It took us ten minutes to get the car out of the snowy ditch, but suddenly it rolled free. I didn’t know where this mystery girl had come from, but surely she had saved me. I turned to thank her, but she was gone. Squinting in the light of the full moon, I saw the tracks of her narrow boots in the snow, headed off down an overgrown driveway toward a farmhouse I had not noticed before.

Clearly she had wanted to leave without making a scene, but I had to thank her for helping me.

An old woman met me at the door. I smiled. “A young woman helped me get my car out of the ditch tonight,” I said. “Do you have a daughter?”

The old woman shook her head, but as she did I spotted a picture on the wall in the room behind her.

“That’s her,” I said. “That’s the girl who helped me. Who is she?”

“That’s my daughter,” the woman said, “but she couldn’t have helped you.”

I frowned.

“Her car went off the road at the foot of the driveway in a snowstorm.” The old woman’s eyes blazed. “She’s been dead twenty years.”