The week after Sophie's letter went out, the cold held the lake the way it had been holding it since the new year — no new snow, the old snow staying, the ice steady under its own weight. Aaron shoveled the path to the woodshed and split wood and watched the smoke stand straight in the still air, and the days had the particular quiet of a season that had stopped asking anything of anyone.
Akosua's answer came on a Wednesday morning, not a letter in the post but a forwarding from Sarah — two pages in her careful English, and an audio file beside them. Aaron did not open it in the study. He carried the phone to the kitchen, where Sophie sat with the translation and an inch of coffee, and he set it down between them the way you set down a thing that has crossed a long way.
