She has gone out on another walk, though I know she isn’t walking. She is smoking, and I should be annoyed, but I smile; smoking cigarettes is her own little form of rebellion. Against me, against society, against warning labels. And she deserves it; she deserves to pretend she is making her own decisions. She isn’t a smoker, not a serious one. She started on our camping trip the summer before college and always had a pack when she came to visit after that. It was her way of feeling separate from me, and while I occasionally protested or spouted off health facts, I was inwardly pleased that she was pretending to be something she wanted to be, even if it made her lips taste different and left an unpleasant stench in her hair.

I was by the window when she came inside, unraveling some piece of technology for sheer pleasure. Every time she walked through our front door and hung her umbrella on the hook on the wall and called for me wildly, peaking around corners to identify my location, I remembered how sad our life had once been, and how glad I was to be home, at home with her forever. As she slept beside me that night I fingered the palm of her hand, swirling secret messages in the creases of her skin. I kissed each finger one by one, even on her right hand where her fingers reeked of secret smoke. I had made it home, home to Chicago, back to the woman I love, the woman I have always loved, and I feel asleep that night knowing I would never let her go, despite the smoke and the snow outside.