Seventh Spring

Curls of white steam that drifted from a cradled mug and over Sarah’s fingers dissipated into the chilled darkness of an unheated living room. Embers crackled in a wood stove, the only source of warmth in this sixth winter since onset of the reversal. Cambridge was a distasteful memory still, eight years after her dismissal. She felt as fragile as one of the glass flowers exhibited at the university’s museum, and as breakable.

April arrived with weather that seemed to mock lengthening days with temperatures that seldom rose above zero. Her supply of firewood was almost exhausted and the food she stored in September was running low. She stared at the glass specimen on the kitchen table. Galanthus nivalis, the snowdrop, her favorite from Harvard’s collection, stolen on her last day as professor of botany.

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