A few weeks earlier a wind had caught her. It had come on her suddenly when she was almost home. She heard a breeze at the top of Perma Hill, like an old man wheezing. It didn’t seem like anything at first but as she reached the crest of the hill she saw the snow-swirling fog. Louise couldn’t see the road anymore. It was like stepping into deep, white water. She drew a stuttering breath. A low wind hissed over her head and stung the backs of her legs. She took her hands out of her pockets and pulled her coat tighter around her waist. She tried to remember a story that Baptiste had told her about the cold and the Indians who had danced for good days to come, but her thoughts were confused. She had seen Baptiste in Dixon with the bossy white woman. He had attempted to approach Louise but the woman had tugged at his shirttail and he had given in to her. Baptiste’s eyes had been strange, the pale-rimmed eyes of a man who had lost sleep. He had become thin. He had become another man around this woman, and Louise’s grandmother had told her to forget him. It was best to let him go. But she could not forget the brutal slap of his hands, the numb scar at the crown of her skull. He had beaten her, and she could not forget him. She could not forgive him either and the thought of Baptiste nagged her. She looked down at her feet and tried to feel the rut of the road, but she could only feel her dry fingers curling up in the catalog paper. A slow burn.

She tried not to cry. She kept her eyes down. She tried to watch her feet and keep walking. Her wool coat scratched her back. There was a dryness in her nostrils that was beginning to sting. She could feel the sharp snow scrape her neck. She took her scarf off and her hair lifted away from her head and snapped silver lights. She couldn’t tie her scarf back on with her stiff fingers so she tucked the ends down into her coat. Louise wasn’t sure she was on the road. She couldn’t see anything familiar. The wind sprayed a fine sheet of snow over her. Her coat snapped at her knees. Then as suddenly as the storm had descended it lifted and Louise saw her grandmother’s house.