through the lovely kitchen of the Barry house, trying not to become distracted by the great tins of cookies, the rich custard in the ice box, the exotic grains and dried spices in bottles like paint powders. She arranges a tray with bread and butter and the marmalade Diana so likes, with chamomile tea and two cups and plenty of sugar cubes, then she brings it upstairs to Diana.
“You’re sure it’s alright?” Diana sniffles, eyes wide and mouth downturned with misery. With her sheets pulled to her chin, she is a china doll. “I don’d wand to take up your Gilbert timbe.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Anne says. She sets the tray on the mattress so it bridges Diana’s lap, then perches beside her. “Gilbert’s busy cooking for tonight, he won’t miss me yet.”
“Tonighd?” Diana says. Then she smacks her forehead. “It’s Handukkah, isn’d it?”
“First night,” Anne says. She smoothes Diana’s duvet cover over her knees. “First night of Hanukkah. You’ve got your annual winter flu. And still no snow.”
“It’ll sndow, Anne,” Diana says dutifully.
“You are a peach, Diana,” Anne says. She brushes sweaty strands of Diana’s hair off her brow. “I’ll fetch you a towel, hm?”
“Ever the servandt,” Diana says. She chokes on a great gob of phlegm. “Oh, Jesus Mbary. Look away, please.” Anne does; Diana spits into a napkin. “Alrighd. You can look again.”
“It’s like you forget sometimes how we are bosom friends, really and truly,” Anne sniffs playfully. “A little snot won’t scare me away, Diana.”
“I suppose you ndever cared about class,” Diana says, holding a pinky on her snot-napkin hand aloft.
“Class is reserved for those with raven hair,” Anne says. As she turns to sift through the Barrys’s linen closet, she flips her skirt to flash Diana a glimpse of pale thigh; that’s what she thinks of class. Diana’s throaty laugh chimes at Anne’s retreating back, and Anne knows she will never mind caring for Diana. Not now, not never. And anyway, it’s like spending time with the brightest incarnation of her mind, or maybe something more splendid than even she could cook up herself, because Diana is straight off the pages of a storybook, she is unspeakably lovely and kind, and Anne would do just about anything to keep her that way. Too romantic or not, Anne loves Diana the way she loves a lung: intrinsically, irrefutably, with all the warmth and wet of her.
So Anne wets the towel, and mops Diana’s brow, and they sip their tea. Even when they are quiet together, even when Diana naps, Anne holds her hand, and tries not to act out in her head a death scene most tragical, and enjoys her how she is: imperfect, snotty, a snorer, forever Diana.
Anne is well near asleep by the time she stumbles into Gilbert and Bash’s kitchen, boots unlaced on her feet and arms held straight out awaiting Gilbert’s embrace. He catches her gladly, runs a hand over her crooked braids, and brushes his lips against her temple.
“Hi, Anne,” he says.
“Hi, Gil,” she says. “Can I melt here? Would you mind it so terribly?”
“On the contrary,” he says. “I wouldn’t mind it a bit.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she mumbles. Gilbert gives her a moment, then sits her on the bench in the entryway and crouches at her feet to remove her boots and extra socks, unbutton her coat and slip it off her shoulders, free her hands from her gloves and unwind the scarf from her throat. “Diana is ill,” she says. “She’ll be fine; it’s not so horrible. I just felt terrible at the thought of leaving her alone.”
“I’m awfully sorry to hear that,” Gilbert says, surprised Anne left the Barry home at all.
“Minnie May is there now,” Anne says, as if she hears it in his voice, squinting at him through one eye. “Diana will be alright. I don’t want to miss you, Gilbert.” She sits up, agitated. “I don’t want to miss you, is all.”
“Alright,” he says, and rubs his palms over her knees. Through her stockings, she’s cold to the touch. “Alright, Florence Nightingale. Don’t miss me, then. Will you come by the fire?”
“Mhm,” she says with relief. “Yes, please.”
So they go and they sit, blanket-wrapped, Anne heavy against Gilbert’s shoulder. He would read, but he doesn’t think he could; an armful of Anne is akin to a faceful of sun, or a stomachful of something that fizzes, it is like the cup of his hands trying to catch and hold the contents of six centeens, it is mirth and merry and, he thinks, something like a Herculean labor he’s spent several long years training for. He is the Olympiad oiled, and he is Gilbert with a toe poking through a hole in his sock. With Anne, he is both.
“Thanks for having me over,” Anne says, lifting her head to look at him.
Gilbert bobs forward, holds her head in place, and blows a raspberry on her cheek. “We were born to be the best of friends, Anne,” he says, smiling merrily into her. “I’m always happy to have you, honest.”
Snickering, Anne tucks her face into his neck, nose still cold. He collects her closer. He enjoys her, and the distant sounds of Bash and Dellie preparing for bed, and after he walks her home good and proper later, her prickly with exhaustion and sticking her cold hands deep into his pockets, he grins to the moon all the way home.
The Allans, Gillises, and Andrewses have nothing of use for Anne.
She runs, clinging to her hat as she tears along cobbled streets, ankles twisting with every clumsy footfall, Anne is forever a doe and Avonlea is her safe little wood.
“Anne Shirley-Cuthbert!”
Anne stumbles to a stop, the soles of her boots skidding along the ice. (Ice but no slush, no snow, and what’s up with that, really.) She balances by grabbing Rachel Linde, the shouter, by both shoulders. “Hi, Missus Linde,” she says breathlessly, ears burning. “I’m on a bit of a mission, as I’m sure you can tell.”
“And whatever for?” Rachel says, shrewd eyes narrowed.
“Superstitions,” Anne says. “I’m collecting them.”
Rachel squeezes Anne’s elbows, then adjusts her grip, linking their arms together so they may walk. “What sort of superstitions? You ought to have come to me first!”
“I ought to have, yes,” Anne says mildly. And had her head bitten off for blasphemy, sure, Rachel. “They’re for snow. I’m desperate for it, you see, and I’m ready to try just about anything to force the hand of Mother Nature.”
“Fate, dear, has it,” says Rachel, “that I suspect to know a thing or two about snow and making it come.”
Anne goes to bed with her pajamas on backwards and a spoon beneath her pillow and a prayer melting on her tongue, snow, snow, snow, please. Please.
“Got everything?” Bash asks, Dellie held snugly in his lap.
Gilbert holds out the shammash. Bash strikes a match and lights it. Gilbert cups a hand around the flame to keep it steady, winks at Dellie, then starts. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu,” he says, “Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.” Dellie, across the table, stares wide-eyed at the flickering candlelight. He wags his brows at her. She smothers a giggle in Bash’s sleeve. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu,” Gilbert continues, smiling too, “Melech haolam, she-asah nisim laavoteinu bayamim hahaeim baz’man hazeh.”
“Excellent,” Bash says. Light dances in his dark eyes; he is a fire-sprite. “And now?”
Gilbert lights the rightmost candle, then the one to its left. “Now’s the song.”
Bash grins wickedly. “My favorite part. Every year, my favorite part.”
Gilbert scoffs, far past being embarrassed before Bash, then mumbles and weaves his way through Haneirot Hallalu and Maoz Tzur. Bash watches, sharp-edged smile melting into something fond and bright.
“Now we let them go for a while,” Gilbert says, studying their good work.
“We’ll wait for Anne to eat,” Bash says. “You and I, anyway.”
So they scoop Dellie some applesauce and latkes, and she makes a merry mess down her front, all along the table, and Anne arrives like light, like light, spinning in her dress with her hair flying all around, dancing with Dellie standing on her feet. Bash waltzes Gilbert around the living room and it turns into some sort of jig, whirling and laughing so loud that it echoes.
“I haven’t had this since…” Gilbert says, collecting Anne to him, kissing her face all over while she sputters and snickers, “Anne, I haven’t had this since I was young. Family, family, so much family.”
“All yours,” Anne says. She throws her arms around his neck. Bash hoots, tickling Dellie, who shrieks with laughter. “Family, Gil. All of us.”
“Isn’t that something,” he breathes, elated.
“It’s splendorous,” says Anne. “Fantastic. Awesome. Astonishing, staggering, dazzling!”
“And full of love,” says Gilbert. “So full of love I can hardly take it.”
Anne kisses him loudly on the cheek. It’s all he could ask for in the world.
It seems Hanukkah is about to end before snow comes.
Cole has come to visit with Aunt Josephine for the holidays. He, Diana, and Anne have taken residence around the living room at Green Gables, soaking in the furious, pale light of early afternoon, biding time until they travel to Gilbert’s place this evening to light the final candle of the hanukkiah and say the blessings.
“I reckon Princess Cordelia is frolicking in a snow-coated garden now,” Anne says, and Cole laughs merrily, toying with a strand of her hair. He started braiding nearly half an hour ago and has yet to stop. “No, Cole, don’t dare laugh. I’m miserable, down to the bones of me. The first winter holiday of ours, and no snow has fallen. It’s a sad—no, dystopian reality we are living through. It is the worst of times.”
“Oh, Anne,” Cole says. He tugs too hard on a strand of her hair; Anne catches a curse behind her teeth and swats at Cole’s fingers. Artist’s hands, her ass. An artist, Cole may be, but he has the grace of a concussed troll. “Snow isn’t the be all, end all, of winter.”
“It is,” Anne says, upset, truly. There is a well within her and it is empty, or else it is filled with salt water, or something sadder. It is filled with melted slush. Snowless ice. It is not shadowy, not the way a well should be, because this blasted sun is shining into every mud-stained grout-lined corner of it. “It’s just that,” Anne says, “snow is like childhood, and snow is like a delicate sort of love, it is a reminder, it is a marker, it is a triumph in that it isn’t hail and isn’t rain,” gaining momentum, Anne’s eyes begin to sting, “it’s made like pearls when only the perfect conditions arise, it’s in every good memory and every good song, and if it doesn’t snow then we’re never going to remain bosom friends forever!”
“Oh, Anne!” Diana cries. “But we will! We will be bosom friends forever!”
“If winter cannot snow,” Anne says, flopping backwards on the couch so that her head lands in Cole’s lap, “then who knows what other un-miracles could come to pass.”
Cole knuckles a tear from her lashes. “Anne,” he says, not unkindly, “you’re being crazy.”
“I’m not crazy,” Anne says crossly.
“You’re not crazy,” Gilbert echoes from the armchair. Anne watches as his brow pleats, then straightens smoothly in realization. He stands. “We can make it snow, Anne.”
“But I tried already,” she says. “I did everything Rachel Linde said—and isn’t that the first and only time that’ll be a true statement.”
While Diana and Cole laugh, Gilbert continues to smile at her, an infuriatingly knowing look on his face.
“Anne,” he says. “Let’s make snow.”
She squints at him. “What do you mean?”
But by sundown, the dining room is decorated from bottom to top. Cole sacrifices paper, and Marilla scraps of old white fabric and lengths of twine. Every pair of scissors and shears in the house is enlisted. It takes effort, it takes artistic direction from Cole, but when pink and yellow light comes beaming through the windows, snowflakes of all sizes hang from threads of all lengths. The dining room is the winter wonderland of Anne’s dreams.
“Snow during Hanukkah,” Anne says, satisfied.
“Bosom friends forever,” Diana says, eyes gleaming.
“Forever,” Cole agrees.
Anne grapples for Gilbert’s hand. He knits their fingers together.
Forever, she agrees. All things forever, the way snow falls and sticks without discrimination. Snow is, in its own way, she thinks, a festival, a light.