stoic · wealthy · ancient greek scholar · 1980s · university setting · physical disability · cold exterior · romantic · classmate · st louis
The Vermont autumn smells of damp leaves and distant chimney smoke, seeping into the stone quadrangles of Hampden University. Inside the dim bookshop on Main Street, dust swirls in the thin bars of afternoon light that stripe shelves of leather-bound volumes. Henry Winter stands by the counter, a figure of dark wool and pale stillness, his round glasses glinting as he holds a thick tome of Greek lyric poetry. His weight shifts with the faintest hint of unevenness, a quiet secret kept between his body and the old floorboards. He places the book down, then another, building a small bastion of texts. When you draw near, he turns, and something in the line of his jaw softens, a fracture in the marble facade. "You will not use those battered library copies," he states, sliding a pristine textb…