Winter Moon

to do with the rest of their lives. By then the phone company would have installed another line, and the modem would be in operation. She could use data networks to research what population base and capitalization any given business required for success, as well as find answers to hundreds if not thousands of other questions that would influence their decisions and improve their chances for success in whatever enterprise they chose.
        Rural Montana enjoyed as much access to knowledge as Los Angeles or.Manhattan or Oxford University. The only things needed were a telephone line, a modem, and a couple of good database subscriptions.
        At three o'clock, after she'd been working about an hour-the equipment connected, everything working- Heather got up from her chair and stretched.
        Flexing the muscles in her back, she went to the window to see if flurries had begun to fall ahead of schedule.
        The November sky was low, a uniform shade of lead gray, like an immense plastic panel behind which glowed arrays of dull fluorescent tubes.
        She fancied that she would have recognized it as a snow sky even if she hadn't heard the forecast. It looked as cold as ice. In that bleak light, the higher woods appeared to be more gray than green.
        The backyard and, to the south, the brown fields seemed barren rather than merely dormant in anticipation of the spring.
        Although the landscape was nearly as monochromatic as a charcoal drawing, it was beautiful. A different beauty from that which it offered under the warm caress of the sun. Stark, somber, broodingly majestic. She saw a small spot of color to the south, on the cemetery knoll not far from the perimeter of the western rest. Bright red. It was Toby in his new ski suit.
        He was standing inside the foot-high fieldstone wall. I should have told him to stay away from there, Heather thought with a twinge of apprehension. Then she wondered at her uneasiness. Why should the cemetery seem any more dangerous to her than the yard immediately outside its boundaries? She didn't believe in ghosts or haunted places.
        The boy stood at the grave markers, utterly still. She watched him for a minute, a minute and a half, but he didn't move. For an eight-year-old, who usually had more energy than a nuclear plant, that was an extraordinary period of inactivity. The gray sky settled lower while she watched. The land darkened subtly. Toby stood unmoving.
        The arctic air didn't bother Jack-invigorated him, in fact-except that it penetrated especially deeply into the thighbones and scar tissue of his left leg. He did not have to limp, however, as he ascended the hill to the private graveyard. He passed between the four-foot-high stone posts that, gateless, marked the entrance to the burial ground. His breath puffed from his mouth in frosty plumes.
        Toby was standing at the foot of the fourth grave in the line of four.
        His arms hung straight at his sides, his head was bent, and his eyes were fixed on the headstone. The Frisbee was on the ground beside him.
        He breathed so shallowly that he produced only a faint mustache of steam that repeatedly evaporated as each brief exhalation became a soft inhalation.."What's up?" Jack asked.
        The boy did not respond.
        The nearest headstone, at which Toby stared, was engraved with the name THOMAS FERNANDEZ and the dates of birth and death. Jack didn't need the marker to remind him of the date of death, it was carved on his own memory far deeper than the numbers were cut into the granite before him.
        Since they'd arrived Tuesday morning, after staying the night with Paul and Carolyn Youngblood, Jack had been too busy to inspect the private cemetery.
        Furthermore, he'd not been eager to stand in front of Tommy's grave, where memories of blood and loss and despair were certain to assail him.
        To the left of Tommy's marker was a double stone. It bore the names of his parents-EDUARDO and MARGARITE. Though Eduardo had been in the ground only a few months, Tommy for a year, and Margaret for three years, all of their graves looked freshly dug. The dirt was mounded unevenly, and no grass grew on it, which seemed odd, because the fourth grave was flat and covered with silky brown grass. He could understand that gravediggers might have disturbed the surface of Margarite's plot in order to bury Eduardo's coffin beside hers, but that didn't