Silent as the Snow

by Grace O'Neill

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               When winter break finally came, I packed my things into my car, filling it with duffel bags and boxes as if I had been evicted. I was supposed to go home for the season, but as I filled my thermos with coffee, I acknowledged a feeling that had been growing in my gut since I started college. 
                I didn't want to go home. 
                I couldn't go home. 
                Not yet. 
                So, I did something I'd never done before. I worried my mother—and I ran. 
                I drove my packed car past the city limits, heading towards home, but right before the town sign, I turned onto a small highway that took me west. I drove past the forest until I found the fields—fields that covered the flat expanses of the continent's landlocked center. I felt so small in those never-ending fields, like a farm mouse weaving through the corn stalks, safely hidden away. I drove beneath the gray winter canopy of clouds until I found a stretch of road with a flat shoulder.
                Flanked by soybean fields and no more than an hour away from home, I parked the car on the side of the road, and I stayed there, watching the clouds darken, feeling the atmosphere change. The rest of the day drifted away with the clouds. I sat reclined in the driver's seat and looked up through the sunroof. I knew after the first day, after the first few calls, my family would come looking for me. I left them a note in my apartment.  
                “I'm okay.” I didn't know what else to say—well, I didn't know what else I wanted to say.
                I hardly slept that night, afraid of being robbed or kidnapped, alone on the side of a country road. So I sat awake—not thinking much of anything and feeling much less afraid. The next day was much the same: quiet, still, alone, peaceful. I found for the first time in a year, I wasn't really thinking about anything. I was feeling a whole lot, but I think feeling is easier without thoughts. Rain fell as the morning passed, heavy and loud, and the sky became a different shade of gray. The silence was filled with the small rattles of raindrops, though it still felt quiet. Snow would follow—it was somewhere in those clouds already.
                Around midday, a car pulled up behind me. A familiar blue sedan. 
                I watched it from the rearview. It sat for a moment, the headlights shining bright, before Clark finally climbed out, running to my passenger side with a coat over his head, trying to hide from the rain. I unlocked the door and let him in. As he leaned back in his seat, catching his breath, I grabbed a blanket from the back seat and mourned the quiet for the short time it remained. 
                But Clark didn't speak. He watched me carefully for a long while—sad but not pitying. I didn't turn to look at him, I didn't explain. I leaned back in my seat and watched the ripples and splashes on the glass. I don't know what my brother saw that put him at ease, but eventually, he looked forward to the road and reclined his own seat, joining me as the rain turned into snow.
               We listened as the rain’s calming rattle puttered out, swallowed by the silence of the snow. For the first time since that day, there was no awkward pity, no straining intensity in the air. For the first time since the funeral, I could have cried without being alone. I did—silent and slow. Just like the snow. I didn't need to look to know Clark did, too.
               When my tears had dried and left my cheeks feeling cool, I sat up, poured the coffee from my thermos into two mugs I had in a box, and handed one to Clark. It was the best I could do to thank him for not forcing me out of that rare little moment of peace. My mind got lost in the untamable rhythm and pattern of snowfall. With it gone, my body relaxed, my tongue loosened, and the lump in my throat receded just enough to talk.
                “Are they worried?” 
                A stupid question, I thought. But I also thought I knew the answer, so maybe it wasn't.
                Clark hummed. “Yes and no. They know you're alive and that you're well. It's your heart they're worried about. Mom more than Dad.”
                “Why not, Dad?”
                Clark shrugged. “Because Dad's been here before, done this before. We did something like this after my sixteenth birthday. Went to a beach a ways down the coast and sat. Cried a little, too.”
                “I thought you were touring colleges.”
                “That's what we told you.”
                Silence lapsed between us, my mind much busier than before.
                “Is that why you were always close with Dad?”
                “It certainly played a part.” Clark exhaled slowly. “I hope you two grow closer now. You were always so much like Mom and Grandma that he wasn't sure what to do. You never seemed to need him the way I did.” He looked at me with a bitter smile. “But you've just become a member of our very unfortunate club.”
               We both laughed at that.
               The afternoon passed with little conversation. At some point, I turned on the car to stop the cold from penetrating its metal shell even more.
                “How's the hospital?” I ventured as we ate something akin to dinner.
                “I quit.”
                “Really? When?”
                Clark laughed at my shock. “A couple weeks ago.”
                He was so unbothered by my not knowing, by my failure to stay in contact.
                “Why? I thought you loved nursing.”
                “I do, but a hospital is an environment you need to have a tolerance for.” He took a sip of water, continuing as he screwed the cap back on. “When breaking down in your car for up to half an hour after work becomes a part of your daily routine, you should take it as a sign that you don't have that tolerance.”
                “What now?”
                “I'm moving back home. We'll see what happens then.”
                “Are you going to be okay?”
                Clark smiled a little. “I’ll figure it out. The sheer quantity of relief I feel is enough to know I made the right choice.”
                I smiled at his optimism and adjusted my blanket. The snow covered the sunroof now. I closed my eyes and pictured the stars out past the layer of snow, beyond the thick clouds.
                “What about you?” Clark asked, initiating conversation for the first time that day. “How do you like school? Studying history?”
                “I don't know. I feel like I should, but I don't.”
                Clark nodded, frowning a little before looking out at the white fields. “Tucker, you know you don't have to go to college if you don't want to.”
                I stole a quick sideways glance at him. Clark sat facing forward, his head turned towards the passenger window. I looked back at the covered windshield.
                “Tucker, your life—It took a turn few people your age share, losing someone so important to you. You're struggling with parts of life that most people won't see until they've grown old. It's changed you, aged you. You don't have to want the same things as other people. You already have experience and wisdom that’s usually gained only with time.”
                I looked down at my hands and the scars left by the shattered windshield glass, and for a moment, I could see the blood and the bruises.
                “People won't understand.”
                “They don't have to.” 
                Clark finally looked at me, and I understood why he hadn't before. It was scary to be seen during moments like that. 
                “Just know I'll support you—Whatever you do. Even if I don't understand.”