He'll tell them he's enjoying his first real winter. He'll say he's missed the snow that mark the death of each year at home. These will not be lies. These will be half-truths, almost-truths. It is true that snow falls each winter in Dingolfing. It is not true that city is his home. Nor does he miss it.

Astrid pesters him to go to the party in her gentle way, soft touches and smiles, but she leaves him alone when he says he's happier staying home. He drinks Sam Adams (not enough hops) and watches the Patriots (the wrong kind of football) as they make their way by inches and yards across a frozen field. He listens to the commentators rehash the past five years and tries to feel something for the great bundled-up anonymous men, but all he feels is drunk, and when halftime comes he changes the channel with a breath of relief.

It's not that he hasn't tried. He's seen the banners hanging in the rafters of Fleet Center, the shock of gold mostly swallowed in great waves of Celtic green; he's heard their stories, seen their greatest moments relived on grainy VHS tapes. He's watched Flutie's throw and Bobby's leap and Fisk's ecstatic celebration, and in every moment he's felt the cold press of time, the tingling distance, like a fine plastic covering his skin so that he never really touches anything.

He's tried to love this city with everything he has, and the hollow in his heart aches like an old break in the cold.

He flips back and forth between Sportscentre and a crime drama, one of the "Law and Order"s, he's pretty sure, but they all look the same to him. He finishes the six-pack of Sam Adams and buries the bottles at the bottom of the recycling bin with a sort of giddy guilt, cracking open a bottle of Andescher Dunkel lovingly crated over from Germany and taking a cleansing swig as the day's NHL highlights roll around.

He braces himself before he remembers the time difference, and the unspent adrenaline leaves his hands shaking. When the Bruins' highlights come up he changes the channel; he never watches media footage of a game, doesn't think it's fair how they can stop time, slow it down, as if it were that simple. He finishes the crime drama (he's proud of himself for suspecting the brother-in-law) and then he turns off the TV, grabs another beer and wanders the house.

He is waiting, waiting, waiting.

He follows his footsteps into the nursery and watches the small face crumpled up in sleep, the twitch and flutter of tiny dreams. Each little breath is full and deep and slow; a breath in, and he lifts the bottle; a breath out and he swallows. He thinks of lullabies his mother used to sing and wants to sing them for this boy, but the baby is already asleep. He wonders what language it is his son dreams in.

At some appropriately jovial but responsible hour Astrid comes home and takes the bottle from his hand, steering him back to the family room when he says he isn't tired yet. He listens to the bedtime noises she makes as she moves through the house, quiet and familiar, then the light in their room goes out and the house is silent.

The waiting is a living thing under his skin. He can feel it rushing at his temples, jumping in the palm of his hand when he presses it to the window; the mound of Venus, which tells you who you'll love and who you'll lose. His mother had once read his palm when he was six, her dark Bavarian eyes tracing the long lines and the short ones, all the places they met and crossed, but she never told him what she saw there. He doesn't believe in fate, anyway.

Still, he closes his hand into a fist and watches the lines deepen or disappear, and he wishes just once he'd asked her about that day before she died.

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