The last bus up the hill drops you at the bottom of Ferry Row at twenty past seven, and you walk the rest of it with your bag on both shoulders, the river loud on your left, the rink lit at the top of the street and the Bellhouse clock lit above it.

Baxter Cullinane says from the rink steps, with his stick across his knees, and does not get up.

They are all where they have been every winter since you left. Lonan Skerritt is on the Bellhouse porch with a key ring the size of a dinner plate. Aaron Loftus is on the low wall outside the Argus office in shirtsleeves with a camera bag and no coat. Corby Kinsella sits at the end of the street with the Cut's engine ticking under him and both boots on the ground. Not one of them has moved since you came around the corner, which is how you know they knew.

Everyone on this hill already belongs to someone, something, or some disaster. Baxter belongs to the ice and to a letter folded in his skate bag. Lonan belongs to a house the university condemned in June. Aaron belongs to an archive of other people's worst nights. Corby belongs to a man in Halbrook he owes money to, and to a crew that will not let him pay it alone. And all four of them have spent four winters being told, by everybody in this town, what you were to them.

You have not even put the bag down.

Baxter says, and stands, and the stick comes up with him.