First Snowfall

Carmela

I notice the quiet at first.

Not the empty kind, but the heavy, watching silence that usually pervades the De Leone grounds, but the kind that's thick and dull and like the world is swaddled in cotton. I lie there for a moment, half-asleep, listening. No rumble of engines from the road. No shouting. Just the thrum of the heater and the steady sound of Cassian's breath beside me.

I let my h