The past held no warmth for Nettie Mae. The present was cold, winter bitter, but she took comfort in the persistence of snowfall. Snow reshaped the world. It suppressed memory, drawing everything that mattered here and now into a tight and immediate circle. Far beyond the fields, obscured by a shroud of white, the snow was mounding over a riverside grave, softening the curve of the soil, pressing memory down beneath the mute silence of the season.
