Franz woke and the first thing was cold.
The master bedroom faced east but the mountains had disappeared behind cloud, and the light that found the curtains was ash-gray and thin. Snow at the window — not heavy, just the kind that doesn't stop. He lay on his back with the blanket not quite covering his left shoulder, the cold coming in from that edge.
Beside him, Arianne was asleep.
She was wearing his sweater. She'd sat up in the night and pulled it over her head — the blanket lifting, cold hitting the exposed skin of his shoulder — and he'd kept his eyes shut. Let her take it. He lay with that cold the rest of the night and didn't move to fix it.
She lay on her side, back to him, facing the window. Breathing even and low. The space between them across the mattress was wide — they'd lain down on opposite edges the night before and stayed there, both awake in the dark, neither speaking. No acknowledgment. The careful kind of silence that takes effort.
