It was after the streetlamps had popped to life, after my newly broken-in sled was stowed against the house behind Mom’s burlap-wrapped rose bushes. After the no school day, the meet me and Joe and Frank on Baker’s Hill day. After snowball fights and forts. Long after my nose grew too cold to sting any longer, my feet and hands had stopped tingling and felt heavy with the warmth that followed the wet cold.

It was when I stood on the shadowed porch outside our front door, snow clinging to my boots, my breath swirling in veils of white around my face. When my mittened hand slipped against the knob, I clenched the soaking wool between my teeth and freed my stiff pink fingers from the sodden glove. It was in that moment that I looked through the frosted glass of the front window and saw them dancing.