Gable had taught me what an open one is worth.

And I had decided, somewhere in the snow with my dying son in my arms, which of the two of them I was going to spend the rest of my life being.

The storm had passed.

The winter was over.

And every door I cared about, in the whole bright house behind me, was standing open — to my son, to the old man in his cottage, to a father learning how to be one, to the warm and honest and hard-won life that was, at last and for good, entirely and unconditionally my own.