Jack drove the sleigh down a path that headed to the back of the property, one that had been frequented by trucks and tractors during harvest season. A few scant inches of white powder covered the ground, but, by all accounts, the winter was off to a slow start, with snowfall well below average. The weak light of the winter sun was no match for the advancing dusk. There was less than an hour left in the day. I noticed that Jack had packed several very large battery-operated lanterns.

If passing through the road-front gate felt like time travel, dashing through the snow in an open sleigh felt like waking up on the front of a Hallmark card. I was sure that Season’s Greetings was scrawled at our feet in calligraphy.

Finally, Jack pulled up along the edge of a small creek that gurgled with brackish water.

“Are you warm enough?”

I was bundled in both of the thick lap blankets that Lars had swung over the seat. “Yep.”

He pulled me close to him. I tucked into the nook created by his outstretched arm. “Gifts now,” he said, clapping his hands as his grandmother had.

I laughed. “I went first last time. Your turn.” From inside my parka, I pulled a wrapped gift and placed it in Jack’s hands.

He turned it over several times, shook it, knocked on it, and even sniffed it.

“It’s a gift, not a melon,” I said.

He took his time, lifting the tape gingerly, folding the paper back carefully. I finally reached over, dug my nails in, and ripped.

“There’s always that way,” he said.

Inside was a folded navy-blue LA Dodgers cap. He shook it out. “What’s this?” he asked.

“A new hat.”

With a puzzled look, he held it up to the fading light, turning it one way and then another. OK, so maybe the Dodgers were an acquired taste. “I already have a hat, a lucky one,” he said teasingly.

The cap in question was, indeed, lucky, having once skittered and drawn me away from an out-of-control truck. Still, it wasn’t the most stylish of things. “It’s always nice to have options,” I said.

“So, am I supposed to wear this thing?” He dropped it on his lap.

“Let me show you,” I said, cramming it over his shaggy bangs.

“It makes a statement, I suppose,” he said.

“The statement being: I’m with Kat Leblanc, California Girl, Dodgers fan.”

“You think I need a reminder?” he said, lifting my chin with his forefinger. “You’re not exactly the kind of girl one forgets.”

“I’m sure you say that to all the girls you’ve saved from being dragged into another realm.” Hard to believe I could be so flip about that horrible night and Wade’s evil plan. I supposed making light of it was a way to deal. Jack had almost died. I shivered to think of it.

“Only the ones with whom I’ve survived drowning incidents and bear encounters.”

It was comforting to know that he, too, could joke about our brushes with death, especially as neither one of us thought our ordeals were behind us. He kissed my eyelid. It fluttered as if about to take flight.

“But about the cap,” he said.

“What about it?”

“Does it come in another color?”

“Dodger blue, buddy. No other color.”

He adjusted its fit. It was a definite improvement over the mesh John Deere cap.

“Your turn,” he said, pulling a small round-shaped package from under the sled’s front seat.

Unlike Jack, I knew how to open a gift properly. Within moments the shredded paper lay at my feet and I held a beautiful snow globe on a squat black base. The domed scene depicted a dark-haired boy and a blond girl in a red coat skating on a tree-lined rink.

“How did you . . . ?” I asked with a catch in my voice. It was so eerily reminiscent of our fateful encounter: the winter day, five years ago, when Jack and I miraculously survived a skating accident. Even the red coat with white trim was accurate. “Did you have this made?”

Jack shook his head no. “I found it in a box of my grandmother’s old Christmas decorations.”

“But . . . it looks so much like . . .”

“Turn it over,” he said.

I upended the glass. A stamp on the bottom read “Gleðileg Jól 1946.”

“Merry Christmas 1946,” I said.

“Yep.”

Before even our parents were born, our likenesses were entrapped in a snow globe.

“Weird. Isn’t it?” I asked.

“I don’t ask anymore. I just accept.”

He had the right attitude. Certain aspects of our lives were almost too much to contemplate. I shook the globe. Snow fell, powdering the girl’s hair and shoulders and dusting the pine trees. “I did ask for a white Christmas. It’s perfect.”

“That’s just part one of your gift,” he said, stretching out his arms.

A light snow began to fall.

“Hooray,” I said, cupping flakes in my joined palms. “My white Christmas.”

It began to snow a little harder.

I looked around, awestruck. “But how? Before, it only happened when you were mad, or jealous, or out of control in some way.”

“I’ve been practicing,” he said.

The flakes grew large and feathery. They clung to the horses’ hides and tails, and my lap blanket was soon coated with a thick band of white.

“I can see that.” I scooted in for a kiss, something we’d been practicing together. It struck me that, like the proverbial snowflake, no two kisses were ever the same. This one was all the more special, given the holiday setting. And it had a delicious contrast between the cold air and the heat we were generating. The tips of our noses were chilly, but our hot breath and lips were smoldering. I shrugged my hands out of my gloves and walked them under his shirt and up his ribs. For one of the Winter People, his skin was always thermal. Nor would he ever have occasion to complain about my icy fingers. I sat on his lap. His groan, though not a complaint, was raw. Forget the Hallmark greeting card; we were now rifling through the pages of a Harlequin romance.

I pulled away and leaned my head back. The snow was falling like confetti now; giant crystalline flakes clung to my eyelashes and wet my face. I was startled to see Jack with a cap of white hair, as if the intensity of our kiss had prematurely aged him. Looking around at the cloaked landscape and night falling as fast as the snow, I knew it was time to bring things down a notch.

“Uh, Jack?”

“Yes.”

“This seems like an awful lot of snow.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe you should turn it off now.”

“Crap!”

“What?”

“I’m trying.”

“And?”

“It’s not working.”

I jumped off his lap. “Quit fooling around.”

“I’m not.” His voice was tight.

I could barely see my hand outstretched in front of my face. The wind howled like a wolf, hungry and irritable. We’d jumped books to Little House on the Prairie: the blizzard scene where Pa had to tie a rope to his waist so as not to get lost between the house and the barn.

“We gotta go now,” Jack said. “Before it gets worse.”

“It’s going to get worse?”

“It could,” he said.

“How are we going to see our way back?”

Jack lightly switched the horses with the reins. “These girls know the way.”

That didn’t help. Our welfare was in the hands of a couple of nags: one called Moonbeam and the other called Bubbles. Neither name, if you asked me, inspired much confidence. I’d have preferred a Saint Bernard named Hero.

It was slow going. Even the horses shied their heads to the side with the winds whipping the snow every which way. Jack was quiet, which made me nervous. Every few minutes I could hear him muttering — cursing, technically — under his breath. And he was going to bust a lobe if he concentrated any harder on whatever it was he did to harness the weather.

My cell phone was at Jack’s, in my purse, next to the front door, my “Stayin’ Alive” ringtone probably not sounding so cute and retro anymore.

I could still see the outlines of trees on either side of the path, but barely. I wondered how the horses kept to the trail. As if sensing my concern, they came to an abrupt stop.

“Shit,” Jack said with a lash of the reins. “Giddyap.”

Nothing.

He tried again. Bubbles, or at least I think it was Bubbles, neighed in complaint. A headwind barreled into me. My face hurt from the cold, and I burrowed farther into my collar. Though I, better than anyone, knew of his resistance to cold, I still shuddered with sympathy for Jack.

“Hold the reins,” Jack finally said. “I’m going to have to guide them.”

He jumped down from the sled, carrying one lantern with him and leaving the other next to me on the seat.

The horses were in no mood and dug in their hooves obstinately. I could just make out Jack’s form through the squalling snow at first coaxing, and then pulling, until he was finally engaged in an all-out tug-of-war with the animals. He may have had determination, but they had brute strength and were not about to be led into an abyss through which they had no guideposts, no point of reference, nothing but a wall of swirling white. And then it came to me. They needed a corner. Not literally, of course, as that could put us into a ditch or thicket of trees. They needed what my mother had always given me when we did jigsaw puzzles together: a small, manageable start, an achievable goal.

As cold as I was, I shrugged out of my white parka and then hastily took off my new red sweater. How, of all days, had both Jack and I managed to dress in white? And dang, it was cold. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. They formed words of their own volition. They even got a little mouthy and crass. Good thing Jack was out of hearing range. They cursed us both: me for coming up with the stupid idea, and him for listening.

Coat back on and lantern and sweater in hand, I scrambled out of the sled. Fighting the driving snow, I made my way to where Jack struggled with the horses. I held the lantern and red sweater mere inches in front of one horse and then the other. I noticed they both lifted their heads slightly. Jack caught on and urged them forward toward the wagging sweater that, inch by inch, I pulled away from them. It was working. Evolution moved quicker, but at least it was progress, and who knows, maybe by the time we got back I’d have adapted for frostbite resistance, a mutation I supposed Jack already possessed. As things stood, I couldn’t feel my toes or the tip of my nose. As if sensing our clearheadedness, even the snow and winds relaxed a little.

“It won’t let up for long,” Jack said. “But I think we can get back in the sleigh.”

We settled back onto the wooden seat. I tucked a blanket around my frozen toes.

“Is it over?” I asked, lifting my mitted glove to catch flakes.

“Not even close,” he said, switching Bubbles lightly. “We better hurry.”