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The thaw came badly, as midwinter thaws often did. Snow softened during the day and hardened after dark into ridges sharp enough to punish careless feet. Roofs dripped. Roads became grey at the edges. Everyone complained that a proper cold would at least be honest. Riri liked winter, but she agreed with the complaint. The weather made every route look temporary.
School had settled into the long middle of the year. The excitement of September was gone and spring remained too distant to use as motivation. Hockey dominated Riri's evenings. Tessa occupied more of the rest. Their relationship had moved past the stage where every touch required an internal conference. They were still young enough to become shy for absurd reasons, but there was comfort now. Tessa came to the Callaghan house without ceremony. Evelyn kept the same rules she kept for any visitor and did not perform modernity about having her daughter's girlfriend at the table. Riri could spend an hour arguing with Tessa about music, kiss her goodbye at the door, and then help Brendan fix a loose hinge as if all these things belonged naturally to one life.
Sister Mary-Agnes belonged to that life differently. By 1991 Riri no longer experienced every encounter as an emergency of the heart. The attachment remained deep, sometimes painfully so, but it had settled into a form that did not require constant crisis. She loved Mary-Agnes. She also understood the love's limits. That understanding had not made her cold. It had made the feeling easier to carry.
Their paths crossed most often through school athletics and the occasional run arranged openly with Evelyn. On one Saturday during the thaw, the roads were too slick for a sensible long route, so Mary-Agnes proposed a shorter loop on cleared paths near the school grounds. Riri arrived to find her inspecting the surface with visible suspicion. Patches of old ice shone beneath meltwater. Mary-Agnes said they would walk the worst sections. Riri agreed before being told twice. This earned her a look.
"You are becoming cautious," Mary-Agnes said. Riri replied that she preferred the word intelligent. They began. The first mile was awkward, more attention paid to footing than pace. Riri found herself automatically taking the outside edge near the road where slush had been pushed into ridges, leaving Mary-Agnes the cleaner line nearer the snowbank. She did not think of it as protective until Mary-Agnes told her to stop herding. Riri protested that she was not herding. Mary-Agnes changed sides deliberately. Riri lasted thirty seconds before pointing out a patch of black ice ahead.
Mary-Agnes stopped and looked at her. The expression contained amusement and warning in equal measure. Riri sighed and said she understood. Mary-Agnes was capable of watching the ground herself. The moment captured one of Riri's newer problems. As she grew physically stronger and more confident, care came to her through action. She carried things, steadied people, took the outside edge, walked smaller girls to cars after late practices. Most of the time this was useful. Sometimes usefulness became assumption. Mary-Agnes had spent years teaching her that strength created obligations without granting ownership. Riri was now learning that protection offered where nobody wanted it could become another way of making decisions for someone else.
They ran in companionable silence until the surface improved. Riri had become faster than Mary-Agnes over shorter distances and was beginning to approach her on endurance. The change was obvious but rarely discussed. Mary-Agnes did not pretend not to see it, and Riri had mostly stopped needing to demonstrate it. She adjusted her stride without thinking when they ran together. The point was no longer to prove she could go ahead.
Halfway around the loop, they saw Tessa approaching from the opposite direction with her younger brother. Tessa lifted a mittened hand. Riri's face changed before she could control it. Mary-Agnes saw the change and looked forward with the tact of someone who had once protected Riri from being watched too closely and still knew how.
Tessa stopped long enough to complain about the sidewalks. Her brother stood beside her kicking at frozen slush. She asked whether Riri would come by later. Riri said yes. They did not kiss in front of Mary-Agnes, though not because Mary-Agnes would have objected. The old hierarchy still made Riri self-conscious. Tessa squeezed her glove briefly instead and continued on.
For another minute Mary-Agnes said nothing. Then she remarked that Tessa seemed happy. Riri said she was. Mary-Agnes asked whether Riri was. Riri answered yes. That was the entire conversation. No blessing was pronounced. Mary-Agnes did not ask for details. Yet Riri felt the question settle somewhere deep. Years earlier she had wanted Mary-Agnes to care so much that ordinary interest felt insufficient. Now the simple inquiry was enough because Riri no longer needed it to conceal another promise.
They continued. A little later Mary-Agnes asked about a hockey tournament and the practical conversation returned. Riri explained a defensive problem the team had been having. Mary-Agnes listened despite understanding only enough hockey to ask broad questions. Riri enjoyed explaining without turning the sport into a performance of expertise. She had learned, partly from Mary-Agnes, that teaching someone required respecting what they did not know without enjoying the advantage too much.
At school the following week, a younger girl came to Riri after lunch with a damaged skate bag. One strap had torn away from the seam. Riri took it to the maintenance room, borrowed a heavy needle and repaired it well enough to last until the family could replace the bag. The girl stood nearby watching every stitch. Riri told her to hold the strap straight. When they finished, the child looked at the repair with exaggerated relief and said Riri could fix everything.
Riri almost laughed. Instead she said no, only some things. Mary-Agnes happened to pass the open doorway then. She heard the answer and continued walking. Riri felt the strange sensation of having reproduced one of the older woman's lessons without consciously deciding to. Capability did not need mythology. A repaired strap was a repaired strap.
This happened more often now. Mary-Agnes's influence appeared in Riri's habits rather than quotations. She asked younger players questions before offering solutions. She tried not to humiliate people when correcting them. When a teammate complained that an Indigenous girl on another team was "too sensitive" about a comment from the stands, Riri asked what had actually been said before accepting the label. The question came out in her own voice. She knew where she had learned the instinct.
Riri's adoration therefore became less about proximity and more about recognition. She could see traces of Mary-Agnes in the way she approached problems, but she did not imagine this made Mary-Agnes her author. Evelyn had shaped her. Brendan had shaped her. Coaches, teammates, friends, girls she desired, girls she protected and girls who corrected her had all contributed. Mary-Agnes mattered enormously without owning the result.
One afternoon in February, Riri found Mary-Agnes sitting alone in an empty classroom rubbing one knee. The sight stopped her because Mary-Agnes rarely displayed discomfort. Riri knocked lightly on the open door rather than entering. Mary-Agnes looked up and told her she had twisted it slightly on a patch of ice, nothing serious. Riri immediately asked whether she had seen a doctor. Mary-Agnes said no. Riri asked whether she had run on it. Mary-Agnes's silence answered.
Riri folded her arms. Mary-Agnes said the expression was unnecessary. Riri replied that running on a hurt knee after years of instructing other people to respect injury was interesting. Mary-Agnes said "interesting" was doing aggressive work in that sentence.
Riri did not smile. She asked whether the knee was swollen. Mary-Agnes said only slightly. Riri told her Evelyn would say to get it checked if the pain persisted. Mary-Agnes agreed. The exchange would have been impossible several years earlier. Riri had once regarded Mary-Agnes's physical competence as part of the woman's near-mythic self-command. Now she could see stubbornness where stubbornness existed. Loving someone, she had learned, did not require flattering every decision into wisdom.
Mary-Agnes looked at her crossed arms and asked whether Riri intended to stand there until she promised never to be foolish again. Riri said that would take too long. Mary-Agnes laughed. The laugh still affected her. Riri had not outgrown that. Warmth moved through her chest with almost the same force it had when she was younger, but now it arrived without the old frantic need to possess the moment. She could simply enjoy having made Mary-Agnes laugh.
A few days later Tessa asked why Riri kept smiling whenever she mentioned the injured knee. Riri explained the conversation. Tessa listened and said Riri sounded like somebody's wife. Riri told her never to say that again. Tessa laughed until she nearly dropped her drink.
There was no jealousy in it. Tessa understood the shape of the attachment because Riri no longer treated it as shameful. Riri could admit that Mary-Agnes was beautiful to her, that she had once built impossible futures around the feeling, and that some part of her would probably always become more alert when the woman entered a room. Tessa did not need those facts erased in order to trust what existed between them.
That trust taught Riri something Mary-Agnes could not have taught from inside the original imbalance. Reciprocity had its own discipline. Being loved back did not mean being obeyed. Tessa could tell Riri no. She could want space. She could disagree about what counted as help. She could also reach for Riri first. The equality Mary-Agnes had described the previous spring was no abstraction anymore. Riri was beginning to live inside it.
When Mary-Agnes's knee improved, they resumed running cautiously. Riri did not lecture. She asked once how it felt and accepted the answer. On the first day back, Mary-Agnes set a deliberately modest pace. Riri recognized what that cost her pride and respected her for paying it.
The thaw ended. Proper cold returned, smoothing nothing but at least making surfaces predictable again. School continued through its ordinary frustrations. Riri sat tests, argued with teachers, went to practice, kissed Tessa, helped younger players, fought with Brendan about leaving wet gear where it should not be left, and saw Mary-Agnes often enough that seeing her did not require occasion.
One morning they passed each other near the office. Mary-Agnes had a stack of papers under one arm and a mug in the other hand. Riri had a hockey bag pulling at one shoulder and half a piece of toast in her mouth because she had left home late. Mary-Agnes looked at the toast, then at the bag, then at Riri with unmistakable disapproval of the breakfast arrangement.
Riri swallowed and said, "I ate more at home." Mary-Agnes said, "Good." They kept walking in opposite directions. Riri smiled to herself. The moment was nothing special. That was precisely why she loved it. Later that month the school held an assembly about winter safety after two students slipped badly on untreated steps. Riri sat with Tessa near the back while staff repeated the usual warnings about footwear, visibility and not taking shortcuts across frozen ground. Mary-Agnes spoke only briefly, practical as ever, and Riri caught herself listening with the same concentration she had years earlier when every sentence from the woman seemed to deserve preservation. The difference was that she no longer mistook attention for obligation. When the assembly ended, Tessa complained about losing forty minutes of study time, Riri pointed out that Tessa had spent most of those forty minutes drawing on the edge of her notebook, and they joined the crowd moving toward class. Mary-Agnes disappeared in another direction with the staff. Riri did not turn to watch her go. The love remained fully present without requiring proof every time distance opened between them. That, more than any declaration could have done, told Riri how much the feeling had grown with her rather than trapping her inside its earliest shape.