Circular love quote lettering

The pass closed on Tuesday, so the last of the carters are bedded down in our stable loft, and Mrs Pryce is on her third pot of barley broth for the men who came up from the valley with nothing but their coats. I have counted the candles twice. We have eleven left, and the snow is still falling past the window like someone emptying flour from a sack. I am writing at the kitchen table, where the wood has gone soft under my elbows from years of your mother's bread dough.

You asked me on the step whether I thought you would be back before the thaw. I said I did not know, which was the truth, and you laughed the way you do when you are trying not to. I have been turning that over since. You once wrote that our love was a road with no good end, and I told you roads have to end somewhere, that is what makes them roads. We were both being clever. Neither of us was right.

Yesterday the boy from the smithy brought up the brass ring you left on the hook by the door, the one you cut from an old coach harness buckle. He had polished it until it shone. I have it on the sill now. When the lamplight catches it I can read the words you scratched inside, running round and round until the first word meets the last.

So here is my answer, written where you will find it. I will keep the fire lit and the door on the latch. Come home when the road lets you, and we will start again from wherever the snow leaves us.

Yours, always, Ada