And she gently called to her husband and asked him if he was okay and said that he seemed on edge.

And Phil apologized and said he was on edge. Because work had been a lot lately. There was a lot going on—and wrong—at Aroostook Pellets, the wood pellet plant in Masardis that Phil owned and ran. The company was still rebuilding from a fire last summer that had destroyed one of the storage silos. And oil prices were low—cheaper than pellets, currently. So wood pellets weren’t as popular a fuel source as they had been, so sales were down. Way down. And Phil was starting to worry that the business he had built was going to fail.

“Well, try to just … you know, be here now,” said Marci gently. “And let that all go for a little while. So we can have some fun.”

“Yeah.”

And then Phil apologized for thinking about work so much lately.

And then he apologized for being late for their date—he had gotten hung up at work, as usual. And Marci told him not to worry about it and said that she understood and then skated away from him, because she really didn’t understand. But now wasn’t the time to let him know that she didn’t understand. And she wondered if there would ever be a right time to say that she didn’t understand. Because there was so much she didn’t understand lately.

Phil watched Marci skate away. And really wanted to smoke a cigarette. But he didn’t have any cigarettes, because Marci had made him quit.

So he just watched his wife skate for a while.

And then he found himself staring out across the lake, past the illuminated makeshift ice rink, and into the darkness. He was lost—not in thought (because he wasn’t thinking), but in time and space. So he didn’t hear Marci when she called to him.

“Phil!”

Phil was looking her way but he wasn’t responding.

“Phil!” Marci called again.

“Huh?” asked Phil, shaking himself out of his daze.

“What are you doin’?”

“Oh, just…” And he didn’t finish his sentence, because he didn’t know what he had been doing. And he started skating over to his wife. “I don’t know.”

“Well, did you see that?” Marci was asking Phil if he had seen the impressive spin and jump that she had just done.

“What?”

“I just did a single axel!” A single axel is a jump in figure skating that requires a skater to jump up while skating forward, rotate one and a half times in the air, and then land skating backward. Marci used to be able to do double axels—but she hadn’t skated in years. So she was pretty happy she was able to execute a single axel. “I still got it, baby!” she boasted. “Did you see me?” she asked, skating over to Phil.

“Aah, sorry, I didn’t.”

“Oh.” Marci was surprised by how disappointed she was that Phil had missed her single axel.