I was quiet a moment.

"I don't know, Riles. We sorta had a fight about something. I said some things I shouldn't have. He did, too, I guess. I think we were kind of in a cooling-off period ...

He did it before I could get back with him."

I realized I hadn't called her Riles in a long time. I wondered if she had noticed.

"What was the fight about, the girl that got cut in two?"

"Why do you say that? Did he tell you about it?"

"No. I just guessed. She had him wrapped around her finger, why not you? That's all I was thinking."

"Riley, you've got-Look, this isn't good for you to be dwelling on. Try to think about the good things."

I almost broke down and told her what I was pursuing. I would have liked to give her something to ease her pain.

But it was too early.

"It's hard to do that."

" I know, Riley. I'm sorry. I don't know what to tell you."

There was a long silence on the line between us. I heard nothing in the background. No music. No TV. I wondered what she was doing in the house alone.

"Mom called me today. You told her what I was doing."

"Yes. I thought she should know."

I didn't say anything.

"What did you want, Jack?" she finally asked.

"Just a question. It's kind of out of left field but here it is. Did the cops show you or give you back Sean's gloves?"

"His gloves?"

"The ones he was wearing that day."

"No. I haven't gotten them. Nobody asked me about them."

"Well, then, what kind of gloves did Sean have?"

"Leather. Why?"

"Just something I'm playing with. I'll tell you about it later if it amounts to anything. What about the color, black?"

"Yes, black leather. I think they were fur-lined."

Her description matched the gloves I had seen in the crime scene photographs. It didn't really mean anything one way or the other. Just a point to check, one duck put in the row.

We talked for a few minutes more and I asked . if she wanted to have dinner that night because I was coming out to Boulder, but she said no. After that we hung up. I was worried about her and hoped the conversation-just the human contact-would raise her spirits. I contemplated dropping by her place anyway, after I was done with everything else.

As I passed through Boulder I could see snow clouds forming along the tops of the Flatirons, I knew from growing up out there how fast it could come down once the clouds moved in. I hoped the company Tempo I was driving had chains in the trunk but knew it was unlikely. At Bear Lake I found Pena standing outside the ranger shack talking with a group of cross-country skiers who were passing through. While I waited I (walked out to the lake. I saw a few spots where people had cleared away the snow down to the ice. I tentatively walked out on the frozen lake and looked down into one of these blue-black portals and imagined the depths below. I felt a slight tremor at my center. Twenty years earlier my sister had slipped through the ice and died in this lake. Now my brother had died in his car not fifty yards away. Looking down at the black ice I remembered hearing somewhere that some of the lake fish get frozen in the winter but when the thaw comes in spring they wake up and just snap out of it. I wondered if it was true and thought it was too bad people weren't the same way.