February came in pale, and the ice began to give up the lake.
It happened the way it had happened the year before — not as an event but as a patience releasing. The ice went from white to grey to a thing you could see through, the coves darkening first where the creek came in, then the long middle following, until the last week of the month the whole surface lay in lanes of black water and the shoreline stood open to the sky. At night the ice spoke as it went, the old groans, the long tuning of a thing letting go, and Aaron heard them through the open window and did not mind them. The lake was doing what the lake did. He had learned to let it.
The garden woke under its melt, the first dark earth showing through in patches along the south wall, and Aaron stood over the rose's bare branches one morning with his coffee and said nothing, the way you say nothing to a thing you are trusting.
"It's coming back," Sophie said from the door. "It always comes back."
