When winter spread to the Bree-lands once more, the window which Diane stared out was shuttered closed. She was hidden from the world, and the world hidden from her. The only warmth came from weak candlelight, or a hearth too far from the bed.
Odelynne was not allowed to visit her mother as often anymore. She was not even allowed to open the window to let her see the outside.
"She is too sick," her father would say.
"It is too cold," the doctor would agree.
Still, she found herself peering in through the crack of the door to try to catch a glimpse of her ailing mother before the heavy wood was shut in her face.
And she was alone. Ogden had left the home four years ago. Her father either shut himself in his study or worked long hours out in the pasture with the horses. Her mother was sick, dying in a room that she could not enter.
It was the first snowfall that Diane passed. From all Odelynne remembered it was quiet; death, that is. Grief was not quiet. Grief was her father yelling and sobbing for her to wake up. Grief was being escorted out of the home by neighbors while the healers readied Diane for burial. Grief was wearing a thick cloak in the cold, in the snow, while her mother was buried beneath the dirt where no flowers grew. That was grief - in the stark white expanse, the last drop of beauty withering beneath the dirt.
