Read Chapter 5: Snowshoe Sabotage

The snowshoes hung on iron hooks by the back door, two wooden frames laced with rawhide and neoprene webbing. Camille had seen them days ago and assumed they were decoration—rustic props for a chalet that wanted to look authentic. When Antoine pulled them down and handed them to her that morning, she noticed the wear pattern immediately: the bindings were scuffed, the frame worn smooth in places from years of use.

“You’re sure?” she asked, weighing one in her hand.

“Unless you prefer to stay inside and translate all day.” He was already strapping on his own pair, older and even more battered than the ones he offered her. A canvas rucksack sat by the door, packed with what she assumed were supplies they couldn’t get online.

The storm had broken overnight, leaving a crystalline world outside. The sky was a pale, watery blue, and the snow glittered so brightly it hurt to look at directly. Camille had been pacing the chalet like a caged animal for the better part of three days—her translation deadline chewing at the edges of her concentration, Antoine’s silence filling the rooms like weather.

“Fine,” she said, and sat down to strap the snowshoes over her borrowed winter boots.

The trail started behind the chalet and climbed gently through a stand of white birch. Antoine moved ahead of her with an economy she admired—no wasted motion, his poles planting with quiet certainty. Camille found her rhythm after the first hundred meters, the oversized shoes forcing her into a wider stance that worked muscles she didn’t know she had.

“How far to the village?” she called up to him.

“Four kilometers.”

“And you walk this every week?”

“In winter, yes. When the roads are passable, I drive.”

They fell back into silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable anymore—or at least, Camille had stopped trying to fill it. She was learning that Antoine’s quiet wasn’t rejection. It was simply his mode of being. He observed more than he spoke, and when he did speak, it was usually worth hearing.

She thought about the portrait in his studio. The half-finished face of his father. The way Antoine’s entire body had gone rigid when she’d pushed open that door. She’d apologized twice since then, and he’d accepted both times, but the subject was closed. She could feel it every time she looked at the studio door from across the living room.

“Your grandmother,” Antoine said unexpectedly. “The photo you showed me. She was in Lyon?”

“Paris. The fifteenth arrondissement. She lived in the same apartment for sixty years.” Camille smiled at the memory. “She used to say the city changed around her, but her windows never moved.”

“You wear her locket.”

Camille’s hand rose instinctively to her throat. The silver locket was warm against her skin, tucked beneath her sweater. “I don’t take it off.”

“I noticed.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. The trail leveled out, and they walked side by side for a stretch. The birch gave way to pines, their branches heavy with snow that occasionally sloughed off in soft cascades.

“What about you?” she asked. “No family photos?”

“My father passed. Six years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded once, which she understood to mean *thank you, and also please don’t push*.

They reached a small clearing where the trail forked. Antoine pointed to the right. “The village is that way. There’s a general store that carries most things. We’ll be quick.”

The next half hour passed in a blur of cold air and conversation about nothing—the quality of coffee in Quebec versus Paris, the best uses for maple syrup beyond breakfast, whether the snow would hold or melt by next week. Camille found herself almost enjoying it. The exercise had warmed her blood, and the landscape was so profoundly different from anything she knew that she felt briefly unmoored from her usual cares.

At the village, they gathered supplies: rice, canned tomatoes, fresh bread from the small bakery, a block of cheese that the owner insisted she taste before buying. Antoine handled the transactions in rapid Quebecois French, and Camille caught only fragments. She watched the way he softened with the shopkeeper, a woman named Chantal who teased him about hiding away all winter.

“Is she your girlfriend?” Chantal asked, nodding toward Camille.

Antoine shook his head, responding in French too quick for Camille to parse. Chantal laughed and handed Camille a small paper bag of cookies.

“For the translator,” she said, in clearer French. “To survive the cold.”

Camille murmured her thanks, uncertain what had just been communicated.

The return trip was easier. The sun sat higher, and the snow had begun to soften underfoot. Camille had grown confident in the snowshoes, stepping with less deliberation, trusting the oversized frames to hold her weight.

They were perhaps a kilometer from the chalet when she felt it: a subtle shift beneath her right foot. Not a slip—a loosening.

The strap snapped.

It happened without warning. One moment the binding was secure around the toe of her boot, the next she felt the frame swing free, the webbing slack against the sole. A sharp crack echoed through the pines as the frame hit a buried root.

“Wait,” she called out. “Something broke.”

Antoine turned, retracing his steps with quick, gliding strides. He knelt in the snow beside her, examining the broken binding. His fingers worked the torn strap, and she watched his face change—not anger, but something closer to confusion.

“This was new,” he said quietly.

Camille stared at him. “The strap?”

“I replaced the bindings in November. Before the first snow.” He held up the broken end. The material was frayed along the tear, but the edges were pale and clean at the break point. She’d worked with enough materials to know what a new tear looked like. This looked like… wear. But she remembered Antoine’s words clearly: the strap was new.

“Maybe a defect?” she offered.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he stood and scanned the surrounding trees, as if looking for something. For someone.

“Antoine?”

“We’re not far,” he said, but his voice had lost its earlier warmth. He unclipped his own bindings and crouched. “I’ll carry the shoes. We’ll walk back.”

“That’s a kilometer in deep snow. You can’t—” She stopped. He was already on his knees, untying his boots to hand them to her. “No. Absolutely not. We’ll figure something out. I can walk carefully.”

“In snowshoes that are broken?”

“I can use the poles to balance. If I keep my weight to the edges—”

“Camille.” His voice cut her off. “You don’t know this terrain. There are drifts up to your waist between here and the chalet. You’ll sink, and I can’t carry you through that.”

“So you’ll walk barefoot?”

“I’m used to it.”

She stared at him. He was entirely serious. His feet were already exposed to the cold, his socks darkened at the toes where the snow pressed through the fabric.

“This is insane,” she said.

“Probably.”

They stood there, and she became aware of the silence around them. No birds. The wind had died. Only the creak of branches settling under their load of snow.

“Back home,” she said slowly, “we would call this gallantry. And we would argue about it and then hold it over the other person forever.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

He waited, and she realized she was going to let him do this. The broken strap was a problem, and he had chosen to solve it by giving her his shoes. The simplicity of his decision was infuriating and humbling in equal measures.

She took the boots he offered and removed her snowshoes. Their hands brushed briefly in the exchange, and she felt the chill of his skin.

“Don’t make it weird,” he said.

“I wasn’t.”

“You’re making it weird.”

She didn’t answer, but when they started moving again—her wearing his snowshoes, him walking ahead of her in boots that were quickly becoming soaked—she found herself watching the back of his neck. The skin there was red from the cold and the effort. Every few steps he paused, checking the trail ahead, and she began to understand what she hadn’t before: this wasn’t gallantry. It was practicality wrapped in unwelcome care.

By the time the chalet appeared through the trees, Camille was breathing hard and her calves were screaming. Antoine went straight to the mudroom, stripping off his wet socks and boots with clenched jaw. Camille sat on the bench and unlaced his snowshoes, setting them carefully against the wall.

“I’ll replace the strap,” she said. “Whatever it costs.”

“It’s not about the strap.” He was bent over his feet, rubbing life back into his toes. When he looked up, his expression was unreadable. “I want to know why it broke.”

He picked up the severed end of the binding and turned it over in his fingers. The morning light fell across the cut—because it was a cut, she could see it now. Clean. Precise. A blade, not a weakness in the material.

Someone had cut his strap.

Camille looked out the window at the trail behind them, thick with unbroken snow. There were no tracks except their own.

But there could have been. Days earlier, before the last storm. Someone could have stood in the trees and sliced through the binding, expecting it to snap under the weight of whoever wore those snowshoes.

Not Antoine.

Her.

“Antoine,” she said slowly, “who else knows I’m here?”

He didn’t answer. But his silence was louder than anything he could have said.