“Janie!” he shouts pulling her into his embrace, bouncing a bit. “It’s been so long.”

“It’s been no more than two days, Nick! Honestly, you make me feel like I never visit when you talk like that.”

Margo hunches over in the corner of the porch awkwardly as they exchange their brief conversation. She wishes to escape their pleasantries. How can they act so happy amidst such a drab town? How can they pretend the ice had never occurred? She wishes to disappear.

“So, what is it that brings you this way?” he asks, still clinging to Janie’s arm in excitement.

“Well,” she says bringing his attention over to their guest. “I have someone I think you’d be interested in meeting.” Her smile beams on as she gives him a wink.

His face suddenly goes slack as he takes Margo in. “Has it really been fifty years?” he whispers.

“So it seems. Time flies around here, eh?”

“It certainly does,” he muses. He can’t take his eyes off Margo, and she now knows why.

It takes him a moment to snap out of his gaze, giving his head a shake. “Well, come in,” he waves. “We have much to discuss. Janie, start some tea. I’ll heat up the stew. Come in, come in.” He tugs Margo inside. A slight annoyance creeps through her after being pulled around again, but she enters without a fight.

His home is polar opposite from the Welcome Center. The walls are the same stone as the outside decked in a variety of sketches and paintings (Margo wonders if he provided Janie with the sketches she spotted in the Welcome Center). The honey wood furniture warms and invites. She follows them into the small kitchen — which is even smaller than her parents’, if that’s possible. Gray stone continues throughout the room, hollowed out in some places to create storage crevices, and is topped with an ancient, honey-colored wooden countertop. In the center wall is a stone fireplace with a fire roaring and licking at the iron pot he places in the flames.

“Have a seat,” Nick offers, pulling out a chair.

Margo glances down at the chair and recognizes the warmth in her cheeks. For the first time this afternoon she truly feels safe. It is in the arms of these two strangers she takes comfort, and she is gracious to happen upon them.

Just as she is about to accept his seat, her smile quickly fades. Before she hadn’t noticed that his right hand is completely covered in dark scars very similar to her own cuts. A vine-like pattern scrolls across the back of his hand.

What she also hadn’t noticed is that half of his hand is missing. He lacks his ring finger, pinky, and the outer half of his palm. A chunk has been sliced clean off.

Margo feels her mouth fall slightly open, and snaps it shut, feeling rude.

“As I said before,” Nick says darkly, “we have much to discuss.”