I must have fallen asleep, for I don’t know how long – at some point she had lit her favorite candle (shaped like a man’s bashed in skull), so I had probably slept a while. She was as I remembered: arms hugging her legs, book in her hands. The flame of her favorite candle looked like a man trying to shake off his own immolation. He writhed, casting her profile in varying depths of black.

She smiled. “Someone was tired.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I guess.”

The house was shadowy and cool.

“It’s snowing,” she said, eyes returned to her book.

I looked behind me. “Jesus,” I said, transfixed by the vast white on the other side of the window. “How long was I asleep?”

She shrugged. “A few days. It hasn’t been snowing this whole time, though. Just since yesterday.”

Yesterday?

I swung my legs off of the couch and stared at her. She caught my gaze, momentarily, before the shadow cast by her favorite candle swelled again.

“What,” she said from somewhere in the shadow. “I wanted to finish my book. But your friend K came over instead.”

The shadow receded from her face and she was still smiling.