Page 93 of Thin Ice

"About what?"

"Christmas morning. When I said I had something ordered that hadn't come yet." He pulled his hand out of his pocket. Something small. He held it in his palm and opened his fingers.

A glass heron. Blue-gray, hand-painted, the neck in a long S-curve. Small enough to fit in his hand. I recognized it. The tree…

"This has been on our tree every year since I can remember," Liam said. "My dad gave it to my mom. When he left, she got rid of everything. Every photo, every shirt he left behind, every piece of him in the house. But she kept this. She hung it on the tree every December and took it down every January and put it in a box in the closet, and that was it. The one thing she couldn't throw away."

He turned it in his fingers. The glass caught the gray light.

"It was her favorite thing in the house. Not because of him. Because it was beautiful. Because it reminded her of a time when things were good and she was happy, and the house was full." He looked at me. "She doesn't need it anymore."

My throat was closing.

"I've been waiting for the right time."

He held it out.

"This is me telling you that you're home. You're home with me. Wherever that is."

I took it from his palm. The glass was warm from being in his pocket. I turned it over.

Frederick. My mother's heron on the dock. The one she named when I was seven. He comes back because he wants to. And if he doesn't come back, he was never ours.

"Liam."

I closed my hand around it. Held it against my chest.

"Thank you," I said and leaned into him.

Chapter 25: Liam

Noah had found a second bottle of wine somewhere, and nobody was asking questions.

The table was too small for six people. Remy had pulled a stool from the kitchen counter and was sitting three inches higher than everyone else, which he seemed to enjoy. Ethan was on a camping chair he'd dragged in from the deck. The rest of us were on the mismatched dining chairs that came with the cabin, and the table was covered in pasta and bread and a salad Priya had made with whatever was left in the fridge, and the wine was cheap and warm and nobody cared.

"This is not how you open a bottle," Noah said, wrestling with the corkscrew.

"You're turning it the wrong way," Priya said.

"There's no wrong way to turn a corkscrew."

"There is literally a wrong way. You're doing it."

Remy reached over from his stool, took the bottle, opened it in two seconds, and handed it back. Didn't say a word. Noah stared at him.

"How."

"I bartended in high school."

"You bartended in high school?"

"My uncle's restaurant. Cash. Weekends." He poured himself a glass and sat back. "Next question."

The cabin was warm and loud and smelled of garlic and the cheap candles Ethan had found under the bathroom sink.

Snow against the windows. The fire going in the living room, throwing light through the doorway. Music from Ethan's phone on the counter, something Remy had picked, jazz with a beat underneath it, and Ethan had complained for ten minutes and then stopped complaining because it was actually good.

I was a little drunk. Not sloppy. Just warm. The edges of everything softened, and the room felt smaller, and the people in it felt closer.