Katie

His boots slid across the ice and he stared at them as he went. It had been quite a while since he'd been near the lake, a long time since he'd been back to the town. There was only one reason he was back and it was the woman by his side.

Anyone watching them would have taken them for a pair of teenagers, lovers maybe, out for a Sunday morning walk. It was a fine day and although it was cold, the middle of winter with snow on the ground, the sun was out and the wind was still.

He looked at her hands wrapped in thick gloves, he had his stuffed into his jacket pockets and he glanced over at the man who walked with them. Dolling let his mind drift back in time, a little bit at first and then a long way back.

Last night she had come to his bedroom and they had made love for the first time. He couldn't believe she had asked under the noses of her parents. While Mr and Mrs Sommers sat down stairs watching television she had come to his room and climbed into bed with him.

He'd arrived earlier that day, she'd met him at the bus station after he'd written saying that he'd like to see her again. He was going to stay at a hotel in town but she said her parents wanted him to stay at their house. He'd never met them before.

And before last night, it had been at least six years since he'd seen her. They'd written the odd letter back and forward but nothing that hinted at anything more than a mutual interest in music, movies and changing the world. They'd known each other at school and then he'd gone away. He was surprised when she had asked him to come and visit.

Six years ago, he thought as he contemplated the journey across the frozen pond. In summer he'd sometimes swam in it, but as much as he could remember he'd never been out on it in winter. He cursed internally at his poor choice of footwear. She had some sensible boots that were designed for the sort of weather that December's in Wisconsin produced. His boots were an impractical fashion statement.

He listened again to the man at Katie's side, he was a religious man of some sort, he preached in the church, one of the small neighbourhood ones in town. One of the religions that wasn't Catholic, Lutheran or Methodist or like the others.

The cold of the ice bit into the soles of Dolling's boots and he felt the chill cross his socks and enter his feet. His wished he wasn't out on the pond, but she had wanted to go for a walk, there was someone she wanted him to meet. Apparently this man, walking on the other side of Katie, was who she thought he needed to know.

Dolling put the creeping numbness of his feet out of his mind for a moment. Katie and the man, Duane Hector was his name, were talking about people who Dolling didn't know. Not for the first time on that day he thought about being twenty four. It seemed so old. Katie Sommers was twenty four. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was tall and fair with long blonde hair, most people in this small Wisconsin town were. Dolling was too.

The other side of what he now thought of as frozen wasteland was getting closer, Dolling thought his feet were wet. Some snow had spilt out across this side of the pond and as the three walked their feet were buried up above their ankles. Dolling remembered in part why he had left this town, headed south, gone to Texas. Texas was where his boots were from.

When they reached a fence line half submerged by snow they knew they were no longer on the pond. A small blue building stood away to the west, about two hundred yards from them. The man, Duane Hector, had hardly spoken to Dolling, most of the time he talked of his church affairs in town and he and Katie batted people's names back and forward making the occasional comment.

The three stood looking towards the building and then Hector announced that he was leaving, he was going in a different direction. Dolling and Katie watched him go. Dolling was getting colder and took his hands from his pockets and clapped them together. Katie took off her gloves and rubbed his hands. Poor thing she said, you need a cup of hot chocolate.

Dolling thought it was a good idea, but only because Katie had suggested it. He would never have thought of it himself. They started walking again, skirting around the outside of the frozen pond and heading in the general direction of town. Katie told him she was glad he'd come to see her, she'd nearly finished her nursing degree, which had taken an extra couple of years to do.

It struck him for reasons unknown that he should ask her to marry him. He could even ask Duane Hector to perform the ceremony in his church. Maybe that was the reason that she wanted him to meet Hector. Maybe she wanted to marry Dolling too. Do people want to marry each other after not seeing each other for six years? It was a strong thought and Dolling tried to work out where it had come from. But Hector had gone, he was now out of sight. Katie held Dolling's hand as they walked, his right hand in her left was starting to feel as numb as both his feet. She stopped to hug him, the cloud of their breathing circling them as they kissed.

In town he sat looking out of the window of the Double B Cafe as Katie dropped another marshmallow into her hot chocolate. She told him that she came to the Double B every Sunday morning when she was back home.

Dolling didn't know what to say. He wanted to talk to her about marriage and what had happened last night. He had a ticket on the bus to St Paul the next day, he could change it. But that is as far as it got. Some older woman who knew Katie came in and started talking and Dolling felt himself sidelined again. At least his feet had started to thaw, but his socks were definitely wet.

He may have been preoccupied, his mind elsewhere, he hadn't noticed the time going so quickly and soon Katie was standing at the cafe door ready to go home to her mother's Sunday lunch. There would just be the four of them, the three Sommers and Dolling.

He'd changed his socks by the time the meal was served and he sat talking as if it was what he did every Sunday. But he'd never done anything remotely like this before. Sunday lunches were always sandwiches for as long as he could remember. But mainly he couldn't stop himself from looking at Katie Sommers, the same Katie Sommers he had a crush on in high school. The same Katie Sommers he was always too shy to talk to back then. Thank God for letters he said to himself. She was a beautiful young woman, an only child, he wanted to ask her to marry him.

When she walked him to the bus station the next day Dolling wished he was out on the pond with her his feet freezing again and that they had another twenty four hours together. And when the bus pulled away she looked up and waved. Dolling wondered what she was thinking. He thought he would write to her when he got home, but he didn't and Dolling would never know if she married.