The house really was wonderful, she was sure of that. After a long nap yesterday, she had spent a full hour sitting in the living room admiring the sunset through the generous glass on the western side. David started a fire that kept the house warm through the night. They would have to get used to checking it in the early mornings, but it had its own kind of rustic charm.

Jessie had claimed the bedroom next to theirs, a small but bright little room with a pretty view of the woods and hilltops out the back. And their bedroom took her breath away. The very first night, David held her, soft and naked, one hand idly stroking the side of her breast while they watched the stars through the skylight. The rooms were still sparsely decorated, cluttered with the boxes and the organized mess of the move, but they felt comfortable and the newness of everything settled down upon her like mist from a fountain on a hot summer day. The drive up was already fading to an old memory, lost among the stuffing of twenty-eight years.

Now the sky was a brilliant blue, the rare depth of color peculiar to the heavens on a clear, cold winter’s day. The sun beamed down brightly, but without any warmth, a token gesture. The snow sparkled, so white it was hard to look at without squinting.

A few miles from their house, she came to a fork in the road and took the left turn, following the river. Occasionally, she passed what could be a driveway or logging road running off to her left into the woods, but there were never any tracks, and it was tough to tell with the deep snow.

She passed a trailer that spewed a long, lazy spiral of gray smoke from its chimney into the sky. After that was a farmhouse, then two more. She guessed she had hit the outskirts of town (whatever town it was), and a minute later she came over the crest of the hill and the village spread out below her, nestled in a shallow river valley.

On the right along the riverbank was a small general store and gas pumps, and beyond that rose the steeple of an old, white church. Just across from the church was a post office flying American and Canadian flags. Scattered about were houses of various sizes and shapes. On her right as she went by she noticed a small, hand-painted sign in both French and English: WELCOME TO ST. BOUDIN, EST. 1876. And underneath that, in English, in smaller letters and handwritten: “Like it or leave it.”