The air had been cold for months now, December adds the sort of expectant chill that noses become accustomed to, the same way windshields do to frost.

Clara had noticed this storm coming since early that afternoon. She could almost taste it on her tongue or feel it in her throat, the antithesis of hot earl gray tea with lemon. Clara would hang her head out of the window and let her cheeks tingle with instinct, even though she had to twist her head out sideways and maneuver over the herbs she let sit on top of the sill to do it. She had smiled quietly to herself at this blue-white scent, knowing what it meant without ever watching the weather report. Already knowing that the snow would soon drift up in piles over peoples newspapers and refill peoples footprints inside fifteen minutes.

Others would be stocking up their pantries with Campbell’s chicken soup tonight, anticipating having to email out their next work day from home. And while others were doing this, Clara was already a hundred spins into her homemade basil and tomato cream stew that she made faithfully every snowstorm. One hundred and one spins and then two taps of the wooden spoon on the edge of the pot, and a small shrug to herself that spoke for itself. Just as it should be, the movement said.

At first Clara assumed the tapping was some magic echo of the same her spoon had vocalized, but then she realized that it was more than that. Clara peered out through her peephole, but instead of seeing the mirror image of the beige door that stood across the hall from her apartment, she saw a man’s coat and the muffled sounds of boots stomping and breath cursing. She leaned back from the brass doorknob as if it had burned her palms.

It wasn’t as if Clara didn’t speak. She asked for her regular black coffee with sugar at the corner newsstand and she always included certain “uh huh’s” when her Aunt Viv called. And, in Clara’s opinion, certain gestures spoke for themselves, had a voice of their own – her wooden spoon notwithstanding. A smile spoke just as well as a ‘thank you’ and a open hand just as well as a ‘please’. Certain sounds held a language to her like the steady chime of an empty tether ball chain on a playground meant vacancy. Or the fluttering scrape of a determined zipper in a dryer meant constancy.

Clara had a voice, it just didn’t speak.

The man at her door would not know that, but he knocked again, restlessly making sure her second guesses of not answering didn’t advance into thirds. Clara opened the door and peered out hesitantly.

“Is Jake in there?” the man asked as if Clara had him hidden inside her skirt.

Clara shook her head, but the man seemed unconvinced and skeptical.

“Really?” a small smile played on his lips, almost as if she had him hidden under her skirts. Clara blushed and shook her head again. Except there was also something she did not do, something she would normally have, instinctually would have done, but didn’t.

Clara didn’t look away; she opened her door wider as if to prove him wrong.

“I’m Eric,” he introduced warmly and he walked past Clara and began taking off his coat. Clara, further surprising herself, closed the door behind him, breathing in the scent of the snowy air clinging to his coat and something more, like starchy linen. Eric took off his coat and hung it over the dining room chair and looked around the room.

“You must be Clara.” She nodded. “Jake told me.”

And then Eric started talking. When Clara offered, inexplicably, her guest some soup, Eric talked at length about his mom’s tomato soup and how she used celery and how she would love Clara’s ceramic bowls. Clara laughed when Eric talked about the book he had just read about Indonesia and how certain places found yaks to be so spiritual that they used their dung for just about anything they could think of. When their metal spoons scratched at the tinted pink ceramic, Clara made Eric some coffee and he talked about how much he loved snow.

Not once did Eric mention that Clara had not said a thing. Nor did he seem annoyed or intrigued by it. And yet, he was talking to her, asking her opinions or noticing her lack of them in the way her eyebrows tugged upward to her hairline. He spoke; as if a moment didn’t pass without some element that made it remarkable. Just as Clara refrained from sharing, as if pointing out the magic might make it dissolve like the white sugar that purred as it hit the black coffee.

Perhaps it had just been that there was finally someone to share something with. Someone who noticed things the same way she did, in words or silence. As the snow fell in flat disks over her rooftop, it seemed the same.

“That’s a great sound,” Eric commented.