It was Sunday afternoon, bright and clear and very cold. He and Danny and Madeline were playing on a frozen pond near their home. Some older kids were nearby playing hockey. Several of them skated toward them, chasing after the puck.

Harry could still hear the sharp crack of the ice. It was like a pistol shot. He saw the hockey players stop short. And then the ice just broke away where Madeline was. She never made a sound, just went under. Harry screamed to Danny to run for help, and he threw off his coat and went in after her. But there was nothing but icy black.

It was nearly dark when the fire department divers brought her up, the sky beyond the leafless trees behind them a streak of red.

Harry and Danny and their mother and father waited with a priest in the snow as they came across the ice toward them. The fire chief, a tall man with a mustache, had taken her body from the divers and wrapped it in a blanket and held it in his arms as he led the way.

Along the shore, a safe distance away, the hockey players, their parents and brothers and sisters, neighbors, strangers watched in silence.

Harry started forward, but his father took him firmly by the shoulders and held him back. When he reached shore, the fire chief stopped, and the priest said the last rites over the blanket without opening it. And when he had finished, the fire chief, followed by the divers still with their air tanks and wet suits, walked on to where a white ambulance was waiting. Madeline was put inside and the doors were closed and the ambulance drove off into the darkness.

Harry followed the red dots of taillights until they were gone. Finally he turned. Danny was there, eight years old, shivering with the cold, looking at him.