Arthur followed thirty paces back, staying in the shadow of the tall utility poles, his polished city shoes soaked through to the wool socks, the freezing wetness numbing his heels. The plastic shopping bags containing the warm apple pie, the milk, and the untouched ribeye dinner were clutched tightly in his right hand, the heavy vinyl handles biting into his fingers.
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He was sixty years old. He had undergone an emergency double heart bypass four years ago at Penn Medicine; his doctor had warned him repeatedly against sudden exertion in freezing weather.
He didn’t feel his heart. He felt only the rhythmic, terrifying crunch of the mother’s boots in the gravel ahead of him.
She was limping.
Her left boot—an old, cracked synthetic leather ankle boot with a broken zipper held together by a black zip-tie—was slipping with every third stride on the icy incline. Yet her right arm never loosened its grip around Chloe’s torso. She carried the child through the deepest drifts of snow like an ancient soldier carrying an unbroken banner through a rout.
