"Bet he doesn't remember," said Dougie. He explained to Rainie. "Dad forgets his age all the time."

"Do not," said Mr. Spaulding.

"Do so," said Dougie. It was obviously a game they had played before.

"Do not, and I'll prove it. I was born in 1948, which was three years after World War II ended, and five years before Eisenhower became president, and he died at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which was the site of a battle that was fought in 1863, which was 127 years ago last July, and here it is November which is four months after July, and November is the eleventh month and so I'm four times eleven, forty- four."

"No!" the kids both shouted, laughing. "You turned forty-two in May."

"Why, that's good news," he said. "I feel two years younger, and I'll bet Ms. Johnson does too."

She couldn't help but smile.

"Here we are," he said.

It took her a moment to realize that without any directions, he had taken her right to the garage with the outside stair that led to her apartment. "How did you know where to take me?"

"It's a small town," said Mr. Spaulding. "Everybody knows everything about everybody, except for the things which nobody knows."

"Like Father's middle name," said the girl.

"Get on upstairs and turn your heat on, Ms. Johnson," said Mr. Spaulding. "This is going to be a bad one tonight."

"Thanks for the ride," said Rainie.

"Nice to meet you," said Dougie.

"Nice to meet you," echoed the girl.

Rainie stood in the door and leaned in. "I never caught your name," she said to the girl.

"I'm Rose. Never Rosie. Grandpa Spaulding picked the name, after his aunt who never married. I personally think the name sucks pond scum, but it's better than Ida, don't you agree?"

"Definitely," said Rainie.

"Rosie," said Mr. Spaulding, in his warning voice.

"Good-night, Mr. Spaulding," said Rainie. "And thanks for the ride."

He gave a snappy little salute in the air, as if he were touching the brim of a non-existent hat. "Any time," he said. She closed the door of the car and watched them drive away. Up in her room she turned the heater on.

During the night the snow piled up a foot and a half deep and the temperature got to ten below zero, but she was warm all night. In the morning she wondered if she should go to work. She knew Minnie would be there and Rainie wasn't about to have Minnie decide that her "new girl" was soft. She almost left the apartment with only her jacket for warmth, but then she thought better and put on a sweater under it. She still froze, what with the wind blowing ground snow in her face.

At the cafe the talk was that four people died between Chicago and St. Louis that night, the storm was so bad. But the cafe was open and the coffee was hot, and standing there looking out the window at the occasional car passing by on the freshly plowed road, Rainie realized that in Louisiana and California she had never felt as warm as this, to be in a cafe with coffee steaming and eggs sizzling on the grill and deadly winter outside, trying but failing to get at her.

When Mr. Spaulding came into the cafe for his lunch just after one o'clock, Rainie thanked him again.

"For what?"

"For saving my life yesterday."

He still looked baffled.

"Giving me a ride up from the river."

Now he remembered. "Oh, I was just doing Minnie a favor. She never thought you'd stay a week, and here you've stayed for more than a month already. She would have reamed me out royal if we had to dig your corpse out of a snowdrift."

"Well, anyway, thanks." But she wasn't saying thanks for the ride, she realized. It was something else. Maybe it was the kids in the back seat. Maybe it was the way he'd talked to them. The way he'd kept on talking with them even though there was an adult in the car. Rainie wasn't used to that. She wasn't used to being with kids at all, actually. And when she did find herself in the presence of other people's children, the parents were always shushing the kids so they could talk to her. "I liked your kids," said Rainie.

"They're OK," he said. But his eyes said a lot more than that. They said, You must be good people if you think well of my kids.

She tried to imagine what it would have been like, if her own parents had ever been with her the way Mr. Spaulding was with his children. Maybe my whole life would have been different, she thought. Then she remembered where she was -- Harmony, Illinois, otherwise known as the last place on Earth. No matter whether her parents were nice or not, she probably would have hated every minute of her childhood in a one-horse town like this. "Must be hard for them, though," she said. "Growing up miles from anywhere like this."

All at once his face closed off. He didn't argue or get mad or anything, he just closed up shop and the conversation was over. "I suppose so," he said. "I'll just have a club sandwich today, and a diet something."

"Coming right up," she said.

It really annoyed her that he'd shut her down like that. Didn't he know how small this town was? He'd been to college, hadn't he? Which meant he must have lived away from this town sometime in his life. Have some perspective, Spaulding, she said to him silently. If your kids aren't dying to get out of here now, just give them a couple of years and they will be, and what'll you do then?

As he sat there eating, looking through some papers from his briefcase, it began to grate on her that he was so pointedly ignoring her. What right did he have to judge her?

"What put a bug up your behind?" asked Minnie.

"What do you mean?" said Rainie.

"You're stalking and bustling around here like you're getting set to smack somebody."

"Sorry," said Rainie.

"One of my customers insult you?"

She shook her head. Because now that she thought about it, the reverse was true. She had insulted him, or at least had insulted the town he lived in. What was griping at her wasn't him being rude to her, because he hadn't been. He simply didn't like to hear people badmouthing his town. Douglas Spaulding wasn't in Harmony because he never had an idea that there was a larger world out there. He was a smart man, much smarter than the job of smalltown accountant required. He was here by choice, and she had talked as if it was a bad choice for his children, and this was a man who loved his children, and it really bothered her that he had closed her off like that.

It bothered her so much that she went over and pulled up a chair at his table. He looked up from his papers, raised an eyebrow. "This a new service at Jack & Minnie's Cafe?"

"I'm willing to learn," said Rainie. "I'm not a bigot against small towns. I just sort of took it for granted that small towns would feel oppressive to kids because the small town I grew up in felt oppressive to me. If that's a crime, shoot me."

He looked at her in wonder. "I don't have an idea on God's Earth what you're talking about."

"A minute ago when you shut me down," she said, really annoyed now. "You can't tell me that shutting people down is so unimportant that you don't even remember doing it."

"I ordered my breakfast is all I did," said Spaulding.

"So you do remember," she said triumphantly.

"I just wasn't interested in continuing that conversation."

"Then don't shut a person down, Mr. Spaulding. Tell them that you don't appreciate what they said, but don't just cut me off."

"It honestly didn't occur to me that you'd even notice," he said. "I figured you were just making small talk, and the talk just got too small."

"I wasn't making small talk," said Rainie. "I was really impressed with your kids. It's a sure thing I was never that way with my father."

"They're good kids." He took another bite and looked down at his paper.