I thought about my husband. This was not unusual—I thought about him often, in the evenings especially, when the day’s work was done and there was nothing to occupy the mind except whatever the mind chose to do with its own time. I thought about the evenings we had spent together in the apartment, the particular quality of those evenings, the specific texture of that life. I thought about how long it had taken me to understand that a life with texture is not to be taken for granted, and how long it had taken me to understand that understanding this would not bring it back.
Outside, the storm pressed against the walls.
It was past midnight when I heard it. Different from the usual sounds—lower, closer, more deliberate than wind. I thought at first it was the wind finding a new shape, a new gap to move through. But it continued, and it was too regular for wind, too purposeful.
I walked to the front window. The storm had stopped for a moment—not ended but paused, the way storms sometimes do, as if drawing breath. In that pause, in the blue-grey dark of a night with thick clouds and no moon, I saw them.
Four wolves, standing just outside the door.
I say standing because that is the accurate word. They were not pacing or circling or exhibiting any of the restless, predatory behavior I would have expected. They stood still, their bodies angled toward the light coming through the window, frost thick on their fur. They looked—there is no other word for it—exhausted. One was leaning slightly against another, as if too tired to maintain its full weight alone. Their breath made small clouds in the cold air.
They were looking at the light.
I stood at the window for a long time. I thought about the door, which was solid old wood with a heavy iron latch but with gaps in the frame that let in cold in the winter. I thought about the stove and the warmth in the room behind me. I thought about the wolves’ fur, rimed with ice, and the temperature outside, which had dropped far below freezing.
I thought about my mother, who had kept the forest-side curtains drawn, and what she might have done in this situation.
I thought she probably would not have opened the door.
