When the funeral was almost over he went back behind the building with Jim, an old high school friend of hers, who had a joint rolled and ready to go. They took a few sweet tokes, hiding in the snow behind a large maple, and then began to talk.

“Her old man was a strange one,” Jim admitted, “and, yeah, there was some strange talk going around about her and him, but nothing that could be proved one way or another. Her mom had been horribly unhappy. There had been some trial separations and the like, so far as I can tell, but, still, talk is only talk, and I guess no one really knows.”

On the beach the next summer he thinks of several factors, his toes dug down beneath the warmth to the cold of night that is still there. He might have used real force, taken her out of the car, dragged her up the stairs to his apartment and forced her to stay; maybe with force of that kind she would have given into him eventually—the erotic elements opening up somehow. They’d wake to the cold room, the soft muffle of a half foot of snow over the rafters. He’d get up and go downstairs to get the store open, leaving her a note or something—begging, just plain begging forgiveness. Or else, down on his knees, he might have found the right way to ask her to forgive him for that one, tiny nudge (and it was a small push, maybe even accidental). Maybe the right question posed would have opened up the thing with her father like a knife through ripe fruit, and then she might have told him about it. Then she would’ve gone up to his room and lain with him, spending the night. He would’ve listened tenderly. He would have opened his heart to her story. There would’ve been snow heavy overhead and, outside, once the winds finally died down, the deep silence that draws everything near. In the morning her car would’ve been down in the street, beneath a blanket of white, and he would’ve helped her clear it off, sweeping the windows clean with the brush, kicking it off the fenders, and he would’ve pushed from behind until she was out in the street, giving her one last heave until the tires caught the bare pavement and she was on her way, safe and sound, heading back up toward the Mackinaw Bridge, which by then would have been clear, dry, white with salt, arching gracefully over the straights.