Becky stuffed the apron down the back of her jeans and there was her anger. Anger that Peter had done nothing to check on her this whole time. That he hadn’t been to see her once since the night she killed Rider and took chances with her own life by saving his dad’s. And seeing her anger made Peter’s all the easier to find. She went to Cooper now. She was his friend, his confidante and the keeper of his secrets. Becky glanced in the direction of the movie theatre as if to acknowledge that she knew he was working there now. She might even have had something to say about it. But whatever it was, she decided against it. Then she walked away. Peter watched her make her way down the street, but before he could decide if he should wait to see if she came back, he spotted his dad.

He was sat hunched over the front step of the barber’s shop where a red-and-white-striped signage pole was twizzling as madly as a candy cane in a hurricane. Snow had started to gather across the hood of his parka. He held a shovel in one hand. A soggy sandwich hung from the other. But he didn’t seem too troubled by either. He just sat there staring at the mounds of snow he’d cleared off the sidewalk.

Peter looked at the area directly beneath the barber’s window. It was so clear you could almost see the concrete now. He had no idea that his dad had taken a job shovelling snow. But then he hadn’t seen him since they’d settled in.

Peter flexed his fingers ready to count the days that had passed since their arrival. But the count stopped abruptly at his index finger. It’d only been two days. He gazed down the length of Mainstreet watching snow-dust snake across the middle of the road like smoke on the wind and wondered how it was even possible that so much time could pass in so little time.