1

Kristen Brock stood in the Falcon Law Group’s conference room beside the floor-to-ceiling windows. On the street below, the first snow in five years blanketed the Pearl District. In her hand, she held the obligatory piece of Black Forest cake from the Windsor Bakery. Rutger Falcon had even asked his paralegal to open a couple bottles of champagne, from which the firm was drinking with sober discretion.

“I’d like to take this moment to thank all of you for being an essential part of the Falcon Law Group,” Falcon began.

The senior partners continued their conversation in the corner of the room. At the far end of the conference table, the paralegals nodded in inverse proportion to how essential they actually were. The youngest, Willow—whom Kristen guessed they had hired either for her father’s political connections or for her amazingly buoyant breasts—beamed and bobbed her head up and down.

“I know we get busy during the year,” Falcon went on. “I don’t always take the time to appreciate each one of you the way I should, so I’d like to say it today.”

When he was done, Willow bounced up and down, her breasts levitating in front of her.

“Guess what time it is?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s eleven fifty-eight.” It was almost noon. “Let’s have a countdown!”

Donna Li sidled over to Kristen. “Stick a pin in her,” she said. “See if she pops.”

The girl pulled out her cell phone, waited a moment, and then counted. “Ten, nine, eight…Happy New Year!” She giggled. “Happy new afternoon.”

A moment later, Falcon joined Kristen and Donna by the window. “So, Ms. Brock. Are you celebrating the New Year with anything better than sheet cake?” he asked.

The Windsor cake probably cost upward of four hundred dollars.

“Strippers and cocaine,” Kristen said with a shrug that said I’m kidding, but I don’t care if you get it. She’d earned the right to joke with Rutger Falcon a year earlier, when she won the Mesterland case and netted the firm almost half a million dollars.

“You’re going to spend all night working on DataBlast, aren’t you?” Falcon clamped his hand on her shoulder the way he did with men in the firm.

“You got me,” Kristen said.

“Says the woman who’s going to make partner,” Falcon added.

Before Mesterland it was the girl who wants to make partner.

Kristen nodded. “It’s an important case.”

Falcon squeezed her shoulder and moved on to honor the next employee with half a minute of small talk.

“So what are you really doing?” Donna asked.

“Working on the DataBlast case.”

“How’s it going?”

“Still looking for the unicorn.”

“Someone who’s willing to talk?”

“And who knows what they’re talking about. They all know the company was up to something, but some guy at the call center isn’t going to know how and when.”

“You think you’ll get someone on New Year’s Eve?”

“Somebody’s day drinking and wondering what they’re doing with their life,” Kristen said. “I’m here to provide an opportunity for them to unburden themselves.”

Donna skewered her fork in the middle of her cake and set it down. “Smart,” she said. “So, what I was thinking was this. Once we find your so-called unicorn…”

Kristen gazed down at the street a story below. A toddler slipped in the snow, and his father scooped him up. The doors to the Market of Choice opened and half a dozen girls spilled out, their scarves flapping in a parade of pinks and yellows. And for a moment Kristen saw a familiar flash of blond hair, a girl turning her face to the sky.

Marydale!

But of course it wasn’t. It was just the sudden, unexpected miracle of snow—so rare, the city didn’t have enough plows to clear the bridges, let alone the streets—that made Kristen see Marydale in the face of passing strangers. When she had first returned to Portland five years earlier, she had imagined Marydale everywhere. Now she went whole weeks without thinking of her.

“I’m going to get back to it,” Kristen said, setting her uneaten cake on the table next to Donna’s. “I’ve got to get to my day drinkers before they forget exactly how DataBlast cheated a quarter million suckers out of their money.”

  

Two hours later, Kristen had placed almost thirty calls, mostly to voice mails. Around her, the office was quiet except for the occasional whir of the fax machine. Even Donna had headed across the river for dinner at the Golden Lucky Fortune with her parents and then off to a party at which she would, almost certainly, break her record of twelve months without a dysfunctional romance.

Kristen’s phone rang. She picked it up quickly. “Falcon Law Group. Kristen Brock speaking.”

“Happy New Year!” It was Sierra. In the background, cheers and whistles told Kristen she had found day drinkers, just not the day drinkers she was looking for.

“Kristi!” Sierra said. “We’re heading out in about an hour. Do you want a ride?”

“A ride?”

“To the Deerfield Hotel for the whiskey festival. Do you want us to pick you up? We’ve got four-wheel drive, and don’t say you’ve got too much work to do.”

“I…The Deerfield Hotel is all the way out in Troutdale. The roads are a mess.”

Someone turned up the music on Sierra’s end.

“You forgot.” Sierra’s voice was still cheerful. “How can you be a lawyer and you can’t even remember New Year’s Eve? You have to come! We have to catch up!”

Just that morning, Kristen had vowed to be a better sister. It wasn’t just a New Year’s resolution. It was a holiday-season resolution, a birthday resolution, a solstice resolution. The thought had probably crossed her mind on Arbor Day.

“I am so sorry,” Kristen said.

“We talked about this,” Sierra whined. “We did!”

Kristen tried to remember the conversation. Sierra had mentioned something about New Year’s Eve…about an open bar at the historic hotel. Kristen had thought it sounded like a tort waiting to happen. Had she also said yes?

“I…look…I don’t have anyone to watch Meatball. That’s my fault. I forgot. We’ll get together later. I promise. We’ll have tea at the Heathman.”

The light for the second line flashed on Kristen’s phone. She scrawled the incoming number on the back of a file.

“You missed the Halloween party.” Sierra’s voice had lost a bit of its cheer. “You missed vegan Thanksgiving. And I saw you for, like, two seconds on Kwanzaa. Tonight’s going to be great. They’re going to have tastings and three different local bands. Fishbowl Pocket Moon is playing! They never play small shows! This is once in a lifetime. This is bucket list. And you said you’d come. And it’s snowing!”

On the street below, a pair of young businessmen picked up handfuls of snow and threw it at each other. The snow made Portland happy. Stores closed and restaurants served pancakes. Even the partners had been calling other firms, checking on their fax lines and their copiers. If you need anything, just give us a call. It made Kristen sad. In a few days it would all melt, and the partners would go back to yelling at each other’s receptionists. And no one’s life would have been transformed, not that Kristen wanted her life to change, she reminded herself. A woman in her midthirties about to make partner at the Falcon Law Group was exactly where she was supposed to be.

“I wouldn’t be any fun,” Kristen said. “I’ve got so much work to do.”

“It’s a whole whiskey-tasting thing. I picked it because you love whiskey,” Sierra said. “This is for you.”

“I don’t love whiskey.”

“You always have a bottle of that awful Poisonwood stuff.”

“Yes. Right. I know.”

There had been a moment, five years earlier, when she could have told her sister everything. Instead she had told Sierra that she left Tristess because big-firm work offered more growth potential. You have to think about a career, not just a job, she had said. A moment later, Kristen had realized it was the wrong lie. She could just as well have said, I came back to Portland to be closer to you. Now they were the kind of sisters who didn’t see each other for months on end even though they lived in the same city.

“It’s really nice of you to think of me,” Kristen said.

She was ready to interject over Sierra’s protests, but Sierra said nothing for several seconds. Then she said, “Okay,” with a finality that Kristen had never heard before. “I don’t want to force you to spend time with me.”

In the background, Kristen heard a man ask, “Is everything okay? She’s coming, right?”

“Wait.” Kristen exhaled heavily. “Does this place you’re going…? Do they take dogs?”

Sierra’s voice brightened again. “Of course they take dogs!”

“I have to make a few more phone calls,” Kristen said reluctantly.

“We’ll pick up Meatball, and I’ll pack you a bag. You can work right up until we leave. We’ll honk the horn when we get there. I know your window.”

“We?” Kristen asked, but Sierra was already hanging up, saying, “You’d better be there when we get there.”

  

Two hours later, Sierra arrived in her company car, a retrofitted, first-generation Range Rover with BIODIESEL emblazoned across the top, like a warning to low-flying drones. Reluctantly, Kristen headed downstairs. Sierra was already standing on the snowy sidewalk.

“We’re going to have so much fun. I promise!” Sierra said. She glanced at Kristen’s Burberry coat open over her gray suit. “Look at you. See? You are ready for a party.”

Kristen did not point out that Burberry and Max Mara weren’t whiskey-festival attire. It didn’t matter. The moment to avoid the trip had passed, and now she was committed.

In the backseat of the SUV sat two men, their hair pulled up in matching buns on top of their heads. One wore a sweater with snowflakes embroidered on it. The other wore a heavy canvas skirt with pockets and loops for as-yet-unidentified tools. It was Frog and Moss. Kristen recognized them from half a dozen house parties she had stayed at just long enough to pound a vodka-spiked kombucha and invent a crisis in the office to call her away.

Meatball sat on Frog’s lap, his pointed ears twitching back and forth. The men motioned for her to take the front seat, smiling encouragingly. Sierra had probably regaled them with stories of Kristen, her sad, workaholic sister who preferred a normal office job to pressing apple cider by hand or drawing mandalas of her vagina or whatever the latest edition of Sierra’s online magazine, the HumAnarchist, suggested the readers try.

Sierra hopped back into the driver’s seat, offering a high five to both of the men. “And we’re off!” she said.

Frog leaned forward and grinned at Kristen. He had a remarkable array of milk-chocolate-colored freckles.

“You want a joint?” he asked.

“No!”

“It’s legal,” Sierra said, pulling a lighter out of her shirt pocket.

“It’s not legal to smoke in a moving car,” Kristen said.

Moss produced a plastic bag and pulled out something that looked like Silly Putty or human skin. Meatball whirled around with surprising agility and goggled at him, his bat ears trembling slightly.

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “It’s soy curl.” He popped the substance into Meatball’s wide mouth. “Something for everyone, right?” He took the joint from Frog, and the smell of marijuana filled the Range Rover.

“Don’t worry. I’m not smoking,” Sierra said. “I’m driving.”

“You’ll get a contact high,” Kristen said.

“That was just propaganda DuPont used to stop the production of hemp-based fiber products,” Moss declared, shoveling another soy curl into Meatball’s mouth.

“I’m so glad we’re doing this,” Sierra said, making more eye contact than Kristen thought appropriate for someone driving sixty-five miles an hour through what newscasters were dubbing Snowpocalypse. “I’m so psyched you could come, Kristen. We are going to have the time of our lives.”

Kristen stared at the blur of highway, contemplating her own death at the hands of her sister’s weed-addled driving.

“Please, watch the road,” she pleaded. “I have things to live for. I’m going to make partner.”

Sierra shot her a long, pointed look.

“Drive!” Kristen protested.

But a voice in the back of her mind said, Partner, really? Another case? Another half marathon? Another corporate banquet? Would it make her happy? A glimpse of Marydale’s face flickered across her memory like the last frames of a black-and-white movie, but it was just the snow. It made the city look like Christmas and the end of the world all at once, and it made it easy to revisit old memories, Kristen told herself. For the rest of the drive, she forced herself to think through the details of the DataBlast case, making a mental list of all the people she had called and all the calls she had yet to make.

  

By the time they reached the historic Deerfield complex, the sun had set and the parking lot was blanketed with white. The early cars were already snowed under. More recent arrivals were parked at odd angles, wedged around mounds of snow. Kristen’s foot had cramped from pressing an imaginary brake pedal as Sierra flew, albeit without mishap, along the icy highway. Now Kristen climbed out, accompanied by a wave of marijuana smoke. She teetered a little bit as her heels slipped on the packed snow.

“Kristen.” Sierra placed her hand on Kristen’s laptop bag. “You don’t need this. It’s New Year’s Eve.”

“I’ll just put it in my room,” Kristen said.

“But you’re carrying the psychic weight.”

Reluctantly, Kristen handed it over. “Lock it up, okay?” she said.

Sierra snatched the briefcase, calling out to her friend, “Frog, do you have Meatball’s jacket? Moss, grab my bag, would you?”

Frog and Moss were a couple, but the whole trio moved like one organism, handing bags back and forth and steadying each other on the ice. Sierra had known the men since her first days at Portland Community College, which seemed strange to Kristen since the only friend she had carried over from childhood, college, or law school was Donna Li, and sometimes she wondered if that even counted as a friendship.

Frog came around the side of the Range Rover with Meatball in his arms like a large, plush bowling ball. Someone had put a green vest on the dog. There was a plastic tag clipped to the vest with a bar code and Kristen’s name written in black Sharpie with a date.

Realization dawned on Kristen as she read the word SERVICE on Meatball’s vest.

“They don’t take dogs,” she said.

She wondered how long it would take to get a cab home.

“Of course they do,” Sierra said. “They have to. It’s the law. Moss made the vest today out of a recycled army duffel bag. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Re-peace! It fits perfectly.”

“No,” Kristen said. “No. You can’t do that.”

Frog placed Meatball in Kristen’s arms and attached an official-looking green lead in place of Meatball’s usual blue rhinestone leash.

“All you have to do is walk him into the hotel and put him in your room,” Sierra said. “He might as well be a service dog.”

 “He eats underwear, and he has a brain the size of a walnut. He would walk off a cliff if there were Cheetos at the bottom. What is he protecting me from?” Kristen checked the tag. “What does this even say?”

“He’s for anxiety.”

“I don’t have anxiety. Do you know what will happen if I get cited for forging a service-dog license? For bringing an unauthorized pet into an eating establishment?”

“His mouth is cleaner that yours,” Sierra said.

“It’s fraud,” Kristen protested.

Frog draped his arm around Sierra’s shoulder and leaned his head against her blond dreadlocks. “Namaste. It’s all good. We’re all in service to each other.”

“This is supposed to be fun,” Sierra said quietly. “Come on, Kristi. Please. Don’t make me feel like I dragged you here.”

Kristen sighed inwardly, remembering her resolve to be nicer to Sierra. She was going to invite her to coffee and have sister-to-sister chats about men or face cream or, God help her, the latest issue of the HumAnarchist. She was going to say things like, I’m so proud of how you’ve accomplished the goals you set for yourself, but when it came down to the end of a busy week, Kristen just wanted to sit on her sofa and watch the sunset reflecting off the mirrored surface of the U.S. Bancorp building.

She glanced back toward the highway, just visible on the horizon. A single semitruck crawled across the ice.

“Okay,” Kristen managed.

  

Despite everything, the Deerfield complex was beautiful. The main hotel glittered from behind a screen of trees. Behind it, outbuildings, now converted to tiny bars, added their pinpricks of light. Inside, the halls were hung with eerie American-primitive paintings: ghostly women in pillbox hats, carnivals of skeletons dancing on barroom tables. In the hallways, the red carpet swerved back and forth across the floor like a vision in a fun house mirror.

Sierra handed out keycards. She held Kristen’s for a moment.

“Half an hour,” Sierra said. “If you’re not at the bar, I’m coming to get you.”

In her room, Kristen sat down on the bed, staring at a mural of cavorting watermelons with little fangs and human eyes. Meatball planted himself on the bed. She tossed him one of the soy curls as she left.

  

An hour later, Kristen was crowded into a subterranean bar, feeling overdressed in her suit. She pulled up the last vacant seat by a teetering bistro table.

“I’ll just sit here,” she told Sierra and her friends.

Moss handed her a foldout map with several business logos printed on it.

“They’re doing a whiskey tasting,” Moss said. “If you try all twelve, you get a free T-shirt.”

It seemed like a bad idea. Why invite guests to have one drink in one bar, when they could stumble around fifty acres of hipster-inspired landscaping, in the dark, collecting booze stamps?

“This one is Sadfire whiskey.” Sierra read, “‘Portland’s newest distillery, Sadfire, has been selling commercially for only two years, but in that time has won several distinguished prizes, including the Multnomah Whiskey Exposition’s Best Whiskey Under Ten Years and the Portland Better Business Bureau’s Community-Engaged Small-Business Award.’ Look. They employ felons to give them a second chance through productive employment.”

“Because that’s a good idea,” Kristen said. “Put felons in a factory with a thousand gallons of whiskey.”

She was thinking about Marydale.

“It’s important to give people a chance to rehabilitate,” Moss said.

“I know,” Kristen said quietly.

But Marydale hadn’t rehabilitated. Maybe she hadn’t had the chance. After Kristen left Tristess, she had looked Marydale up on the statewide database that tracked parolees. Marydale had been released a month after Kristen left Tristess, then arrested again a month after that. She had been jailed, released, and jailed again and again.

Kristen told herself she was lucky to have left when she did, to have put enough time and distance between their affair and her office at the Falcon Law Group. But every time she had seen Marydale’s name next to a new parole sanction, she had felt a cold ache in her stomach, until one day she exited the database and promised never to look again.

Sierra threw her arm around Kristen, snapped a selfie, and then shoved the camera at Kristen so she could see the picture. A diet of protein bars and a five-day schedule of running had defined Kristen’s cheekbones like a sculptor’s chisel. Pretty or lucky? she wondered.

A trio of musicians in the corner struck up a little accompaniment.

Sierra eased up to the back of the crowd, rising on tiptoes. “She’s eating fire!” she said. “Come on. Get over here and check this out.”

Kristen couldn’t see much more than polar fleece and the occasional Portland Timbers sweatshirt. The crowd hushed.

Kristen heard a man at the front of the crowd say, “Now I’m going to let my colleague tell you about what you’re going to taste.” A few people clapped.

A melodic woman’s voice chimed in. “Thank you. We both come from a farming-ranching background, so we understand the importance of raw ingredients. We have our own twelve-acre farm north of St. John’s.”

The room was hot.

Sierra said, “It’s really crowded. Do you want to try the next one?”

“We put our heart and soul into this production.” The woman’s voice floated over the crowd.

Kristen couldn’t see her, but the cadence was familiar. It was the same slight twang that had infused Marydale’s voice when she told stories about Tristess.

The man interrupted. “My friend here actually waters the ground with her tears.”

The crowd chuckled.

“No, I’m serious,” the man said. “The first night after planting she goes out to the fields—”

“And you’re going to taste all of that,” the woman cut in, “when I pour the first round.”

Kristen edged forward, listening.

“What is it?” Sierra asked.

The couple in front of Kristen stepped to the side, and Kristen stepped into the space they had vacated. Behind a folding table covered in a black cloth, a banner read SADFIRE DISTILLERS. On either side of the table, a bronze contraption, like some steampunk creation from the Alberta Arts Walk, released a blaze of flame. But Kristen wasn’t admiring the craftsmanship or thinking about the liability of open flames in a low-ceilinged room almost certainly over the 148-person capacity listed by the door. She wasn’t thinking about anything now, because she wasn’t breathing, because it was Marydale behind the table, like a vision in a dream. Her blond hair was pulled up in an aggressive bouffant ponytail, and her arms were tattooed in a swirl of oxblood and black, the bodies of women intertwining in the ink. She looked older and tougher and gorgeous.

“So what are we going to taste, Mary?” It was Aldean beside her.

Marydale took a skewer from the table, wrapped a piece of cotton around the end and dipped it into a snifter.

“We’re going to start with the Consummation Rye,” Marydale said. She flicked the end of the skewer through the flame at her side, tilted her head back, opened her mouth, and, accompanied by the “ooh” of the crowd, she lowered the torch into her mouth. The flame disappeared. She set the skewer down and lifted the snifter to her lips and, in flagrant violation of Oregon Liquor Control Commission server regulations, took a long sip.

“Well played,” her friend said. “What do you taste, Mary?”

Marydale turned to Aldean. “You’re going to find this surprisingly smooth for such a young whiskey, although it does still have a bite, and I think that’s part of its charm. It’s going to mellow, but you’re going to miss its youth.”

Kristen felt the stiff, gray fabric of her suit holding her in place. Marydale was there, only feet away, real, breathing, her hair glistening. Kristen had practiced this moment in her imagination a thousand times, this exact moment when their eyes met and Marydale recognized her.

For just a second, Marydale seemed to lose her train of thought. Then she resumed. “Large commercial distilleries produce consistent quality, but they sacrifice character.”

Kristen had dreamed about this reunion. She had seen Marydale in the crowds around Pioneer Square and in the quick flash of a TriMet window, her face forever disappearing into another person’s image. A rational voice in the back of her mind told Kristen she was overreacting. The strange longing that filled her when she thought of Marydale was just the first pangs of middle age creeping into her thirties. It was the kind of nostalgia Sierra and Donna would never feel because Sierra lived in a semi-platonic, semi-polyamorous partnership with Frog and Moss, and Donna dated a never-ending roster of assholes.

Marydale held the glass up to the flame. Someone lowered the lights, making dark shadows of Marydale’s eyes.

“First,” she said, “you’ll smell the earth. Now, don’t let those wine connoisseurs get away with telling you it smells earthy, like that’s a thing. Earth is specific. Farmers know that. This is our parcel.” She smelled the whiskey. “If you’re very careful—and please don’t drink to excess because you’ll miss everything—you can smell the roots of our heritage oak. Yes. Aldean is right. They’re there, too.” She put the glass to her lips and took another sip. “It’s frost on a really clear day in December when you’re lonely despite all the Christmas going on around you. You can also taste summer’s wildfires. This batch was aged in barrels made out of ten percent reclaimed wood from the Firesteed burn. And if you haven’t seen one of those fires up close, you haven’t looked into the eye of God.”

The crowd hushed.

“Now, here I’ve got a little bit of water,” Marydale went on. “It’s from Multnomah Falls, and, friends, even if you don’t take your whiskey with water, you need to at least taste it with water. Water opens the whiskey up.” She poured a little bit of water from a silver pitcher and smelled it again. “There it is.” She paused and looked directly at Kristen. “Your old lover’s perfume woken from the leather seat of your pickup the day you take it to the scrap yard. The body. Lovemaking. Loan. Madrone bark in sunlight. The pencil you once used to write love letters.” Her voice grew louder. She raised the glass to the crowd. “A woman’s hair slick with sweat. That first taste, so strange and so familiar.” She took a sip of the whiskey, set it down, and beamed at the crowd. Her teeth were perfect.

The crowd applauded.

“That, friends, is how you taste a whiskey,” Aldean said.

The lights brightened. The crowd moved toward the table or away, depending on their desire to taste oak tree and Marydale’s tears. Kristen stood frozen, staring at Marydale, because the reasonable voice in the back of her head had gone silent. All she heard was the beat of blood in her ears.

“Are you going to taste?” Sierra asked.

Frog and Moss appeared beside them, smelling of marijuana. Frog draped his long arms around Sierra’s shoulders. She took his hands.

“Fishbowl Pocket Moon is playing in the Tiny Barn Bar,” he said.

“I can’t,” Kristen hissed to Sierra.

“You are not going to go back to your room to work,” Sierra said.

“Just go,” Kristen said.

Kristen glanced at Marydale and looked away.

“What is it?” Sierra touched Kristen’s arm.

“Nothing.”

  

When Sierra had left and the crowd had thinned, Kristen made her way to the front of the room. Behind the table, Marydale and Aldean moved in perfect coordination, pouring samples, opening bottles, and clearing away the little plastic tasting cups without ever bumping into each other.

Marydale smiled as Kristen approached the table, but it was the same smile she had just offered a trio of college girls ahead of Kristen.

“What can I pour for you? Tonight we’re tasting the Wildfire Barrel Aged, the Consummation Rye, and the Solstice Vanilla Infusion.”

Her gaze barely touched the surface of Kristen’s face

“Marydale, it’s me. Kristen.”

“Kristen Brock. I know.”

Aldean tossed a bottle in Marydale’s direction, and she caught it behind her back.

“Thanks, man.” To Kristen she added, “What’ll it be? Are you doing the whiskey passport? Can I stamp your card?”

 The whiskey passport? Kristen held the flyer in her hand, crumpled and damp.

“I…” She stopped, stricken by Marydale’s easy smile.

“How about I make you a sidecar,” Marydale said. She pulled a few bottles out of a cooler behind her. “On the house.” She poured a few ingredients in a shaker and then handed a plastic cup to Kristen. “Nice to see you, Kristen.”

A group of men in kilts moved in behind Kristen, and Marydale turned her smile in their direction. Unconsciously, Kristen touched her own lip. It was strange to see Marydale’s smile unmarred. It was strange to see her older, but Kristen was older, too. Everyone who saw old pictures of her said she’d changed. And she had an irrational urge to run up to Marydale and plead, It’s me, Kristen, as though Marydale had turned away because she didn’t recognize her.

Instead Kristen made her way out of the bar and into the snow. Dazed, she stood for a long time, not drinking, not moving, just clutching the cup in her hand. The door to the bar opened. A few hotel guests passed her, nodding a greeting.

Someone said, “Can’t believe this snow.”

Kristen heard someone else speaking in her own voice, saying, “They say we haven’t gotten a snow like this since 2006,” as though she cared about the weather, as though she had ever looked up comparative snowfalls in Portland, as though she didn’t want to lie down in the snow and cry at Marydale’s casual nice to see you, Kristen.

With that thought, Kristen dumped her drink in the snow. If work at the Falcon Law Group had taught her nothing else, it had taught her to confront. She marched back into the bar. Marydale was describing the complexities of the Solstice Vanilla to a pair of middle-aged women.

“I need to talk to you,” Kristen said. It sounded like she was hounding opposing counsel.

Marydale and Aldean exchanged a look. Then he leaned over and whispered something in Marydale’s ear. Her face said no, but she nodded.

“Okay.”

Outside, Marydale said, “Yes? What?”

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Kristen said. She could feel the snow seeping in around her pumps, dampening her nylons.

A group of people poured out of the bar, blowing paper horns.

“It’s almost midnight,” someone called out.

“You thought I’d be in jail?” Marydale asked.

“No. I…” She was still holding the empty cup. “This was good.”

Around them, the snow had transformed the bushes into a menagerie of mythical beasts all shrouded in white. Above them, an old water tower stood sentinel over the grounds, an orange light at its base illuminating it in a sepia glow.

“So?” Marydale said. “I’m working. What can I do for you?”

Snowflakes dissolved on Kristen’s glasses, blurring her vision.

“How have you been?” Kristen asked. The question felt small.

Marydale gave a little laugh but said nothing.

“So you work at a distillery?” It was small talk, like all the legal banquets she had attended on behalf of Falcon Law Group. So I hear you’re with a new firm. Yes. Patents. How interesting.

“I own a distillery,” Marydale said. “Me and Aldean do.”

“And you’re in Portland.” You’re here. “Are you living on the east side?”

Marydale raised an eyebrow, a calculated expression as deliberate as a handshake. “Are we really going to do this?” she asked.

“I haven’t seen you for years.” It sounded like an accusation.

“Five years,” Marydale said. “It’s a small city. We were bound to run into each other eventually.” She turned her palm up to the sky and caught a snowflake that melted immediately.

 “I’d like to give you my number.” Kristen was shivering, and her words came out in choppy bursts like Morse code. “We could do tapas at Nel Centro or tea at the Heathman. Is your distillery in the city? I could meet you there.”

Marydale looked at her. “Why?”

Kristen felt her heart tighten in her chest. Marydale looked so beautiful, like a new incarnation of the girl Kristen remembered. Older. Brighter. Sharper. Her sleeves rolled up. Her tattoos a splash of color against the white snow. The cold didn’t seem to touch her.

“We knew each other.” Kristen wanted to grab Marydale by the shoulders, to grip the fabric of her shirt and hang on. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to get coffee.”

“Unreasonable.” Marydale’s lips curled in a wry frown. “It’s been a long time. I’m not exactly hard to find.”

“I…I looked you up.”

“Ah,” Marydale said, her face registering a rebuff. I could have found you, but I didn’t.

“I mean, I didn’t want you to get in trouble with your parole officer…We said…” I said. Kristen never fumbled in court, never said one word or made one gesture that wasn’t calculated to accomplish her ends. Now she felt the conversation slipping out of her control. I missed you, she thought, while she heard herself say, “My firm has an excellent Web presence. If you don’t want to take my number, you can just look me up.”

Marydale turned away, and Kristen gazed at her profile outlined in snow. Her lips were full and glistened with a touch of gloss. There were a few fine lines beside her eyes, a faint shadow beneath them, the kind of imperfections Kristen hid behind her glasses, but they didn’t look like imperfections on Marydale.

“In my experience, these things are always better if you’re just honest,” Marydale said.

“These things?”

Marydale shrugged. “We don’t even know each other. Let’s skip the brunches and just chalk it up to life experience. If you’d wanted to find me, you would have.” With that, Marydale turned and headed back into the bar.

“Wait,” Kristen said.

“This is a coincidence,” Marydale called out behind her. “This is New Year’s Eve. It’s snowing. It doesn’t change anything.”

Kristen took a few steps and stopped. She steadied herself against a mound of snow, the icy crust burning her fingers.

“Marydale,” she whispered.

And there was the truth, realized, as if in dream, impossible and absolute: she had loved Marydale, and when she had left Tristess, the trajectory of her life had stopped, and she had done nothing.