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Calorogu Shark Media. Hello and welcome to Romance Weekly. This
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is the January Man, Episode four, the first light. The
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temperature hovers at thirty one degrees all day, just above freezing,
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just warm enough to kill him. Callum flickers in and
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out like a bad signal. There one moment, transparent, the next.
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He tries to hide it, but I can see the
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effort it takes him to stay present. Every word costs
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him something. Every touch is a small miracle. He might
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not be able to repeat. You should rest, I tell him,
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conserve your energy. Rest where he almost laughs in the
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deep cold with the others watching myself fade. The forecast
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says it might drop tonight after midnight. Might. He says
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the word like it's a curse. I've never had to
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hope for cold before. It was always just there, the
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foundation of everything I am. We're sitting in my apartment waiting.
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There's nothing else to do. The lost souls of the
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polar vortex have been found or frozen. The crisis hotlines
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are handling the aftermath. The world doesn't need a winter
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Walker today, just a woman and a ghost watching the
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thermometer like it holds the secret to everything. Tell me
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about your brother. Callum says, I look up, startled. What THEO.
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You've mentioned him, but you've never really told me. He's
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more transparent now, the afternoon light passing through him like
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he's made of winter fog. If this is my last day,
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I want to know all of you, not just the
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parts you show the world. I don't talk about THEO,
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not really. I talk around him, the loss, the grief,
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the way it shaped my career. But I don't talk
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about him, the person he was, the whole he left.
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He was four years younger than me. I hear myself say, brilliant, funny.
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The kind of person who walked into a room and
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made everyone feel like they mattered. What happened, depression happened.
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The kind that hides, the kind that smiles and makes
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jokes and convinces everyone it's fine until suddenly it isn't.
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I stare at my hands. He was at a New
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Year's party, surrounded by people, and at two am he
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walked out the door in a T shirt and jeans,
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and nobody noticed. Nobody stopped him. Where did he go?
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A bridge over the James River back in Richmond. The
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words feel like glass in my throat. He didn't jump,
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he just stopped, sat down in the snow, and let
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the cold take him. They found him the next morning, frozen, solid,
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looking almost peaceful. Callum is quiet for a long moment.
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When he speaks, his voice is gentle. You blame yourself.
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I was in Chicago, building my career, too busy to
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fly home for New Years, too important to notice that
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his text had gotten shorter, his cause less frequent. I
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finally look at him, and there are tears on my
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face that I don't remember crying. He called me that
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night at one forty seven am. I didn't answer. I
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was asleep, and I thought. I thought i'd call him
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back in the morning. There was no morning for him.
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I wipe my face with the back of my hand.
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So I moved to Minneapolis, into the cold. Because if
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I couldn't save him, at least I could suffer the
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way he suffered. At least I could punish yourself. Yes,
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he reaches for me, and his hand passes through my
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arm on the first try. On the second he catches
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hold barely, the pressure faint as a memory. You've been
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frozen this whole time, he says, softly. Haven't you not
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just grieving, frozen like Delia, like James, like all the
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lost souls. January tries to swallow. I want to deny it,
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want to say I'm fine, I'm functional, I help people
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every day. The truth is sitting in my chest like
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an ice block, and I'm so tired of carrying it.
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I haven't been to his grave, I whisper, in five years.
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I haven't gone back to Richmond, haven't visited the bridge,
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haven't let myself I break off. I'm a grief counselor
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who's never grieved. How's that for? Irony? Callum's form stabilizes slightly,
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like my confession has given him something to hold onto.
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You know why you can see me, he says. Why
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you could always see me even before we met, Because
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I'm a witness, Because you're standing at the threshold yourself
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have been for five years, not dead, not alive, frozen
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in the moment you lost him. He cups my face
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with hands. I can barely feel. That's why you can
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perceive the deep cold you've been living in it all along.
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The words hit me like a physical blow. All this time,
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I thought I was helping the lost ones. I thought
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I was the guide, the rescuer, the one who pulled
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people back from the edge. But I've been one of them,
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lost in my own january, waiting for someone to show
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me the way home. I've been trying to guide you,
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Callum says, since the moment I saw you at that window,
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but I couldn't. You're not like the others. You're not
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someone I can just warm and release. He flickers badly,
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his form scattering like snow in wind, before reforming. You're
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the reason I'm still here vera not just because you
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anchor me, because you're the one soul I was always
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meant to guide, the one I've been waiting for. What
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does that mean? I don't know. He's fading now, the
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afternoon warmth eating away at him, but I know that
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I can't save you. You have to save yourself, You
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have to. He disappears. One moment, he's there holding my face,
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looking at me with those pale eyes, full of love
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and grief and desperate hope. The next he's gone, just
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empty air where a man used to be. Callum. I
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reach for the space he occupied, but there's nothing, no
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cold spot, no presence, nothing. The thermometer outside reads thirty
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three degrees and I'm alone. I spend four hours watching
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the temperature. It drops to thirty two at sunset, thirty
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one by eight pm, holds there like it's taunting me.
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Not cold enough, not quite. At nine pm, I stop watching.
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At nine point fifteen, I grab my coat and walk
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out the door. I don't know where I'm going until
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I'm already there. The bridge over the Mississippi, the one
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I pass every day on my way to work, the
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one I've never let myself reach look at. It's not
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the same bridge that one's in Richmond, one thousand, one
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hundred miles away, but it's close enough. It's January, it's cold,
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It's a bridge over frozen water, and I've been avoiding
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it for five years. I walk to the center and stop.
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The city glitters around me, lights reflected in the ice below.
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The wind cuts through my coat, my sweater, my skin
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minus two now, according to my phone, cold enough to
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kill if you stay too long, cold enough maybe to
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bring him back. But that's not why I'm here. I'm
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here because I've been running from this moment since the
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morning they told me THEO was gone. Running from the bridge,
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the cold, the grief that's been frozen inside me like
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a body in the snow. I'm here because I'm finally
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ready to thaw. I'm sorry, I say to the empty air,
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to THEO, to myself. I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone.
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I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry I've spent five
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years being angry at you for leaving. Instead of my
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voice breaks. The grief surges up, and it's not the
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controlled professional grief I help my clients with. It's the
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ugly kind, the broken kind, the kind that doubles you
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over and tears sounds out of you that don't seem human.
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I grip the railing and I scream. I scream for THEO,
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who deserved better than a frozen bridge and a sister
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who couldn't save him. I scream for my mother, who
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buried her son and then watched her daughter disappear into
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a grief she wouldn't name. I scream for myself for
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the five years I've wasted being frozen, for the life
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I've been too afraid to live because living felt like betrayal.
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And somewhere in the middle of the screaming, something breaks,
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not breaks, thaws the ice around my heart, the glacier
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in my chest, the permafrost that's kept me frozen in
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that moment at one forty seven a m. When I
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didn't answer the phone. It cracks and shifts and starts
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to melt, and the pain is unbearable, and I let
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it come anyway. I let it all come. I don't
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know how long I stand there, crying, grieving, finally feeling
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what I've refused to feel for five years, long enough
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that the cold seeps into my bones, long enough that
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my tears freeze on my cheeks, long enough that I
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start to wonder if this is how THEO felt the
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strange piece of surrender, the letting go. But I'm not surrendering.
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I'm not letting go. I'm walking through, and on the
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other side, in the space where the grief used to be,
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there's something else, not emptiness, not peace exactly, but room
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space for something other than frozen pain, space for living.
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I look up from the railing and THEO is there.
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Not really, I know it's not really him. It's a memory,
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maybe a threshold vision like the one's Callum described, or
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maybe it's just my mind finally letting me see what
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I needed to see. He looks the way he looked
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the last time I saw him alive, Thanksgiving, two years
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before he died, smiling, laughing at something my mother said,
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alive in a way that had nothing to do with breathing.
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It wasn't your fault, he says, or I say, or
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the cold says. It doesn't matter. The words are true
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regardless of who speaks them. I miss you, I whisper.
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I know, but you don't have to miss yourself anymore.
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He smiles, and it's so much like him that my
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heart cracks all over again. Live Vera. That's all I
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ever wanted for you. He fades or I let him go,
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and when I turn around, Callum is standing at the
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end of the bridge. He's solid, more solid than I've
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ever seen him, even during the polar vortex. He's looking
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at me with an expression I can't read, wonder, maybe,
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or fear or hope, so intense it looks like pain.
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How he breathes. I stop being lost. I walk toward him.
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My leg's unsteady, my heart roar and bleeding, and somehow
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still beating. I finally walked through. But the temperature, it's
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only minus two. I don't think it's about the temperature anymore.
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I reach him, reach for him. My hand connects with
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his chest, solid and real and present. I think it's
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about me. He stares at my hand, then at my face.
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What did you do? I grieved. Tears are still streaming
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down my face, but I'm smiling now, really grieved. Not
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the frozen kind, not the kind I've been carrying like
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a stone, the kind that moves through you and changes
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you and leaves room for something else. And that. He
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shakes his head, not understanding that shouldn't affect me. I'm
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bound to the cold, not to you. You're bound to both.
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I step closer, close enough to feel the chill that
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radiates off him, the winter that lives in his bones.
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You said I was the one soul you were always
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meant to guide, that you've been waiting for me. Maybe
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this is why, maybe you couldn't fade, because your job
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wasn't finished. My job was to guide the lost, and
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I was lost, the most lost of anyone, frozen solid
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for five years, standing at the threshold, unable to move
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in either direction. I take his face in my hands,
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and he's cold, so cold, but real. Present. Here You
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found me, Callum, You guided me home, And now now
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what I don't know how to explain what I feel.
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It's like the grief broke something open, and in the breaking,
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something else got free. Not just me, him too, the
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binding between us, the anchor I became when I chose
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to stay. It's different, now, stronger, more real. Now you're
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not a walker anymore, I say, slowly, the understanding coming
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as I speak. You completed your task. The last lost
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soul has been guided home, and that means the deal
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is finished. His voice is barely audible. The bargain. I
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made one hundred eighty years of service, and it's done.
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He stares at me. The wind howls around us, January
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in all its fury, but he doesn't flicker, doesn't fade,
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doesn't disappear. I can still feel the cold, he says,
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almost to himself, still sense the between spaces. But the chain,
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the thing that bound me to the winter. He presses
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his hand to his chest. It's gone. What does that mean?
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Are you? I'm not a winter walker any more? He laughs, disbelieving,
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and the sound is so human it makes my heart ache.
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I'm just I'm just a man, a man who's been
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dead for one hundred eighty years, somehow, standing on a
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bridge in Minneapolis with a woman who sees ghosts. That's
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not nothing. No. He pulls me into his arms, and
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he's solid, fully solid, the way he was in the
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deep cold of the polar vortex. That's everything. We stand
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there on the bridge, holding each other while January rages
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around us. I don't know what happens next. I don't
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know if he'll age now, if he has days or
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years or decades. I don't know what it means to
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love someone who's been dead since eighteen forty seven, who
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watched his daughter grow old, who walked the winters for
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nearly two centuries. But I know he's here. I know
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I'm here, and I know that, for the first time
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in five years, I'm not frozen any more. We should
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get inside. I finally say, it's cold. He laughs again.
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I hadn't noticed. I take his hand, warm now or warming,
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the winter seeping out of him with every passing moment,
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and lead him off the bridge. The city spreads out
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before us, lights glittering against the january dark. What do
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we do now, he asks, I don't know. I look
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at him, this impossible, ancient, newly human man who guided
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me through the longest January of my life. But I