"I wish I'd never seen the picture," she said, dropping her head. Her right hand went to her temple, rubbing it. Lisa had taken her back to her bedroom to give it to her. Didn't want Frank to see it.

"We can't just let it lay," Frank insisted. "I told Harper that."

"There'll be trouble, Frank," Claudia said.

"And the law can handle it. It don't have nothing to do with us," he said. After a moment he asked, "Will you get the stove?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'll get the stove."

Claudia looked out the window toward the mercury-vapor yard-light down by the garage. The snow seemed to come from a point just below the light, as though it were being poured through a funnel, straight into the window, straight into her eyes. Small pellets, like birdshot. "It looks like it might be slowing down."

"Wasn't supposed to snow at all," Frank said. "Assholes."

He meant television weathermen. The weathermen said it would be clear and cold in Ojibway County, and here they were, snowing to beat the band.

"Think about letting it go." She was pleading now. "Just think about it."

"I'll think about it," he said, and he turned and went back down to the basement.

He might think about it, but he wouldn't change his mind. Claudia, turning the picture in her mind, put on a sweatshirt and walked out to the mudroom. Frank had gotten his driving gloves wet and had draped them over the furnace vent; the room smelled of heat-dried wool. She pulled on her parka and a stocking cap, picked up her gloves, turned on the porch lights from the switch inside the mudroom and stepped out into the storm.

The picture. The people might have been anybody, from Los Angeles or Miami, where they did these things. They weren't.

They were from Lincoln County.