Snow Day

He wasn’t supposed to be there.

Elijah thought he timed it perfectly. The forecast called for the snow to start around 10:00 PM. He planned to leave by 11; before the roads closed, before he got too tired, before the house remembered what it felt like with him there. Nia turned and walked away before he finished the sentence.

He went downstairs to clean the man cave.

He didn’t have to rush, but he wanted to get it done. He wanted to show her that he was still a man of his word. Not that it mattered — none of it did anymore. Still, he gathered a few old magazines into a corner, next to a few trophies from a men’s league he hadn’t thought about in years. He unplugged cords from devices that were no longer there, wrapped them neatly, then paused with one in his hand, as if it held the key to his troubles.

The TV played old music videos on YouTube. The volume was low enough not to get engrossed, but loud enough to recognize the song. He kept moving until he saw the beginning of a video that at one point meant everything in the world to him.

He watched a waitress scamper into a diner, late for work.

He sat down.

“Why is this man drinking hot chocolate with catfish, greens, and yams?”

The video seemed to stay on while the two were trying to decide whether they liked each other.

“I know he blew up the bathroom every Wednesday if he was eating lunch like that.”

“Why does she say water like that?”

They had the same conversation night after night, alternating who asked the questions and who made the jokes, until one night they found themselves holding hands at an Alicia Keys concert.

They had their first kiss that night.

Outside, the snow fell faster, the cars disappeared, and Elijah was sleeping. His coat folded into a pillow of a promise deferred.

Upstairs, Nia tossed and turned.

She checked her phone; there were no notifications that either door had opened. He was still in the basement. She fought with the urge to check. Some things only worked if you pretended they weren’t happening.

They’d shared that house on Bennett Street for eleven years; it was old, but it was theirs, and it had a porch, which was her only requirement. They updated the house over the years, finishing the basement, replacing the siding, and re-roofing. They made it home.

The storm exceeded expectations.

At first light, it looked like a cloud had landed in their neighborhood. There were no tire tracks. Footprints. Just blinding white, like the world had been erased and was waiting to be redrawn.

Nia stirred first, like always. She pulled her robe on and walked down to the kitchen, where she started coffee. She turned, and Elijah was standing in the doorway, shirtless, in yesterday’s jeans. She pulled her robe closed, remembering she wasn’t wearing a bra.

Neither of them spoke.

She loved snow days. When she was a kid, it meant no school, all the snacks you could eat, snowball fights, and naps. At 43, they meant canceled meetings, reclaimed time, all the snacks you could eat, and naps. Snow didn’t care about your work calendar, plans, or who was supposed to leave before it came.

“Fell asleep and missed my window.”

Elijah rubbed his hand through his hair. There’s a bit less of it up there since he last stood in the kitchen,

She poured two cups of coffee. Placed one near where he stood, then backed up. Habit and memory. The silence sat between them.

“I quit.”

He hadn’t moved toward the coffee.

Her eyebrows were raised.

“Doctors said I needed to cut back.”

He didn’t go into detail. She didn’t need to know these things any longer.

The snow made the house feel smaller. The heat clicked on. A dog barked somewhere down the street, once, twice, then stopped.

It was small talk at first. What was closed? What would be open? If the streets were plowed. If she had enough food in the house, it was that bad. Conversations that belonged to people who were still in love.

Remember the apartment on Carver?”

Nia asked her cup.

“Those damn radiators.”

Elijah smiled despite himself.

“You used to say they were singing to God.”

Nia smiled at the memory.

“Did it snow the first night after we moved in?”

“Two days.”

“Yeah, that’s right. We were stuck in the house for three days, eating cereal and honey buns, watching the same movies over and over because the cable company couldn’t come get us hooked up.”

“You kept burning the popcorn.”

“There was a popcorn button on the microwave. Took me some time to realize it was set for much bigger bags.”

“We still ate it, though.”

They laughed. A real laugh. A laugh they hadn’t shared in almost two years.

Dangerous.

Snow days tend to return you to the default versions of yourself, without being prompted.

Back then, time seemed infinite. They’d walk through Holloway Park after snowstorms, gloved hands tucked into each other’s pockets, talking about what they would do when they had kids, when they had money, when they had the house that they wanted,

The money came. The house came. The children never did.

Arguments, too.

Arguments like a television drama with episode names like “Resentment”, “Too Busy”, “My Mother Told Me...”, and Nia’s favorite, “I Wasn’t Trying to Hurt You, But...”

“What happened?”

She was really asking herself, but she spoke loudly enough for Elijah to hear.

Elijah stared over her head out of the window into the backyard.

“I think we spent too much time trying to reach our dreams and forgot we needed to be kind to one another.”

It felt right, so she nodded.

There was no itemized receipt of their damage. They didn’t list the times one of them canceled a date night, the times her words cut him deeply, or the nights he sat silently, until it became his love language. They’d gone through it all before. Snowstorms didn’t require you to rehash things verbatim; it just brought them into proximity.

“Think...”

She started. Stopped.

“Do you think there’s anything left for us to salvage?”

Elijah didn’t answer.

He looked around the kitchen. She knew he did this when he wanted to avoid the truth. There was a photo of the two of them on the fridge, held up by a magnet that read “Cancun” from their tenth anniversary vacation. The affirmation calendar next to it still read January 21^st.

It felt like the past lived in that kitchen.

He wanted to back out of it and run out of the house.

“Hard to say. I can’t trust myself not to mess it up again.”

That hurt more than the lie he almost told.

They let the truth settle.

Outside, the snow clumped onto the porch railing.

For the first time in a long time, they seemed okay with the truth.

“I should shovel before it turns to ice.”

He disappeared back down into the basement and returned with his coat and boots in hand.

She watched him tie his boots tight, so snow wouldn’t get into them and soak his socks. He reached into the hall closet and pulled out a shovel. He paused at the door like he’d changed his mind.

He didn’t.

Nia watched him work from the living room window. He stopped every few minutes to wipe snow from his face. She laughed at the way it clung to his beard. He was out of breath but continued to shovel with intent. He cleared the driveway, the sidewalk, and a neighbor’s walkway, then stopped to admire his work.

She remembered when he used to shovel just good enough for them to leave in an emergency, then rush back inside, toes frozen, laughing, grateful for the warmth of her embrace.

When he finished, he leaned on the shovel for a few minutes, staring at something down the street that she couldn’t see. She went into the kitchen to make him a cup of hot chocolate.

Elijah stuck the shovel in the snow and walked away.

Nia told herself he was just making sure the sidewalk was clear. Told herself snow days made people see what was real. Told herself he would burst through the door and ask her for another chance, but after he got the feeling back in his toes.

The door never opened.

She watched the snow fill his footprints.

By the time the plow made its way down the street, she was staring at the “For Sale” sign that was delivered the day before. The sight of him in the kitchen that morning had given her hope that she wouldn’t need them, but that hope emptied out as she pulled her boots on to retrieve the shovel from outside.