"I noticed," Rowan said, not unkindly.
Near the Christmas tree, Ned Ashcroft reappeared with the camera hanging quiet against his coat. He was not skating now. He stood with both feet planted, watching the lights as if checking them for truth.
"You again," Theo said.
"I never left," Ned said. "I just gave you the dignity of thinking you were alone." He nodded at Rowan. "You're a skater. Real one. The blades give you away even when you try to stroll."
"I coach," Rowan said.
"Same family," Ned said. He hesitated, then seemed to decide that December was too short for long approaches. "My wife skated here. Not professionally. Recreationally, the way people do when they want joy without a scorecard. She died six years ago in March. Every December I come back with this camera and I take one frame that feels like it belongs to the living. I don't sell them. I don't post them. Lottie lets me leave a print in the booth for a week if the people in it want it. Most don't come back. That's fine. The point isn't possession. The point is proof that the rink still makes people hold each other like the ice means it."
Rowan looked at him for a long moment. The colored bulbs painted his glasses in tiny reds and greens. "That's not cartoon," she said quietly.
"I should hope not," Ned said. "Cartoon is for people who haven't had to learn the difference." He tapped the camera once. "Thursday. Ask Lottie. If you decide the frame is none of my business, tell her to toss the contact sheet. I won't be offended. I've been tossed before."
He walked toward the food cart, bought nothing, and stood in the steam as if warmth were a conversation.
Theo watched him go. "I like him more than I expected to like a man who yelled at us to hold a pose."
"He didn't yell," Rowan said. "He insisted. There's a difference."
They put the skates back on because leaving the night unfinished felt like a kind of cowardice neither of them wanted to claim yet. Theo's second attempt at the ice was less elegant than his first disaster and somehow more sincere. Rowan stayed close without making a show of spotting him. When he wobbled, she offered a hand. When he found a stretch of balance, she let him keep it.
"You're thinking very loudly," she said after a lap.
"I'm thinking about Minneapolis," Theo said. "And about last April."
Rowan's blades hissed. "Ah."