The sleet-snow mix slanting through the frigid air stung Harry Mickelson’s cheeks as he stepped out into the darkness of the early morning onto the landing outside his second-floor apartment. He slammed the door behind him, making sure the lock caught. He could feel it in his forty-two-year-old bones that the coming winter would be a bad one. Of course, most winters in Superior were bad ones; he’d learned that much, the five years he’d lived here. He shrugged his shoulders to make sure he was as far into his coat as he could get, pushed his hat down lower on his head, and shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets, realizing he’d forgotten his gloves again. He wasn’t one who liked to retrace his steps, though, or waste time on regret: easier just to run the six blocks to the office.

He thundered down the wooden stairs to the backyard, avoiding patches of ice with quick feet like the athlete he’d once been. His loafers crunching in the shallow snow, he loped around the corner of the house and through the narrow side yard. Without a backward glance at the white clapboard house where he’d rented for the last two years, he veered onto the sidewalk and set an easy pace, the icy ore dust air burning his lungs.

He hadn’t run a block down the narrow street through the close-set, stout houses when his knee began to ache. Another block, it felt like little men were pounding his knee with silver sledgehammers, mining for his blood. He had to slow to a walk. He cursed under his breath, limping a little. At least Uncle Sam had known what he was doing when he’d classified Harry 4-F. Harry shrugged deeper into his coat, dug his hands deeper in his pockets. Funny how a guy could still be feeling the effects of a high school football game almost twenty-five years later.

Despite the pain in his knee, Harry didn’t mind these early morning walks; he liked to imagine that in each house with yellow light glowing through the curtains there was a housewife in her bathrobe boiling the coffee, getting ready to face the day. It seemed to him that every one of the houses in his neighborhood was home to people who believed in working hard and, like him, not wasting time on regret. Maybe that was why he wasn’t as restless here as he’d been in every other town he’d ever lived.

He supposed one could call it a series of failed love affairs, his relationships with the small towns where he had lived. Pine Rapids, for starters, his hometown. And then, after college, Little Chute for two years, Osseo for one, Alexandria for four. Then three years in Moose Lake, one in Pine City, and four in Stone Harbor.