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way Bethany’s body claimed her boys somewhere just below the breastbone.
    â€œIs that the river where the angel lives?” Gabriel asked in his clear, child’s voice.
    â€œAngel?” Bethany said. It had started to snow, a light sparkling haze that shattered the moonlight into millions of pieces and skipped them across the narrow strip of water still untouched by ice.
    â€œMy dad said there was an angel,” Gabriel said, and his voice was less hopeful now.
    â€œThat’s just an old wives’ tale,” Bethany said.
    â€œNo it’s not,” Robert John said. “This kid at school? Davey Otto? Some other kids dared him to jump off the Killsnake Dam and he did it? And he—”
    â€œNearly drowned,” Bethany said.
    â€œHis mom says the angel saved his life.”
    â€œI don’t ever want to hear about you playing at the dam.”
    â€œPops saw it once. By the highway bridge,” Robert John said. “He says it jumped out of the water like a fish!”
    â€œHave you ever seen it?” Gabriel said.
    Robert John twisted in his seat to stare at him. “Maybe,” he said mysteriously.
    They were coming into Ambient. All the houses were outlined with lights, and some were capped by glowing reindeer, sleighs and snowmen, Santa Clauses wired to the chimneys. That afternoon, there’d been a living crèche in front of the railroad museum, and all the props were still in place: the manger with its cradle, the shepherds’ staffs, the post where the Farbs’ pet pony had been tied. Downtown, every other parking meter boasted a red-ribboned wreath, and the tall pine tree in front of the courthouse was decorated so beautifully, its star shining so brightly, that a stranger might barely have noticed the empty storefronts: the boarded-over windows of the Sew Pretty House of Fabric, the close-out sale banner at Fohr’s Family Furniture, the old brick bank where first a bridal shop and then a shoe store had started up and failed. The pharmacy was gone, and so was the five-and-dime. But there were a couple of new gift shops that catered to the millpond people—weekenders and summer vacationers who thought nothing of buying a perfectly fine little bungalow overlooking the Killsnake Dam, then ripping it down and putting a great big house up in its place. Cheddarheads sold cow T-shirts and German dolls and cheese; The River Stop sold cards and books, expensive kitchenware. And some of the old businesses were doing just fine—Roland Schmitt’s real estate company, Kimmeldorf’s Family Café, the bowling alley around the corner and, of course, Jeep’s Tavern. The sad thing was, if you wanted a can of paint or a new blouse, a slice of liverwurst or a refill on your prescription, you had to drive to Solomon, which, just a few years earlier, had been no more than a couple-three hundred housesupwind from the fertilizer plant, a dance bar called the Hodag and, down the road a mile or so, the Badger State Mall.
    Sometimes Bethany couldn’t believe how fast everything had changed, even since she and Fred were married. But she had no problem with the newcomers, the way some people did. You couldn’t blame others for moving in from the cities. Who wouldn’t want to live somewhere like Ambient? At the town square, Cradle Park was as lovely as any picture postcard she had ever seen, especially now that the Onion River had finally begun to freeze over, the ice beneath the bridge glistening like spilled cream. You could forget all about how crowded it was in summer, how the trash cans spilled over, drawing flies, how several women had had their purses snatched in broad daylight last July. There was talk of the city buying land on the outskirts of town for a larger park, setting up a boat ramp, dumping sand for a beach. Bethany didn’t care what they did, as long as it didn’t raise her taxes.
    Saint Fridolin’s parking lot was