Free The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon Page A

tucked between them in fleecy pajamas telling them grand stories about his dreams:
“…  and then there was a man who had a magic hat and he could pull anything you asked for out of it—marshmallows, swimming pools, even Sparky, Mama!”
She’d ruffled his hair, thought it sweet that he could bring their dead dog back in his dreams.
    The acidic coffee hit her empty belly with a snarl and a toothybite. She tapped her ring against the mug. Gary had given it to her two weeks before he died. She turned it around her finger, noticing the indentation it was leaving, as if it were slowly working its way into her skin, becoming a part of her.
    She should eat something. She’d skipped a proper dinner last night, settling in at her worktable with a jar of olives and a glass of Shiraz. Since Gary’s death, she’d pretty much been living on canned soup and crackers. The idea of actually going to the trouble of cooking a proper meal for just herself seemed silly, not worth the effort. If she craved something more elaborate, she could go out. Besides, she’d discovered some pretty fancy canned soups: lobster bisque, butternut squash, roasted red pepper and tomato.
    But she hadn’t been shopping yet, and the soup-and-cracker cupboard was empty; she’d have to go to the market today. She’d unpacked a few dry goods yesterday—oatmeal, baking soda, flour—but the pots and pans were in boxes. She’d been in the apartment for two days now, and other than setting up her artwork area in the living room and making the bed, she had done little to settle in.
    The truth was, she liked the sparse look of bare countertops and shelves; the empty white walls felt like a clean slate. She was even hesitant to hang her clothes in the closet, preferring the vagabond feel of living out of suitcases. What did one really need to live? The thought excited her a little—an experiment in pared-down living.
    Katherine looked around at the piles of cardboard boxes, neatly marked KITCHEN with contents written below: mixing bowls, steak knives, ice-cream maker, bread machine. But who on earth really needed an ice-cream maker or a bread machine? These, she decided, along with a great many other things in the boxes, would need to go.
    Out in the living room were more boxes: CDs, movies, books, photo albums. The things that made up a life. But now, in their boxes, they seemed strangely unreal. A remnant from another woman’s life. The Katherine who had been married to Gary and once had a son; who had wedding china and photo albums and an electric knife sharpener. Now all these objects felt like toys, like she was a child in a playhouse trying to imagine what it was that grown-ups did.
    A ustin had died two years and four months ago—leukemia. He was six years old. And it had only been a little over two months since Gary’s death. Sometimes it felt like two days, sometimes twenty years. Her decision to move from Boston to West Hall, Vermont (population 3,163), had seemed absurd—concerning, even—to her family and friends. She claimed she needed a fresh start. After all, she’d just been awarded a Peckham grant: thirty thousand dollars to cover living expenses and art supplies, enabling her to work on her art full-time, to finish the assemblage-box series she’d been working on for the past year. For the first time in her life, she’d be an artist and only an artist—not a wife or a mother or the manager of a gallery. She gave notice on their Boston loft, resigned from her job at the gallery, and moved to a small apartment on the third floor of an old Victorian house on West Hall’s Main Street.
    She didn’t tell anyone the truth.
    Almost a month after Gary’s accident, she’d received his final American Express bill. The last charge on it, dated October 30, the day he died, was a $31.39 meal at Lou Lou’s Café in West Hall, Vermont. For some reason, he’d driven the three hours to Vermont, had a meal, then turned around and headed back to