She turned to face the square. There had been several fierce blizzards that winter, and the snow was piled so high around the perimeter that she could only see the American flag hanging like a frozen sheet on the pole beyond the squat, red brick bandstand. Part of her wished she were a kid again so that she could climb the snow bluffs and sled down the small berms on her mother’s vinyl placemats. She’d loved playing in the square until she’d overheard Roberta’s mom say that hooligans with nothing better to do hung out there. Sherri hadn’t wanted to be thought of as a bad kid, and she wasn’t, not with her mom to take care of. Unlike Roberta, she’d never had the luxury to misbehave. It was Roberta who ended up smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap wine at the picnic tables, Roberta who lost her virginity in the bandstand, Roberta whom their classmates thought of (respectfully) as a “bad kid.”

The businesses around the square were slowly limping to life. Giles was serving breakfast, and the air smelled of sausage and their famous cinnamon rolls. The desk lamp in the window of Haskell’s Insurance glowed green, and on the other side of the square, probably in front of the tavern, she could hear someone shoveling snow and ice from the sidewalk.

Marshall’s department store on the corner wouldn’t open until nine o’clock, the same time her interview was supposed to start, which was in, what … twenty-five minutes? Sherri checked the time again on her art deco antique watch. Like the bathing suit, it wasn’t exactly stolen. An old lady from Whitewater had brought it in for repair and never picked it up. After a year or so, her father had told Sherri she could keep it. Sherri didn’t generally like old things, but she loved that watch. It had a delicate gold chain for a band and an elongated, angular bezel that suddenly reminded her of the shape of her mother’s coffin. It was 8:38, and it took twenty minutes to get to Lake Geneva. Sherri began to hope that Roberta had overslept so that she could avoid this fool’s errand, but just then Roberta veered off Highway 15 at breakneck speed and pulled up in her rusted-out Chevy Chevelle. She came to a loud stop and reached across to unlock the passenger door.

“Think we’ll get there in time?” Sherri asked before getting in.

“We’re fine.” Roberta threw her cigarette out the window. “Let’s go. It’s just down the road a piece. Traffic in Milwaukee was the shits. Should have only taken half an hour to get here.”