The winter came like a sharp shock in the chest. He lived to see the winter, she did not. He couldn’t tell if the air had changed, or if the choir bells sang signaling a Christmas soon to come.

He worked persistently through the night, providing for the bills of a two-bedroom home he lived alone in. The queen bed he slept alone in. He couldn’t even acknowledge the symbolism there. She had sewn him a quilt, the Christmas before. He kept it locked in the closet he couldn’t return to. Perhaps it would have kept him warm, but his heart was too cold to care. Plans to build a family, dreams of a baby that almost was. He could remember the day, in the hospital, the day the baby he wished for flew skywards with one hundred colored balloons, once a child than an angel. An angel like Ellie. He could imagine the baby having her eyes, her hair, the details of her face she never paid mind to. Paradise Falls, the land of their dreams, the land that held the memories they never got. That book, Ellie made so long ago, the book they would have taken.

One day, Carl said, one day he would make it there.