Whiter Than Snow
The snow storm of earlier had petered out to a gentle flurry. Flakes drifted lazily down in the moonlight, spinning softly before they joined their comrades blanketing the ground. Alex paused at the window before completing what had become a nightly routine these last couple of months - to check on Marita.
He paused at the door to her room. It was ajar as always. She left it that way, like a little girl afraid of the night shadows. The Marita he had known would have scoffed at something so childish, if she'd left her door open it would have been an invitation or a dare. But this was a new Marita, the new normal in their personal little new world order from hell.
Broken.
They had been three broken offspring, victims of old men's delusions and dreams.
And now they were two.
Spender, the idiot, had managed to get someone to 'recognize his authority to release a patient' or else he had just shot them. He'd managed to get Marita out and the three of them to this house. And now Spender, the idiot had also managed to get himself shot.
So now they were two.
Alex nudge the door a little more expecting to find her sleeping form, with both of them knowing full well she wasn't. She couldn't fall asleep until he checked on her. It reassured them both that the other was there.
Earlier in their stay she had had night terrors and he had spent some of those first few nights with her holding her when she would wake up screaming or trembling. Once they had made love or rather had sex. It was perfunctory, mechanical, broken and sad. Shaken, Alex felt that he had violated her or at the very least taken advantage. Normally such thoughts wouldn't trouble him but this was the new normal and he was somewhat a new Alex. From that point he never spent the night in her room but always stopped to check feeling oddly paternal.
And tonight she wasn't there.
Easing the door open quietly he looked around. The bedroom had a small balcony to the side and the flutter of the curtain and cold air wafting from that direction signaled her location.
"Marita?" he asked as he walked to the open doorway. No answer but he saw her standing there, arms crossed over her chest, robe drawn tightly around her.
"You'll catch cold," he said joining her on the balcony, hand on her shoulder to gently nudge her inside.
"I"m fine," she whispered her breath wisping away from her lips in the frosty air. "Just a little longer. It makes me feel so..."
Alex went back to the room and returned with a blanket draping it around her. He studied her. The moonlight made the night sky midnight blue rather than black, cutting a swath of silver across the snow. She turned to look up at him and the silver caught her hair no longer straw and her eyes returning to their piercing ice blue they once held.
Her eyes locked with his and panicked she quickly looked away back over the snow, stepping forward to hold the rail of the balcony slip.
"I was pregnant," she whispered hoarsely, "before..."
Alex didn't know what to say so wisely said nothing.
"I like the snow," she continued. "It makes me feel so... clean."