““He thought that she looked like Winter; meaning both the girl he had once known and the season. He had always believed that winter's beauty deepened further into the season, when the memory of fall and the promise of spring were stripped away and there was nothing to do but accept the day-in, day-out reality of what winter entailed. This was what he thought when he looked at her: that the embattled woman before him was a wonder to behold, and, as much as he wished he might have spared her the pain of the last eleven years, it contributed to her spellbinding presence.””
