We went to high school together. Once exchanged letters when she moved north.
She’d been living alone since her husband passed.
I heard once that her son tried to sell her house without asking.
She took him to court and kept her cabin.
Colleen saw me right away.
“Mary Beth.”
I nodded.
She held up a bag of apple pastries.
“These still taste the same. And honestly, we don’t need anything new at our age, do we?”
We each bought a portion and walked back to the cabin.
I made hot cocoa.
She sat on the wooden steps, hands resting on her knees like someone who used to garden everyday.
I poured the cocoa into two brown ceramic mugs.
My hands trembled a little from the steam.
Colleen took hers without a word.
We sat on opposite sides of the steps, backs against the doorway, facing the forest dusted in snow.
No one mentioned children.
No talk of letters unscent or calls that never came.
No one asked why the other had ended up in a winter cabin this far out.
Maybe at a certain age being there is enough to understand.
Explanations only make the ache sharper.
Colleen looked out toward the lake now covered in a thin sheet of ice.
The evening light sliced across it like a quiet blade of orange.
“I kept the cabin,” she said, “but I couldn’t keep the silence.”
I turned toward her.
She wasn’t looking at me, just speaking into the wind.
“I mean, you can live alone, but the absence of footsteps, you still hear it.”
I knew what she meant.
There are nights when the heater kicks in, a harmless sound, but it echoes like someone whispering my name in a dream.
Not because it’s cold, but because it’s no one’s voice at all.
We didn’t speak for a while.
The forest rustled gently like distant waves from a far off sea.
I told Colleen about the cabin, that my husband built it himself.
Every stone in the foundation his choice.
We camped here the first some summer after our wedding.
Travis learned to climb trees in the little woods behind this place.
Once he fell and broke his arm, I screamed in the ER while they wrapped it.
I thought I’d never forgive the cabin for letting him get hurt, but I came back.
Every year, every winter.
Colleen laughed.
Kids never take care of the things they didn’t pay for.
I smiled.
Then we keep them.
Not to hold it against them, but to hold on to what’s left of ourselves.
I wasn’t sure if she understood what I meant, but I didn’t need her to.
That sentence was for me.
A quiet vow from someone who once forgot her own worth.
The sun dipped lower.
Colleen stood waved.
No promises to see each other again, but that wasn’t needed.