I was mindlessly staring out the window when it started snowing. “The wind is blowing west,” I thought. My brain was numb ‘round the edges. “The wind is blowing west and I’ll never see Chicago,” I thought. It made me laugh so hard, Mary came to the door to see if I’d gone insane or something worse.

I looked at her; she was crying, her cell in her hands and I laughed harder, sobbing, weeping, falling to my knees and grabbing the carpet in my fists and pulling so hard I could hear the tacks tearing in the corners of the room.

“Hey, how often does it snow in July?” I coughed, but she wasn’t in the door. So I shouted it. The front door slammed and I stopped sobbing – she shouldn’t go outside, it’s dangerous out there. There’s cancer, lymphoma, leukemia, death out there now. And the snow-

I used the windowsill to pull myself up. It was raining a little, driving the heavier flakes down. Mary stood in the yard, looking slackly up into the gray sky, the ashes of the east coast settling on her upraised face.