Snowed In at Willow Creek – Part 2: When the Loons Return

By April, Hannah Brooks had paint on every piece of clothing she owned.

It was on her jeans and her socks and the sleeves of Sofia’s old flannel shirts, which she had slowly and completely stolen over the winter. It was under her fingernails. Once, memorably, it had been in her eyebrow for an entire day before Sofia noticed and laughed so hard she had to sit down.

She had set up an easel on the porch facing the lake. Every morning she painted the same view, and every morning it was different. Grey ice in February. Black water in March, when the ice cracked with sounds like gunshots in the night. And now, in April, a soft green haze over the birches and the water flat and silver, waiting.

“They’re late,” Hannah said one morning, holding her coffee with both hands. “You said April.”

“They come when they come,” Sofia said, from the workshop door. She had sawdust in her hair and a pencil behind her ear. “You can’t schedule a bird, city girl.”

“I could if I was still a lawyer. I’d send them a letter.”

Sofia came over and kissed the top of her head.

“Give them time,” she said. “Good things are usually late.”

---

The letter came on a Tuesday.

Hannah found it in the mailbox at the end of the dirt road, between a seed catalogue and an electricity bill. Heavy cream envelope. Whitman & Cole, Attorneys at Law. Her old firm.

She read it standing in the mud by the mailbox. Then she read it again.

When she walked back to the cabin, Sofia was on the porch, sanding the arm of a rocking chair. She looked up and saw Hannah’s face and put down the sandpaper.

“What is it?”

Hannah handed her the letter.

Sofia read it slowly. Her jaw tightened with every line.

Our client, Northshore Development LLC, has acquired the two parcels adjoining Willow Creek to the east and west. Construction of the resort will proceed on these parcels in June. We understand that the Reyes property sits between them. Our client remains willing to purchase it at the original price, given that its character, quiet, privacy and lake access, will be significantly altered by construction.

It was signed by Richard Whitman. Her old boss.

“They’re going to build around me,” Sofia said quietly. “Forty units on each side. They can’t take the cabin, so they’ll make it worthless.” She put the letter down on the half-finished chair. “And then I’ll sell. That’s the plan.”

“Sofia.”

“The loons nest on the east shore.” Sofia’s voice cracked. “That’s the parcel they bought. That’s exactly where they nest.”

Hannah had never seen her cry. She didn’t cry now, either. She just stood very still on the porch with her hands at her sides, looking out at the lake, the way you look at something you’re about to lose.

Hannah picked up the letter.

She read it a third time. Slowly. Like a lawyer.

And something cold and sharp and very familiar woke up inside her.

“Give me a week,” she said.

---

She drove to Montpelier, to the state archives, three days in a row.

She sat at a long wooden table under fluorescent lights in one of Sofia’s flannel shirts, with paint still on her fingers, and read land records from 1958. She read wetland surveys and wildlife reports and the minutes of town meetings from forty years ago. She called people she hadn’t spoken to since law school. She made a lot of coffee.

Sofia didn’t ask what she was doing. She just made dinner every night and left it on the stove, and when Hannah came home at eleven, exhausted, she wrapped her in a quilt and didn’t say a word.

On the sixth night, Hannah came home and dropped a folder on the kitchen table.

“The east shore,” she said, breathless. “It’s a protected wetland. It was designated in 1981. Common loon nesting habitat, state-listed. Nobody updated the county map when it was digitised, so the developer’s lawyers missed it.” She tapped the folder. “They can’t build there. Not one unit. Not even a road.”

Sofia stared at her.

“And the west parcel?” she asked slowly.

“The west parcel,” Hannah said, “has a right-of-way that goes straight through your land. Your grandfather negotiated it in 1962. Any construction requires your written consent.” She sat down, suddenly shaking. “Which I strongly advise you not to give.”

Sofia didn’t say anything for a long time. Then she pulled out the chair beside Hannah and sat down, and put her head in her hands.

“You did this,” she said through her fingers. “In six days.”

“I was a very good lawyer.”

“You hated being a lawyer.”

“I hated being a lawyer for the wrong people.” Hannah took a breath. “I wrote to Richard Whitman this afternoon. I told him I represent you now. Free of charge.”

Sofia looked up. Her eyes were wet.

“What did he say?”

Hannah pulled out her phone and showed her the email. It was one line long.

Ms. Brooks, our client is withdrawing from the Willow Creek project. Regards, R. Whitman.

---

That night, they didn’t go up to the loft.

Sofia pulled the sheepskin rug in front of the wood stove, the same one they had sat on during the blizzard, and spread three quilts over it and lit the fire, even though it was April and not really cold. She opened a bottle of wine she’d been saving for a year. She put on an old record of her grandfather’s, Spanish guitar, scratchy and warm.

“You saved my home,” she said, sitting down beside Hannah.

“You saved me first,” Hannah said. “I was very lost in some very bad boots.”

Sofia laughed. Then she stopped laughing and looked at her. In the firelight, her eyes were very dark and very serious.

“I want to tell you something,” she said. “And I’ve never said it to anyone, so I’ll probably say it badly.”

“Okay.”

Sofia took a breath.

“I love you,” she said. “I loved you somewhere around the can of soup. I think I knew when you said it was good soup.”

Hannah stared at her. Then she started laughing, and crying, both at once.

“It was good soup,” she said.

“It was terrible soup.”

“I love you too,” Hannah said. “I’ve loved you since you closed the door in my face.”

Sofia kissed her then, slow and certain, and pulled the quilts around them both, and the old guitar record played on and on into the night. What followed belonged only to them: to the firelight on the log walls and the spring wind moving softly through the birches outside, to the slow, sure happiness of two people who finally had nothing left to be afraid of.

---

Hannah woke up at 5 a.m.

It was still dark. The fire had burned to embers. Sofia was asleep beside her under the quilts, one arm thrown across her, breathing slowly.

Hannah lay very still, not sure what had woken her.

Then she heard it.

It came from across the lake, from the east shore, through the open window. A long, rising, trembling cry, like nothing she had ever heard. Wild and lonely and beautiful, rolling over the dark water and echoing back off the hills. Then another voice answered it, from further away.

Hannah’s breath caught.

“Sofia,” she whispered, shaking her shoulder. “Sofia. Wake up. Listen.”

Sofia opened her eyes. For a second she was confused. Then the call came again, and her whole face changed.

“They’re back,” she whispered.

They wrapped themselves in a single quilt and went out onto the porch in their bare feet, into the cold, grey, early light. Mist lay on the lake like smoke. And there, out on the silver water, gliding slowly side by side, were two black and white birds with red eyes, calling to each other across the morning.

Hannah couldn’t speak. She felt Sofia’s hand find hers under the quilt.

“My grandfather,” Sofia said softly, “used to say they mate for life.”

Hannah turned to look at her.

“Is that a proposal?” she asked.

Sofia smiled, the slow, real smile she gave to almost no one.

“I told you,” she said. “Good things are usually late.”

And while the loons called across Willow Creek, and the sun came up gold behind the birches, she kissed her.

---

The End.

More lesbian romance: The Last Train to Brighton · Monsoon Nights · The Tuscan Harvest