CHRISTIAN WINN

At i rst, there was no answer, though there was a low moaning Abby could hear in the faint middle distance behind that door. She put both palms to the red-painted wood, and could feel a humming, and a warmth. She leaned gently into the door, and her whole body felt a generous ease, a comfort, a familiarity and af ection. The moan rose and quavered, shivered through her. She closed her eyes and let the door wrap her, hold her, as it seemed to be pressing back into Abby, whispering now.

“Abigail.” It was Professor Naughton’s sonorous voice, the low and soothing voice he’d use mornings as they woke and held each other gently, as one. “You’ve made it. We’ve been waiting all these years.”

“I know,” Abby whispered back, her eyes still shut, a pulsing joy seeping into her. “I’ve been away so very long.”

“Come in,” he whispered, as the door gave way, swinging easy into the front hallway.

Abby stumbled a little and pushed back from the door, but the warmth and comfort remained within her.

She opened her eyes. Stepped slowly into the hallway, smelling fresh baked bread, cofee, the musk of the Professor’s cologne. Around her everything was the same — the overstufed couch, the framed antique maps of Madagascar, the Arctic Circle, Patagonia, Sicily. All those places the Professor told her stories of as they sat here in this living room, on this Turkish throw rug, in this same sot amber light, drinking wine, and imagining. All those places he’d said he would one day take her.

Everything from all those years ago, it remained. The hutch illed with old pocket watches. The teak and brass barometer. The claw-footed dining room table. The smell of leather and polished wood.

“Years, Abigail,” she heard from the kitchen, as the light shited, brightened into the clear white light of morning. Out the back windows, birdsong emerged, and a light dew carpeted the lawn. “But you’ve inally made it back here. Are you ready for breakfast, love?”

Abby looked down, saw she had on her old Converse tennis shoes, and her favorite blue socks with the Cheshire Cat stitched across each ankle. Her mother had given her these socks the day she let for college. Abby felt at her chest where her years-gone high school sweatshirt now draped. She touched at the white cotton shorts at her hips, reached into the pockets and pulled out a small envelope with three hearts sketched across the front beneath her name and the Professor’s.

She thought to open the envelope, but she already knew what the short neatly-scripted letter would say. That this was it. This was their last morning. That he loved her, he cherished her, but he also loved Laura, and he had to consider the life he’d established, his reputation on campus, the future, the larger scope of who they were in this world. This letter had sat in a drawer by

her bedside for many years now. This letter was the only thing she had kept, all this time, and she had read it so many times the stationery was thin and frayed and the envelope wrinkled, smudged with oil.

“What’s taking you so long, little one?” the Professor said in that coy voice that always made Abby smile and touch her face with a kind of wonder.

She walked toward the kitchen, saying, “It’s that morning, isn’t it? The last morning.”

The Professor stood at the counter in his blue robe and leece-lined slippers. His dark, just-grey hair mussed the way she always liked to see it. He poured her a cup of cofee, stepping towards Abby, nodding.

“Yes,” he said, smiling, handing over the cup. “You haven’t killed me yet.”

“All that’s coming,” she said, holding the cup with both hands, feeling that same warmth as before and a slow joy in knowing what would happen.

“I was thinking,” he said. “I was thinking we should go out to the desert today. It’s so lovely this time of year.”

“What about Laura? I thought…”

“Laura won’t be home until tonight,” he said. “Besides, this is your day. You inally get to take something back.”