Later, as he watched her across the table at the club, she turned to him and smiled in the dark. It was then that her face had shown that childlike happiness, and he had realized with an almost shocking surety, I’m falling for this girl. Falling hard. He had leaned across the table, sure that he would be shot down, but full of recklessness, and whispered, “I love you.”

To his surprise, she had replied frankly, with no hesitation. “I love you too.”

They had spent the night together, and a month later he had proposed.

A snowball exploded on the silver curve of the bumper right in front of his nose, and he was shocked out of his trance. Snow was in his hair and eyes, and as he shook it off, laughing, he heard her running across the driveway towards him.

“Where were you, soldier?” she asked. “I’ve been shouting at you for an hour, it seems like. Hank’s here.”

He looked up and saw Hank parking his rust-colored Cherokee near the U-Haul. David gave Helen a quick kiss and a hug and went to meet him.

As they sat at the kitchen table, David was reminded again of how much he liked the older man. Even Jessie, who played with her crayons on the kitchen floor as they talked, seemed to be listening with half an ear to their conversation, as if Hank’s slow drawl pleased her.

“I’ve got a cabin about five miles from here,” he said. “Good fishing in the pond out back, ice fishing, of course, in the winters. You ought to take a gander at it sometime.”

“Maybe I will.”

“Always welcome. That pond sure knows how to grow ’em, sure does. It ain’t much to look at, but that don’t mean nothin’. Fish don’t care much for looks.”

Hank had brought a six-pack of Molson Light, and they both sucked at their beers comfortably. “I guess you don’t have much company around here?” David asked.

“That depends. Used to have a good friend name of Joe Thibideau, worked in the station with Bobby. Hell—” he glanced down at Jessie to see if she had caught this blasphemy, then, deciding she hadn’t, kept on. “We used to go fishin’ ‘bout every weekend in the winters, when I was here. He was a decent guy all around. My old lady liked him a lot, my boy too. Say, Michael and Jessie, they might get along. Didn’t think about that. Mike’s about six now. I’ll have to drop by with him sometime.”

He seemed to have forgotten what they were talking about. “So what happened with Joe?” David asked.

“He went missing about a month ago now. I was one of ‘em that helped look, but we never found his body. Didn’t figure we would. There’s a lot of land out there to cover.”