Charles Rammelkamp		Breaking Ice Oh Lord, the old lady barked when I lay the package of salt crystals on the check-out counter. You aren’t putting that on the pavement, are you? The nametag on her red smock proclaimed Pat. Her tone contained a slap, her manner certainly patrician. The impatient scorn in her eye held the imperious anger of a mother habitually obeyed. I confessed that was my plan as if admitting to foolishness, or some shameful behavior. Well, Pat muttered, dragging the barcode across the scanner, just be sure you sweep it away once the ice melts or you’ll have cracks in your sidewalk like, like, I don’t know what; her imagination failed her. Your voice, I silently supplied, handing her the bills,		Possessions “We only had sex once,” Liz confided to her husband, shocking Wilfred with her frankness about a boy they’d known in college. He felt invited into her life and excluded from it, too. “I think he thought I was trying to trap him. Maybe he thought I wanted to get pregnant so he'd have to marry me. I asked him once if his parents were rich, and he said yes, reluctant but proud.” True, Liz and Wilfred had been married thirty-three years, had three children together, watched one die from a birth disease, but he thought he understood why some men kill their women for the things they give them, the things they withhold.