What We Carry in Winter

The gray had been creeping into Elena's temples for years, but it was the clumps falling into the sink that finally made her book the appointment. Fifty years old, and she was still running from the mirror.

"You want to keep it natural?" the stylist asked, fingers already sectioning the stubborn strands.

Elena caught her own gaze in the glass—exhausted eyes, the faint tremor in her hands she couldn't hide anymore. "No. Cover it all. Every last bit."

The salon was warm, smelling of chemicals and artificial vanilla. Outside, Chicago was buried under its third snowstorm of the month. Her mother was dying. Three states away, hospice nurses measuring morphine drops against hours, against breaths. Elena should be there. She'd told herself she was staying because of the tenure review, because someone had to cover Marcus's classes while he recovered from the bypass. But the truth sat heavier on her chest than the lie.

She wasn't running toward her career. She was running away.

Her phone buzzed on the counter. David. Again.

"You need to come home," he'd said yesterday. "Mom asked for you."

"I can't."

"Elena, you're going to regret this."

She already did. The regret lived in her throat like something swallowed wrong, a sharp stone she couldn't cough up.

The stylist's phone chimed too. She glanced at it, frowned.

"Everything okay?" Elena asked.

"My husband. He's a ranger at Yellowstone. They found a cub separated from its mother during the storm. He's been out all night trying to track her." She shook her head, depressed the nozzle. "Bears are something else, you know? They'll do anything for their young. Walk through fire, starvation, doesn't matter."

The heat of the dryer wrapped around Elena's head. She closed her eyes and saw her mother's hands—how they'd braided Elena's hair before kindergarten, how they'd trembled holding a teacup last Christmas, how they'd looked clutching at the bedsheets in the video David sent.

Her mother, who'd worked three jobs to send her to grad school. Who'd never complained once.

Elena stood up, hair foil-wrapped like a mummy, and grabbed her phone.

"Cancel the rest," she told the stylist. "I have to go."

"Go? But we're halfway through—"

"I know. I have to go."

She threw cash on the counter and ran to her car. The snow hit her face like judgment. She didn't care about the gray. She didn't care about tenure. She cared about what she would have to bear if she didn't make it in time, and that weight was finally heavier than her fear.

Some things you carry. Some things carry you. Love, she realized, was both.