The morning I met Cap Nicks, I walked with weary legs from the building into the frosty December air. All night long I had waged my battle with the patient, patient darkness, working all the while, and then emerged into the sunshine filled with avid skiers marching down the snow-­packed sidewalks, skis rest­ing on shoulders, looking far too active, healthy, and lively for eight o’clock in the morning. I remember watching their parade, feeling exhaustion leaden in every cell, thinking that a cup of hot chocolate or even coffee would sit well with me.

Instead of turning left, to go down the street and home to my basement apartment, I turned right and went up toward Main Street, to a popular little breakfast spot.

I should have known better. The line of tourists waiting for breakfast wound out the door and down two shops. It is the visitor season, Angelina, I told myself. It was a hard concept, that of seasonal popu­lace, and I was unaccustomed to it.

As I stood there, I realized that coffee or hot chocolate was not really the issue. What I wanted was companionship, I wanted to be with someone inter­esting. Anything to keep me from going home to an empty apartment.

The loneliness was suddenly overwhelming. I felt a need to share with someone the terrors of the night, the confusion about my past that strangled my thoughts. I needed someone to talk to, to be with. I needed to learn not just the definition of the word remorse, but to see how other people lived with it. And remorse wasn’t the only word I didn’t under­stand. Altruism was another. So were compromise, and sacrifice. All those social words.

Loneliness wrapped around me like a leper’s shroud. There was no one for me. No one but Boyd, and he was impossible. Someday, though, someday I would return to Boyd, someday when I could hold my head up and be clean.

I kept walking, past the warehouses, beyond the service entrance of the shopping mall. I heard my boot heels on the frozen ground and on the hard-­packed snow, on the ice and even on the pavement, but it didn’t sound the same. It sounded low.

The air was crisp and cold and my nose began to run. I shoved my hands deep into my pockets, where one shredded an old Kleenex and the other toyed with a penny and a smooth pebble. The sun was bright as it reflected off the snow, and I stopped for a moment, letting sadness and loneliness mix with my exhaus­tion. I kicked through the soot-­blackened plow bank at the side of the road and felt sorry for myself.

I felt like giving up. Life was just too hard. I had to fight the darkness and do it all alone, and it was too much, it was too hard, I felt used up.