Chapter Nineteen
It would have been nice to sleep in, but I shuddered awake just a few hours later. The walls were an unmarred dusty mauve, with just the faintest orange shadow in the corners.
I sat up and brought my knees in to my chest. “Let me see outside,” I said, and instantly I was surrounded by my mountains. Their snowy peaks were pink with alpenglow. I breathed in, almost able to smell the scene from memory: coldness, faintly sweet, laced with pine.
I looked out over the mountains for a long, long time, tracing their stark silhouettes with my eyes. I thought of spats I’d had with Molly before, for the pettiest of reasons, it always seemed afterwards. And I thought of the desolation of that room below, how cold it had been.
Rising from the bed, I walked to the wall. I laid my pa
