He knew. He was the only one who knew my secret.

I just couldn’t tell Jackie about it. Not yet. I knew he had strong opinions about some things in life, and this was one thing he’d have a lot to say about. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Or maybe I didn’t want to ruin it. Maybe talking about it in the light of day would make it all vanish like a fever dream.

For whatever reason, I kept my mouth shut that night. I was happy to sit by the fire and watch the rest of the hockey game. The Wings gave up a late goal and after the five-minute overtime had to settle for a tie. Vinnie put his feet up and closed his eyes. There was still white tape on the side of his face, where the bullet had taken off part of his ear. I knew he was spending a lot more time over at the reservation now, looking after his mother. I didn’t see him nearly as much.

We heard the wind picking up. There was a soft ticking at the windows. The snow had started. Outside this building, not a hundred yards away, lay the shoreline of Lake Superior. The ice stretched out a quarter mile, into the darkness of Whitefish Bay. Beyond that there was nothing but open water-water so cold and deep it was like a cruel joke to call it a lake at all. It was a sea, the Sea of Superior, and tonight it would feed the snow gods.

“You’re gonna be plowing,” Vinnie said. He kept his eyes closed.

“I’m ready.”

He opened one eye. He started to say something and stopped.

“What is it?” I said.

He smiled again. Two smiles in one night.

“You’re not going anywhere tomorrow,” he said. “You’re gonna be stuck here.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said. But I knew he was probably right. God damn it.

We finally left around midnight. I said goodbye to Jackie and he dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

“You got him a little worked up,” Vinnie said as we stepped out into the night. There were already three inches of new snow covering the parking lot. “He doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on.”