From a distance, they looked like a couple of kids playing keep-away.

Until one lunge landed Glory face-first in the snow.

“Oh! Are you okay?” asked East, rushing to Glory to help her up, because he felt terrible that he had just made her face-plant.

Glory flipped onto her back, sat up, and demanded, “East, give that back to me.”

“No!”

“It’s mine!”

“But it’s broken! It’s no good like this!”

“But it’s my heart,” pleaded Glory.

“Yeah. It is.” East held Glory’s heart above his head, out of her reach, and declared, “And right now, I have it.”

East looked up at the brown paper bag and said, “And I can fix it.”

And then he looked at Glory and said, “I’m a repairman. I repair things. It’s what I do.”

Glory took in what East had said. And wondered what his being a repairman had to do with anything.

And then realized it had everything to do with everything.

And she contemplated what East was proposing.

And what it implied.

And then she scowled and scoffed, because there was no way East could possibly do what he had just said he could do, whether he was a repairman or not.

But … then she couldn’t help but wonder … what if he could do what he just said he could do?

What would happen?

East took off his coat and spread it out on the snow, lining up, in front of him. And then knelt down and placed the brown paper bag on it. He rubbed his hands to warm them. And then cupped them over his mouth and exhaled to warm them some more. And then took hold of the bag. The paper around the opening was so worn, it felt more like cloth than paper.

And then he checked in with Glory as he started to open it.

And paused. Because she didn’t seem to want him to open it.

But she didn’t seem to want him to not open it.

So East opened it.

And as he did, Glory inhaled sharply as if she was afraid that opening the bag was going to hurt her or something. And she held her breath.

And then stopped holding it.

Because she realized that the bag was open—and she was okay.

And she felt that strange lightness fill up her insides again. It felt like it was permanently replacing the darkness and heaviness that had been inside her since Wes had left her for someone else.

It also felt like it was making room for something else.

Something she thought she would never feel again in her life.

Something like what she had felt when she first met Wes. But—different.

East started to take the nineteen pieces of slate out of the bag. And he laid them on his coat.

Glory watched him do this.

And then she looked up—partly because she couldn’t watch what East was about to do, partly because she couldn’t believe he was about to do what he had said he was about to do, partly because no one wants to see their heart laid bare, but mostly because she was looking for answers to questions she didn’t even know how to ask.