Northern Lights

ice that had the water below welling up, freezing thin. Dangerous business, because the new ice looked just like the rest and would break under you and take you down.
    What you thought was safe would kill you.
    There were handwritten warning signs. Nate's doing, she knew. He was a man who understood all about thin ice and the dangers of what looked safe and normal.
    "Would you settle for a picture? A photograph?"
    "What do you mean?"
    She turned back. "If I brought you a picture of him, would that do it?"
    "If you can go down and take his picture, why—"
    "I don't have to. Nate has pictures. I can get one, bring it to you."
    "Now?"
    "No, not now." She yanked off her cap, drove her fingers through her hair. "He wouldn't like it. Evidence or something. But I'll get it tonight. You can look at it, satisfy yourself, and I'll take it back."
     
     
    OUTSIDE THE STATION, Meg flipped through her keys and found the one marked PD. She'd left Nate sleeping and hoped he stayed that way until she got back. She didn't want to explain this little bit of insanity to him.
    She let herself in, pulled out her penlight. Part of her wanted to poke around and enjoy the sensation of being somewhere she shouldn't. But more, she wanted to get this little chore over with and get back to bed.
    She went straight into Nate's office. Here she risked the overhead lights, flipping them on before crossing to the covered corkboard.
    She removed the blanket carefully. And it fell to the floor from her numb hands as she took one wavering step in retreat.
    She'd seen death before and had never known it to be pretty. But those stark and graphic photos of Max Hawbaker had her breath whistling out.
    Best not to think about it, not quite yet. Better to take the photo of her father—how much cleaner his death seemed—and take it to Charlene.
    She slid the photo inside her jacket, turned the lights off and went back out the way she came.
    Charlene was in her room, answered the door wearing a floral robe. There was a scent of whiskey, smoke, perfume.
    "You'd better be alone," Meg said.
    "I am. I sent him on. Where is it? Did you get it?"
    "You're going to look, then I'm taking it back and I don't want to hear any more about this."
    "Let me see. Let me see him."
    Meg drew it out. "No, you can't touch it. You wrinkle it up or anything, Nate will know." She turned the photo face front.
    "Oh. Oh." Charlene stumbled back, much as Meg had at the corkboard. "God. No!" She shot a hand out to stop Meg from putting the picture away again. "I need to . . ."
    She stepped forward again and, at Meg's warning look, clasped her hands behind her back. "He . . . he looks the same. How can that be? He looks the same. All these years, and he looks the same."
    "He never had a chance to look different."
    "It would've been quick, do you think? Would it have been quick?"
    "Yes."
    "He was wearing that parka when he left. He was wearing it the last time I saw him." She turned, cupped her elbows with her hands. "Go away now." She shuddered, then pressed both hands to her mouth. "Meg," she began and spun around.
    But Meg was already gone.
    Alone, Charlene walked into the bath, turned on the lights and studied herself in the hard glare.
    He'd looked the same, she thought again. So young.
    And she didn't. She never would again.
    • • •
     
     
    IT WAS MARCH IN ALASKA, but the longer days didn't make him think of approaching spring, however close the calendar crept toward the official day.
    Nate awoke to daylight now and most often on the left side of Meg's bed. When he walked through town, he saw more of people's faces and less of sheltering hoods.
    The plastic eggs hanging from the branches of snow-draped trees, the plastic bunnies crouched on white carpets of lawn didn't make him think spring, either.
    But his first breakup did.
    He watched, with a kind of buzzy wonder, the little cracks creeping along the icy ribbon of river, like crazed zippers. Unlike the overflow, these didn't fill in and freeze up. It astonished him so much that it took him twenty minutes to stop staring and head back to the office.
    "There are cracks in the river," he told Otto.
    "Yeah? Little early for breakup, but we've had a warm spell."
    Maybe, Nate thought, if he lived in Lunacy for, oh, a hundred years, he'd think of a few days of forties and damp, chilly lower fifties as a warm spell. "I want signs posted. I don't want a bunch of kids playing hockey falling through the ice."
    "Kids got more sense