Chapter 176

He had only one sheet of paper on him, and he knew which one it was before he put his hand inside his coat.

I watched him know it. The lantern stood on the lower millstone between us, the light warm in its horn window, and in that light I saw him hesitate on the doorstep with his fingers on the fold. Then he took it out, and got up, and came as far as the lantern and no farther, and held it out to me on his open palm, as he held everything out to me now.

Brown paper, a little waxy, gone soft at the creases. A grease spot at one corner where a cake had once sat.

“You carry it,” I said.

“Since the night we signed it.” He did not look away. “Odette made me a fair copy for the dresser. This is the one with your hand on it.”

I took it. Snow was coming down through the hole in the roof in a slow grey curtain, as it had the first afternoon, and settling on the drift against the far wall that nobody had ever swept up, and the river was loud under the ice.