The winters here are quite cold. However, I am never as cold as I was in the winters of my youth. Ruth would spend whatever money she got from David on mind altering substances. Natalie and I would freeze during those winters when we were kids. When I think about it, I wish that I could only have made her a little bit warmer so she could have experienced what it might be to sit and drink hot chocolate and watch television on a Sunday evening in a house with heat.

Every now and then I will look out this window in my living room, the one that lets in the rare sunlight during these New England winters, and I watch the shimmering crystalline snowflakes drift from the heavens and I wonder if it is Natalie. Is it her telling me that she forgives me, or is she reminding me that I didn’t do enough back then. Of course, I know there wasn’t any more that I could have done. Like so many young parents I was just ill-equipped, though not exactly a parent.

Sometimes, on the anniversary of Natalie, I will go out in the snow and just walk around. Though I don’t have to, and though it might not be the best decision, I wander around and just let the cold freeze me. I cry sometimes, and the tears freeze to my face. I feel better after I come home from those outings, emotionally drained. Rufus doesn’t ask questions anymore. Even though he doesn’t understand completely why I need to do it, he gives me my space and has my hot cocoa and American Spirit waiting for me at the window in the living room. I will sit and listen to the plaintive and melancholy tones of the cello album that I have had for almost fifteen years. Natalie gave it to me just before. She had saved up her allowance to get it for me – an old record that was on sale at the thrift shop ‘round the corner from where we lived.

I will just sit there and watch those crystals fall from heaven. Rufus will eventually come in and check on me, kiss me on my forehead and hug me while I cry for a little while. Then I will shower in the hottest water I can stand and go to bed and put the memory out of my mind until the next year – I pretend that all of it is just a dream and that none of it really happened.