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On a gray day in December of 1999, a happy middle-aged man drove his daughter to the grocery store. The freezing winds blew thick tendrils of snow across the hood of his rusted-blue Honda and slipped stealthily across the front windshield; it caked the wipers and iced the sleek metal guardrail shouldering along the road. Beyond the snow was a solid curtain of whiteness that partly concealed the remainder of the highway.
He pulled his Honda into the lot and parked in the first slot across the front of the store. He unclipped their seat belts, climbed out from behind the wheel and tiptoed around to the passenger seat. He slid her out of the passenger seat, wrapped her inside the muggy black folds of his overcoat, pressed his free hand onto his sock cap to keep it from flying away
