Beside the mattress, he sat with his back against the wall. I resettled on my pillow and gazed toward the ceiling. For a time, we remained like that, absorbing the silence, the darkness. Breathing.

Oddly, nothing about it felt strange. Only…content.

Then a cry rang out and I flinched. A baby’s wail. It grew from the apartment below, where the child and its mother had come to visit family. A brief stay, I prayed. For at the strained cries, again a vision flew back of an infant in the stairwell, propped up by its mother suffocating below.

Tears flooded my eyes. Desperate to block out the memories, to not feel alone, I reached across the mattress but caught myself. I started to pull back when Arie’s gloved hand covered mine.

Once more, he made me feel safe.

Before long, the rhythm of my breathing matched the tempo of his. Slow and soothing, loosening my muscles from head to toe. Then my blinks lengthened and eyelids drooped. And somehow, as if by magic, it was instantly morning. The sun was breaking through the clouds and reflecting off the snow.

Arie had vanished, just as before, but not from my life.

Not yet.

***

There were more nights to come when he would save me from the throes of a nightmare. Not hurrying away, he’d distract me by spinning fantastical tales. He’d whisper about brave knights and dragons or pirates pillaging on the high seas. In time, we’d trade stories of our lives and families. Like most immigrants, his parents’ ancestral ties were essentially severed when they boarded the boat, ditto for mine. But what brought us to Eden Springs differed.

Skilled in machinery, his father had been recruited by an acquaintance to move from central Michigan to oversee the maintenance of mining equipment. Mr. Jansen’s negative stance on unions made him especially appealing to management. Yet after working alongside the miners and encountering the conditions firsthand, he sympathized with their cause and supported the strike fully.

“Don’t tell anyone though,” Arie inserted. “About why they picked him, okay?” It was a reasonable request. He didn’t want his father viewed as a planted informer, which very likely had been the company’s intent.

All that mattered to me was where the man stood now.

“Not a soul,” I promised.

Arie nodded easily; the extent of our trust went without saying. Then we returned to competing in jacks, embracing the extra challenge of quietly bouncing the ball. Even though, really, it would take more than that to wake Papa.