We drove to a graveyard, two towns away. The snow was falling as we got out, but then, when was it ever not snowing?
We walked through the graves and it occured to me how little I knew about her, despite how much time we've spent together, outside of time.
But she turned away and said she didn't know anyone here. I followed her past the engraved, decorated gravestones to the blank markers. The lines upon lines of empty stones, marking the passing of yet another soldier. She stood and looked out over the graves and whistled softly, and I didn't know the tune. Snow framed her face, or maybe it was just her hair... The note she whistled went on and on, true and clear across the snow covered dead, ready to last forever with them. Only then did I wonder what we were doing there, in a graveyard in the middle of February.
She turned her face to me again and her nose and cheeks were pink. It would have matched her hair, before. Before when she was fake.
There was a circle of stone benches in that graveyard and she led me there, through an archway of carved rock. She wiped the snow off a bench and sat down, facing inward while I stood and watched.
She told me she had been here before, once with her mother. She said it was a friend of her mother's, a woman she had never really known. She said, she couldn't find her anymore.
She smiled at me, and maybe her lips were a little blue, but we didn't go back yet. Not yet.

She sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window as we waited for the car to warm up. She took off her mittens and rubbed her hands together, pressed them to her cheeks and shivered.
She asked me if I ever wonder... but then she did not say what, and I didn't ask. Because I know what she still wonders, even now. Because I know she isn't living here right now, that her mind rests elsewhere, in another world. In our world. And she wonders where it goes, and where have we gone, and where are we going, where will we go next?
I didn't ask because I know what she wonders and I wonder the same thing.
Warm air started to flow from the heater and I couldn't see our breath anymore. She stopped rubbing her fingers and put them on the dashboard and she watched them, waiting to see what they would do next. But they just sat there as miles of road passed by outside the windows.
When the air started coming out hot and it was getting too warm in our winter clothes I turned the heat down. She took her hands off the dashboard and let them drop into her lap where they lay still, pale and lifeless against the night blue of her snowpants, and she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes. I wanted it to be cold again so I could see her breath drifting out through her slightly parted lips. I wanted to watch her breathing.
But I kept my eyes on the road and the signs announcing the distance we had travelled. The signs telling me we were getting closer to someplace I've never been, except to stop for gas on the outskirts. The radio announcer announced that it was time for John Smith's talk show hour. She opened her eyes and turned the radio off with an irritated breath.
I passed her the Kleenex box and she took one and blew her nose loudly and thanked me. Her nose was red and her eyes overly bright, but I couldn't have noticed; I had to watch the road, read the signs telling me it wouldn't be long until we were almost back home.
She looked out the window and was silent. And miles of road passed beneath us, but I wonder if she noticed.
She said: "It was beautiful in the summer." But the radio was silent and I didn't understand and the world stood mute outside our windows as the road sped by beneath the wheels and a sign drew near, telling us we were home.