The cold held the lake in its fist through the first weeks of the year. No new snow fell — the old snow stayed, drifts hardening along the shore, the ice creeping out from the reeds in sheets of white that held the sky's grey light and gave none back. The house sat above it, smoke standing straight in the still air, and inside, the days kept the particular quiet of a season that keeps its own hours.
Sophie had claimed the kitchen table for the book.
She had been at it every morning since the story arrived — the translation spread before her, two texts side by side, the English in Akosua's careful hand and, beside it, the same sentences in a language Aaron could not read but had come to recognize the shape of. She read them against each other the way she read anything, slowly, as if the words had cost someone something. Because they had.
"It should be bilingual," she said one morning, without looking up. "The whole story. Her language on one page, the English facing it."
