SNOWMAN

Seely let herself in stealthily with the key she had kept, glanced around, then set the electric blanket she’d borrowed on the raunchy old pelt on his bed. As she stood before it, she envisioned his sleepy Pan face, swathed in bedclothes. And suddenly there it was again—sprouting and blooming out of the obdurate ground of her hurt and anger—her love for him.

A bunch of shirts on hangers were sticking out of his open closet door as she passed down the hall. She fingered the sleeves. This, at least, was one touch he couldn’t recoil from. Abruptly, she felt like grabbing them all—this heap of starched laundry—to have and hold the last of him who didn’t want to be held.

She thought of a day Zeke and she had showered together. She hadn’t had a shower cap, so she chose a black hardhat from his fanciful hat collection. The water drummed on it like rain on a roof, while Zeke lathered her up from the bottle of amaretto soap he kept in a pocket in his shower curtain—and lathered himself up too, face and all, till he looked like a snowman; patting her cheeks with foam, he promised it wouldn’t sting her eyes.

As she reached for the doorknob, a sense of loss pierced her through like a rapier—and she buckled against the door.