Page 53 of Love Under Snowfall

“Did you camp much as a kid?” she asked, chewing thoughtfully.

“No,” Benjamin clipped, shaking his head. “We weren’t the camping type of family.”

“What type of family were you?”

“The broken type.” He hadn’t meant to let that sentiment pop out; his expression made that little fact obvious. But he relaxed his shocked eyes and shrugged.

“Divorce?”

“Just like half of the U.S.” His sigh was resigned.

“How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“That must have been hard.”

“Divorce is never easy, Francesca.” His hard stare froze her in place. Sweeps of sadness and shame rippled over his stern features, and Frankie found herself desperate to know the layers beneath his comment. Then she remembered what he had done for work before teaching at Northwest Washington University.

“At the welcome banquet, Jon mentioned you were a divorce attorney?”

“Are you asking or stating fact?”

“Don’t ‘professor’ me with your Socratic bullshit,Benji. We’re equals now that the quarter’s done.” She smiled sweetly, happily makinghimsquirm for once.

“But you haven’t received your final grade yet.” He leaned back, arms crossed.

“And when were you going to get around to handling that?” She shoveled in another bite, brows raised.

“I don’t,” he conceded. “I already gave my TAs the rubric that they use to score the finals.”

“Like I said,” she chirped, scooping stray flakes of bread and crumbs into her palms and dusting them off into her empty bowl. “Equals.”

“There are some things I’d like to move on from. Rehashingthe past leads to nothing good.”

“You mean besides closure?”

He said nothing, only bored his eyes deeper into hers.

But she was immovable.

“Five cribbage wins.”

“You can’t be serious—”

“As a heart attack. I’m cashing in. We agreed that five wins could get an answer to one question. My question is: What was it like being a divorce attorney?”

Benjamin released his crossed arms and raked his fingers down his face.

“Soul-sucking, guilt-inducing, made me feel like the scum of the earth.” He appeared suddenly tired, almost older in his exhaustion—all the cheery effects of his earlier nap gone.

“Why?”

“I answered your question.”

“Five more points, then,” she responded to the emphatic shake of his head and downward gaze. “Why?”

“Because it made me feel like my father.” His ocean eyes darkened into tumultuous swells, hinting at the squall that never quite quieted inside of him.

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