The week the Bakkes’ oldest started plowing Emmitt’s driveway without being asked, because Krista couldn’t get down there in the snow with the baby if the drive wasn’t clear.

The afternoon I saw the fighting young couple — who had a purpose now, three houses to watch — actually standing in the recluse’s yard, having brought Odell a pie, and Odell, who does not let people in, letting them stand there a minute in his silence, which for Odell is practically a banquet.

The Petersen kids learning old Mr.

Wilkes liked company and starting to stop by after the bus.

A road that for thirty-one years had been ninety separate solitudes connected only by me was knitting itself, that winter, into an actual neighborhood, the old kind, the kind that was ordinary once and has gone rare, where people know whose light didn’t come on this morning and go check.

I had been so afraid of the dark coming.