The Twin Cities’ police and emergency blotters have recorded the stories of people who have survived jumps and falls from all of its bridges. But these survivals aren’t the rule. Even sober, healthy adults who can swim and aren’t suicidal get in trouble in the river, largely due to the current. It drags you in the wrong directions: downward, where people get caught up in submerged trees and roots, and toward the river’s center, where the current flows fastest over the deepest part of the bed.

The fall from this structure might well be survivable, and the water might not be the paralyzingly frigid temperatures of midwinter. But all the same I thought it was best if things didn’t get to that point.

Holding on to a railing, I put one experimental foot out onto the edge.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Vignale said.

“No kidding,” I said. “If she didn’t want someone to come talk her out of it, she would have jumped already.” I hope. “I’m worried about you, Officer Vignale,” I said. “If your partner didn’t radio ahead to keep train traffic off the bridge, I’d think about going back.”

The bridge’s framework wasn’t really any more difficult to climb down than a child’s jungle gym at the playground, but I negotiated it a lot more slowly.

“You got company, but don’t be scared,” I said when I got down to the kid’s level, keeping my voice low and modulated. Like Vignale said, I didn’t want to startle her. “I’m just coming down to talk.”

She turned to look at me and I saw that she was indeed Ellie. More than that, I saw the beauty that had so worried her older sister. Ellie had in fact changed since the taking of last year’s class picture.

She was one of those people who seriousness, even unhappiness, makes far more lovely than a smile. Her green-gray eyes were heavy-lidded, her skin clear, her lower lip very full. The freckles from the photo, fading already, were the last vestige of her child’s face. She wore a gray T-shirt and black jeans. No pastels, no ribbons, no girl stuff for Ellie. If I’d seen her from a distance, I might have taken her for a petite 21-year-old.