No, actually, I could imagine him wanting children, small helpless things that he could love, that wouldn't laugh at his awkwardness or expect him to act in ways he didn't understand. I just couldn't imagine him wanting them enough to find someone to have them with. And certainly I could never imagine him abandoning his children to come to Low Ferry and live in the middle of nowhere.

I am certain that the village as a whole must have noticed that I was distracted and aimless in the next few days, my thoughts always elsewhere than the task at hand. I think it likely that they chalked it up to bad health and didn't dare ask me for fear I'd collapse again. Lucas was too busy to come to the shop, tutoring the boy and, according to some of the students, two other children as well. Exams were coming up, and the boy wasn't the only one worried about his grades.

At any rate, this deep in winter the village had bigger problems to deal with. There was snow to be shoveled and pavement to be salted. We had to fill evening hours normally spent watching television, as the signal was still out, and make sure we could keep our homes warm during the blackouts that came with the high winds. Christmas was coming, and there were decorations to be hung on the street and in the stores, not to mention plenty of shopping.

In a small community it's hard to keep Christmas gifts a secret. Carmen's boyfriend, in particular, was the talk of the town when he bought the one diamond ring in the little jewelery case at the department store, and asked me to make him a fake hollow book to hide it in when he gave it to her. I picked a copy of The Joy Of Cooking that had been gathering dust on the shelf since before I bought the shop. He thought that was pretty funny.

While I cut the middles out of pages and glued them together and sold books in-between tasks, the rest of the town was also paying a certain amount of attention to Sandra, of the infamous Bank Love Triangle, and what was being bought both by and for her. Nolan and Michael seemed to have declared some kind of cease-fire, but neither of them appeared to have been chosen or to have staked a permanent claim.

"Now, if she's buying a present for a boyfriend," Paula said to me one day in mid-December, "she's keeping it pretty general. She did buy a scarf yesterday."

"Nothing from the hardware store?" I asked.

"Don't tease."

"Well, what about Michael and Nolan? Either of them buying shiny toys a girl like Sandra would enjoy?" I asked.

"If they do, it wasn't in Low Ferry. Didn't Nolan ride up to Dubuque a little while ago for something-or-other?"

"Couldn't say," I said. "I know Michael went hunting last week, but it's not like he's going to give her an elk for Christmas."

"Did he shoot an elk?" She looked horrified. "Season ended in September!"

"Relax, Paula, I don't think he shot anything. Not really that surprising, this time of year," I said. "Hiya, kid," I called, as the boy entered the shop, eddies of snow following him inside.

"My cue to get back to work," Paula said. "Seeya, Christopher. Find out about that elk!"

"Elk?" Lucas asked, as he passed her on the way in. She gestured at me, and he gave me a confused look.

"Long story," I said. "Come in, defrost yourself. Buying today or just browsing?"

"Browsing," Lucas said, already hidden behind a shelf. "The boy wanted to come in – not that I didn't!" he added, leaning around briefly. The boy smirked at me.

"You buying?" I asked him.

"Maybe," he said, peering at the assortment of bookmarks in a little display on my counter.

"Christmas shopping?" I asked in a low voice.

"For Lucas," he whispered back.

"Get him this one," I said, pointing to a thin brass bookmark with a bent top that would clip over the edge of a page. He examined it, checked the price, and nodded. I put it quickly into a bag for him, took the cash he handed me, and passed him the change without so much as a jingle. Lucas was either indifferent to the silence from the front of the shop or studiously ignoring it because he knew exactly what we were up to.

"Lucas said he'd walk me far as the south junction towards home," he said, when we were finished. "Said you might want to come along."

"I can offer you dinner and a stiff drink of something," Lucas told me. He looked pale, and as anxious as he had the day I questioned him about the Harrison twins over lunch. I realized he was offering me the chance to hear a confession from him – those lies of omission he'd talked about. It didn't take me long to get my coat and turn the front-door sign to Closed.

The days are very short in winter, and darkness was already starting to creep up the horizon by the time we left the boy at his crossroads, heading south, and turned our own faces west. In a soft gray hat he'd bought in the village and the gray coat he'd bought with his masks, Lucas looked as though at any minute he might disappear into the snow and sky.

"You wanted to talk, I think," I said, as we walked.

"I wanted to," he agreed.

"Finding it kind of hard now?" I asked with a grin. He ducked his head.

"You..." he began, then stopped and started again. "You don't go to church."

"No," I said. "I like to sleep in."

"And you told Christopher the storyteller you don't believe in superstition," he continued.