Brock green's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The last nail went in on a Tuesday morning, two weeks after the twins came home. Brock stepped back from the porch and looked at the roof line. The storm that had pounded the clearing for nine days had blown itself out overnight. Snow lay clean on the pitch. Two chimneys stood straight against a pale sky. He had built it by hand with borrowed tools, and it was done. He walked back to the rented red house and told Nova to put her coat on. She was feeding Pisces on the couch. Leo was asleep in the basket at her feet, no fever, no rattle in his chest, only the small even breath of a baby who had decided to stay. She looked at Brock's face and did not ask why. She wrapped both boys in the wool blankets her brother had brought over and carried Leo out to the sled. Brock carried Pisces. The path was short and the wind had died. He opened the front door and let her go in first. She stood in the main room and counted. Seven bedrooms. Five baths. A kitchen wide enough for a long table. A hearth already laid with kindling. She walked the hall and opened each door and did not speak until she reached the nursery at the end. He had painted the walls green and cut wooden dinosaurs from scrap pine and nailed them in a line above the two cribs. She touched one with her finger. "Two cribs in one room," she said. "On purpose." "They should share," Brock said. "For now. There's room for five more down the hall when we need it." She turned and looked at him. "Five more." "However many you want." She laid Leo in the left crib and Pisces in the right. Leo opened his eyes and looked at his brother through the slats. Pisces stared back. Neither of them cried. Nova pulled the blanket up to Leo's chin and stood there a long time. Then she went to the hearth and struck the match herself. The kindling caught. Smoke pulled up the flue clean, no backdraft, no smoke in the room. Brock watched her feed the fire and understood that her job by the fire had just changed. It was her fire now, in her house, and she would keep it burning for a family that was going to grow. That night they slept in the new bedroom under a real roof for the first time. The wind stayed low. Brock lay awake and listened to the house settle around them. He had built what he promised. The arc of the winter had bent, and they had come through it with two sons alive and walls that would hold. But the house was empty of everything a house needs. No stores in the pantry. No woodpile stacked against the north wall. Only the fire Nova had lit, and a long winter still ahead of it.