Neither of them moved to stop it. The hiss went on, soft and even, like snow. Lena was sitting on the stool with the atlas open in her lap and both hands pressed flat on the map, as if the country might blow away, and she was crying so hard now that her shoulders shook, and Danny reached over and pressed STOP, and then he did the only thing there was to do, which was to put his arms around her. She turned her face into the front of his coat, into the place where her snowball had hit, and held on.
They stayed like that for a long time.
"He didn't tell her," she said finally, into the wool. "He never told her. He had a heart thing and he didn't tell my mother and he went out here in January and he—"
"I know."
"She thinks it was the car. She thinks it was you."
"I know," Danny said. "I know she does."
She pulled back and looked up at him. Her mascara had run in two dark lines and she did not care.