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own harried breath like wind in my ears, and the horror I thought I’d left behind had returned, surging through me like electrical current. Night returned as well, the prodigal son within the light, and I realized I was back on the bench. The flurries had stopped and there was no accumulation, as if the snow had never existed at all. Maybe the child in red hadn’t either, I thought. Maybe I’d never chased him to the cemetery. For a moment, to be sure, I sat rigid on the bench, watching shadows slink along the walls of the church across the street. I couldn’t be sure if I was awake or still dreaming.
    When I felt the unmistakable sensation of tiny fingers walking over my palm, I wondered if there was much difference anymore.
    As the warm and sour breath of a little boy exhaled against my face, I slid my eyes in its direction without turning my head. That same hideously aged face on a child’s body glared at me from beneath the red hood, so close I shouldn’t have been surprised when his cold lips touched my cheek in a pathetic attempt at a kiss. “ Daddy ,” it whispered.
    The son I might’ve had, beckoning me from a life I’d never known.
    Spinning up and away from the bench in a frenzied pirouette, I looked back. He was gone.
    In the distance, among the usual illuminations, I saw Christmas lights of many colors and remembered Cap Payens at the bar with his tattered copy of A Christmas Carol.
    Remember what the book says , he’d told me.
    And for some reason, I did.
    I broke into a run and dashed toward the here, the now, and the lights on the next block, certain that everything would be all right if only I could get to them.

 
     
     
    -4-
    Coughing violently and struggling to breathe, I stumbled to an eventual stop then fell against a parking meter and hung on for dear life. Christ , I thought, goddamn cigarettes. Despite the cold I was bathed in sweat, my lungs burned and my heart hammered my chest as if trying to punch its way out.
    As I slowly began to catch my breath, I realized I’d made it to a well-lit street, and also a familiar one. Christmas was still a few weeks away but the blitz was already in full swing. Everything was adorned with holiday decorations, and industrial size ropes of silver, green and red garland had been strung from streetlight to streetlight for far as I could see. Though most of the stores on the street had already closed for the night, Christmas music continued to blare through tinny speakers somewhere above me. The few shops that had remained open to take advantage of the season were packed with shoppers, and the street was busy as well, with numerous people hurrying about with bags and bundles.
    Few of them seemed to notice me.
    As if it had just occurred to me, I realized this would be my first Christmas without Jenna in over twenty years. It still didn’t seem possible.
    I checked my watch. Almost eight o’clock.
    As a group of female shoppers spilled from a nearby candle store in loud mid-conversation, I pushed away from the parking meter and did my best to appear as if I were casually strolling the boulevard in search of gift ideas like everyone else. But what I was really focused on was the fact that the apartment Jenna and I had lived in for the first five years of our marriage was less than a block away. That, and how dramatically the neighborhood had changed in the fifteen-plus years since we’d lived there.
    Once a low-income area, it had become considerably more upscale. Where an old bodega had been there now stood a trendy general store. The grimy newsstand on the corner was no more, and the liquor store, porn outlet and pawnshop were gone too, replaced with quaint little specialty shops in renovated and renewed retail space. Gone was the graffiti and garbage, and once filthy streets were now clean.
    As I turned onto the side street that would lead me to our old building, I began to reminisce. Jenna and I had spent five years there, and in that time became good