She drove west in February. Danny rode with her as far as Cheyenne, and then, because it seemed foolish to stop there, as far as Salt Lake, and then, because a person should not cross the desert alone, all the way. The road atlas sat open on the dashboard the whole way, the yellow line under her finger. HERE, KIDDO.
* * *
On the afternoon before Christmas, 1990, a red Mustang coupe was parked at the curb in front of number 27 Holloway Lane, in the place where a wood-paneled station wagon had once stood, with California plates and a bumper sticker for a boatyard in San Pedro and a dusting of new Ohio snow on its hood.
The woman who got out of it carried two wrapped presents, one silver and one red. She was twenty-nine, and her name had been in the end credits of four motion pictures, very small, which her mother had seen at the Larkfield Commons Cinema eleven times between them, staying each time until the lights came up so that she could read it out loud. The man who came around the car behind her wore a long black overcoat and, for the first time in his life, a hat. Rosemary had knitted it.
They had gone four steps toward the porch when the snowball hit him in the back of the head.
He stood there with snow sliding down inside his collar and closed his eyes.
"Joey," he said.