Epilogue
Ten years later, the snow still comes softly.
It doesn’t rush.
It doesn’t try to impress.
It just falls—faithful, patient, exactly on time.
The house is warm with noise now. Real noise. The kind that echoes and lingers and refuses to be ignored. Laughter from the kitchen. A radio humming an old holiday song that never quite gets turned off. Footsteps upstairs—too fast, too loud, unmistakably young.
I stand by the window with a mug cooling in my hands, watching the yard disappear under white. The river beyond the trees moves slowly, just visible, just present—like it always has been.
Some things don’t need to change to prove they matter.
“Mom?”
I turn.
She’s standing there in mismatched socks, hair still half-asleep, holding the book I once wrote alone in a quiet apartmen
