I knew that smile. I knew who Paul Goode looked like, more than he did me or the snowshoer. But I was quiet; I just drove the car. My uncles and Elliot Barlow had not seen my ghosts. They’d not met the snow shoveler in that black-and-white photograph; they’d not seen the Aspen of my dreams, or of my nightmares.

“Paul Goode doesn’t look like a very young George Raft, no matter what my father says,” the little English teacher said.

“Not even if George Raft were really handsome,” I pointed out.

“No matter what my mother says,” Elliot added.

I couldn’t tell them that I thought I’d seen Paul Goode, in documentary black and white, when he was only fourteen and he’d been shoveling snow—when he’d cleared the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Jerome. He was about the age he’d been when he might have met my mom, when he was just some kid who wasn’t shaving—a no-strings-attached kid who couldn’t take his eyes off Little Ray. How could I have told them that? I didn’t know that for a fact, and they’d never seen the young snow shoveler—or so I thought.

In the Franklin, when the houselights came on—after the end credits for The Wrong Car had rolled—I’d told my uncles that Nora and Em thought I looked like the getaway driver.

“You’re not an Angel of Death, Adam,” Uncle Johan had assured me.

“Adam has the same eyes,” Uncle Martin said.

“You look more like your mom, Adam,” Uncle Johan said.

A good-looking woman had overheard us. She was my mom’s age—she’d been in the row behind us, but she was making her way to the aisle alongside us. “Let me see your eyes, Adam,” she said. When I looked at her, she asked me if I could smile. Under the circumstances, I suppose my smile was shy and childlike. I think I was more innocent than most eighteen-year-olds.

The attractive older woman spoke directly to my uncles, but she kept glancing at the snowshoer. “The kid has Paul Goode’s eyes and his smile—he’s going to get in a lot of trouble,” the woman said. “And who are you?” she suddenly asked the snowshoer. Before Elliot could answer her, she said, “You and the kid are definitely related.”

“I’m Adam’s stepfather—we’re not related,” Mr. Barlow told her pleasantly.

The good-looking woman was now annoyed with all of us. “He looks like he could be your father, kid,” she told me, pointing to the little English teacher. She was walking away from us, disappearing into the theater lobby—like a lost noir character from The Wrong Car. She was returning to the movie, I was imagining, when I felt Uncle Martin’s hand on my shoulder.