That included Josh. He was a football player, big and slow. Even so, he was six feet three and a Scandinavian beauty, and they looked good together.

Josh undid the padlock on the fish house and let them inside. It looked like a prison cell in Siberia. No windows. Pitch-black. He turned on an oil lamp that illuminated a garage sale sofa and a couple of Sam's Club wooden chairs. Inside was just as cold as outside, and the wind blew through the aluminum siding as if it wasn't there.

"Oh, man, does it get any warmer?"

"I'll get the heater going," Josh said.

Sherry shrugged off her coat. "You just want my nips to show." She followed his eyes and glanced down at her turtleneck. "Looks like you win. The headlights are on."

She rubbed her arms vigorously and stamped her feet in the small, claustrophobic shanty. She wrinkled her nose at the fishy smell. There was a large circle cut into the ice in the center of the floor. She peered down into it and saw slushy water about a foot down. It was opaque.

"How do you cut through the ice?" she asked.

"Gas auger," Josh said. He pointed at a machine that looked like an outboard motor with two feet of black screw attached, its blades pocked with rust.

"This is like a horror movie," she said. "You're not going to cut me up, are you?"

"No!"

Sherry laughed. "It was a joke. Besides, in those movies, the girl has to get naked before she gets killed, and I am not getting naked in this place." Josh looked disappointed, and she added with a wink, "Okay, maybe a little naked."

The heater beat back the cold in the fish house. Sherry watched as Josh prepared the hook end of a fishing line and unwound the line deep into the cut-out section of ice. He propped the rod on an upside-down chair and reached into his pocket for a small bell, which he tied to the line with thread.

"What's that for?" she asked.

"If a fish takes the bait, the line jerks and rings the bell." He tapped it with his hand, and the bell went ding, ding.

"Cute."

Josh unzipped his backpack and pulled out an iPod and a set of portable speakers. He put on an album by the Black Eyed Peas, and Sherry began rolling her body to Fergie's funky beat. Josh's face lit up in a sly grin, and he reached back into the pack and came out with two frosty cans of Miller Lite.

"Let the party begin," he said.

Sherry took an open can from Josh and drank down a long swallow that she thought would freeze in her throat. Holding the can with two fingers, she danced, swiveling her hips lazily and slithering her arms and fingers up and down her body. The more she danced and drank, the warmer she felt, and the more handsome Josh got.

She crooked her finger, beckoning him to the sofa. They sat down, and his hands prowled over her back. He kissed her clumsily; his tongue felt like a wet slug exploring the roof of her mouth. She felt him tentatively cup one of her breasts, and when she didn't protest, he grabbed it as if he were diving for a fumble. A low moan purred from his throat.

She pulled away and rolled her shirt up an inch at a time, revealing her flat tummy and then her pear-shaped breasts. She left the shirt propped on top of her cleavage. His eyes were so wide she thought she could see around them into his brain. She turned her attention to his belt buckle, which she undid, and then unzipped him, exposing the white fabric of his underwear. She reached inside and pulled him out.

His eyes were closed. He was on the moon.

Ding, ding.

The fishing line fluttered. The rod rocked in the chair and tumbled to the ice.

"Shit, hang on," Josh told her, swinging his legs off the sofa.

"You have got to be kidding," Sherry said.

"Help me," he said, jerking on the line, his jeans around his ankles, his shaft still ready for action.

Sherry sighed. "That's what I was trying to do." She added, "Don't let your thingy get sliced off, okay?"

He battled the fish for several minutes, until it was close to the surface.

"Take the pole," he said. "Keep it pointed up."

"That's what I was-oh, never mind." She took the fishing rod and held it while Josh grabbed a pair of gloves and reached down into the hole.

"Reel in some more line," he told her.

"What am I, Supergirl? This thing is heavy."

She cranked the reel, and the line wound in slowly. It felt as if she were pulling up a boat anchor on the other end.

"Almost got it," he said.

Suddenly, Josh yelped. He unleashed a girlish scream and fell back on his ass. His erection deflated. With his hands on the ice, he scrabbled away from the hole. "Shit!"

Something black bobbed out of the ice like a gopher in a carnival whack-a-mole game. Sherry cranked the reel and inched closer, repelled but curious. When she saw it, she screamed, too.

Matted black hair danced up and down at her feet. The smell, released out of the water, was rank; she covered her face. Invisible gases fouled the air. She watched through slitted fingers and saw a human head now, snow-white and hideously swollen, peeking above the ice. More of the body was trapped below. Mud and weeds clung to its skin. Its eyes were open but cloudy, like marbles. Its mouth was slightly open, and the splashing and sucking of the water made it sound as if it were talking. As if it were alive when it was obviously dead. The head said over and over, "Let me out, let me out, let me out, let me out."

Helen Danning could see her reflection in the window of the gift shop, and every few seconds, her face lit up like the glow of a wild fire as northbound traffic off the highway shot their twin beams through the glass. To Helen, the car lights were like the white tunnels of searchlights, wending back and forth across a field, hunting for her. When a car slowed and pulled off the road, she flinched. The headlights grew huge in the window as the car parked outside the shop, and Helen pushed her chair back and got up, leaving a half-drunk chai tea and her white Mac laptop open on the cast-iron table. She backed up between the oak shelves, which were stocked with Yankee candles and potpourri.

The shop door opened, and Helen felt as if the night were spilling inside. A burst of chill made her shiver. She glanced at the corridor leading to Evelyn's stockroom, where a back door butted up to frozen cornfields. Irrationally, she wanted to run, but she saw that the people coming into the shop were harmless. A man in a Minnesota State Fair sweatshirt ordered two coffees from Evelyn at the counter, while his wife browsed the sale-priced Christmas ornaments. Helen ducked her head and kept her face hidden.

She waited until their car was back on the highway before she sat down at the table again. When she took a sip of her sweet tea, her fingers were trembling. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and continued the methodical work on her laptop, opening each of the entries in her blog and erasing them. Her slim finger hovered over the Delete key as she reread a posting about the show Miss Saigon. She had seen the show dozens of times, as she had seen most musicals that came through the Ordway Center in Saint Paul. As an usher, she saw the performances night after night, and she could spot the nuances in every actor, song, costume, and set. She lived the shows almost as if they were more real than her own life. Some people became obsessed with soap operas, but Helen's obsession was Phantom, Les Miz, Rent, and all the other touring shows that ran over and over on the stage. Her blog was her outlet to pour out her thoughts about the characters.

She called her blog "The Lady in Me." She had come across a Shania Twain CD called The Woman in Me years earlier and bought it because she liked the title. The phrase became a kind of anthem to her. It summed up what she had lost in college and what she had been searching for her whole life. She even had the initials TLIM tattooed on her ankle, like a secret message she carried with her.