The wind picked up, banged through the trees, sent branches flying.

She trudged forward, one light amid dozens spread out through the glowing blue-white-black forest, pinpricks of yellow searching, searching … she heard Mr. Walker’s voice call out, yelling Matthew’s name so often he started to sound hoarse.

“There! Up ahead!” someone yelled.

And Mr. Walker yelled back, “I see him.”

Leni plunged forward, trying to run through the deep snow.

Up ahead, she saw a shadowy lump … a person … kneeling by the side of a frozen river in the moonlight, head bowed forward.

Leni shoved through the crowd, elbowed her way to the front just as Mr. Walker squatted beside his son. “Mattie?” he shouted to be heard, laid a gloved hand on his son’s back. “I’m here. I’m here. Where’s your mom?”

Matthew’s head slowly turned. His face was starkly white, his lips were chapped. His green eyes seemed to have lost their hue, taken color from the ice around him. The ice beneath him glowed with moonlight. He was shaking uncontrollably. “She’s gone,” he croaked, his voice raw. “Fell.”

Mr. Walker hauled his son to his feet. Twice Matthew almost collapsed, but his dad held him upright.

Leni heard people talking in snippets.

“… fell through the ice…”

“… should know better…”

“… Jesus…”

“Come on,” Officer Ward said. “Let ’em through. We need to get this kid warmed up.”

NINE

Winter had claimed one of them; one who had been born here, who knew how to survive.

Leni couldn’t stop thinking about that, worrying about it. If Geneva Walker—Gen, Genny, the Generator, I answer to anything—could be lost so easily, no one was safe.

“My God,” Thelma said as they walked solemnly back to their vehicles. “Genny didn’t make mistakes on the ice.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Large Marge said, her dark face crumpled with grief.

Natalie Watkins nodded solemnly. “I’ve crossed that river a dozen times this month. Jesus. How could she fall through this time of year?”

Leni was listening and not listening. All she could think about was Matthew and what he must be going through now. He’d seen his mother fall through the ice and die.

How could you get over a thing like that? Every time Matthew closed his eyes, wouldn’t he see it again? Wouldn’t he wake screaming from nightmares for the rest of his life? How could she help him?

Back at home, shivering with cold and a new fear (you could lose your parents or your life on a normal Sunday, just out walking in the snow … gone), she wrote him a series of letters, each one of which she tore up because it wasn’t right.

She was still trying to compose the perfect letter two days later, when the town came together for Geneva’s funeral.

On this freezing cold afternoon, dozens of vehicles were in town, parked wherever they could, on roadsides, in vacant lots. One was practically in the middle of the street. Leni had never seen so many trucks and snow machines in town at one time. All of the businesses were closed, even the Kicking Moose Saloon. Kaneq was hunkered down for winter, glazed in snow and ice, illuminated by the ambient glow of daylight.

The world could tumble, change radically in two days, with just one less person living in it.

They parked on Alpine Street and got out of the bus. She heard the whining drone of a generator’s motor, grumbling loudly, powering the lights in the church on the hill.

Single file, they trudged up the hill. Light filled the dusty windows of the old church; smoke puffed up from the chimney.

At the closed door, Leni paused just long enough to peel the fur-trimmed hood back from her face. She’d seen this church on every trip to town, but she’d never been inside.

The interior was smaller than it looked from the outside, with chipped white plank walls and a pine floor. There were no pews; people filled the space from side to side. A man dressed in camouflage snow pants and a fur coat stood up front, his face practically hidden by a mustache, beard, and muttonchops.

Everyone Leni had ever met in Kaneq was here. She saw Large Marge, standing between Mr. Rhodes and Natalie; the whole Harlan family was here, squished in close to one another. Even Crazy Pete was here, with his goose settled on his hip.

But it was the front row that held her attention. Mr. Walker stood beside a beautiful blond girl who must be Alyeska, home from college, and alongside Walker relatives Leni hadn’t met. Off to their right, standing together with them and yet somehow alone, was Matthew. Calhoun Malvey, Geneva’s boyfriend, kept shifting his weight, moving from foot to foot, as if he didn’t know what to do. His eyes were red-rimmed.

Leni tried to get Matthew’s attention, but even the opening and closing of the church’s double doors and the subsequent sweep of cold and snow didn’t faze him. He stood there, shoulders slumped, chin dropped, his profile veiled by hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week.

Leni followed her parents to an empty space behind Mad Earl’s family and stood there. Mad Earl immediately handed Dad a flask.

Leni stared at Matthew, willing him to look at her. She didn’t know what she’d say when they finally got to talk, maybe she wouldn’t say anything, would just take his hand.

The priest—or was he a reverend, a minister, a father, what? Leni had no idea about things like this—started to talk. “We here all knew Geneva Walker. She wasn’t a member of this church, but she was one of us, from the moment Tom brought her here from Fairbanks. She was game for anything and never gave up. Remember when Aly talked her into singing the national anthem at Salmon Days and she was so bad that the dogs started howling and even Matilda waddled away? And after it was all over, Gen said, ‘Well, I can’t sing a lick but who cares? It’s what my Aly wanted.’ Or when Genny hooked Tom in the cheek at the fishing derby and tried to claim the prize for biggest catch? She had a heart as big as Alaska.” He paused, sighed. “Our Gen. She was a woman who knew how to love. We don’t quite know whose wife she was at the end, but that doesn’t matter. We all loved her.”

Laughter, quiet and sad.

Leni lost track of the words. She wasn’t even sure how much time had passed. It made her think of her own mother, and how it would feel to lose her. Then she heard people start to turn for the door, boots stomping, floorboards creaking.