It was snowing the night Philip’s ill-fated impulse led him to Lucy’s house. He hadn’t intended to go there, he just wanted to go out for a walk in the snow. He knew it was over between them, that she had moved on to Jonathan or Richard or somebody other than him. He had no plan whatsoever except to be outside, to breathe the crisp cold air and to enjoy the solitude of a walk in the middle of the night. He automatically headed for the ravine at the end of his block – a natural conduit between his place and hers, a forty minute walk to where the trail ended in the heart of Cedarvale.

The path was covered with fresh snow, already inches deep. His were the first footsteps to mar the pristine surface. Big fat flakes floated silently to the ground and he tilted his head back to feel them tickle his face. He inhaled that ozone-rich air that always accompanies snowfalls like these. Euphoric, he was at the top of the Ferris wheel, suspended above the ground and he felt capable of anything, until he was at the bottom.

These ups and downs were a feature in Philip’s life. He would invite the adrenalin rush of danger only to run from it in fear. As a boy, he and his friends would sneak out into the winter twilight to wander through Prospect Cemetery, drawn by the danger and seduction of something other-worldly among the gravestones. His heart raced and his skin prickled with the fear he tried to conquer in vain. Invariably he would abandon his buddies and run home to safety. This teeter totter of invincibility and abject cowardice made him miserable.

Lucy tended to pick the wrong guys to date. She had a penchant for ‘bad boys’ and had no qualms about dating anyone who turned her on. Philip’s appeal was purely physical. His well proportioned physique and his beautiful hands could make her swoon with desire when he touched her. This was enough to accept his awkward advances. But she discovered that his moods were erratic and she had no patience for that. Eventually she came to despise him for the dastardly wretch that he was. After a couple of months of dating when they were at Mount Pleasant Theatre one night to see an old Agatha Christie film, the fire alarm sounded. Philip, in a panic, pushed past the orderly crowd, desperate to save himself. He left her behind. After that incident she wanted nothing to do with him and when he wouldn’t stop showing up at her house, she applied for a restraining order.

He reached the big boulder near the Ava Road end of the path from where he could see her house. The lights were on! He stopped dead wondering why she was still up. The picture window at the front of her little bungalow revealed the silhouettes of two people behind the blinds – Lucy, petite and pudgy, and someone tall and burly. This guy might have excited her merely because of his menacing size. She held her arms extended palms up, as if pleading and his arms were reaching as if he was about to grab her. Were they arguing? She backed away from him until she was out of the room where he could no longer see her. The guy followed her out of sight.

What was happening inside? What should he do? Should he knock on the door? And say what? “Hi, I was in the neighbourhood…” Should he call the cops? And say what? “I just happened to be spying on my ex-girlfriend in the middle of the night…” Was he delusional in presuming he needed to intervene? And what could he possibly do if the guy actually became violent? Philip’s gut reaction was to barge in and save her, but his pusillanimous nature urged him to flee.

His euphoric bubble had burst and he was quickly descending from the top of the Ferris wheel. His intrepid instinct of only moments ago turned inside out and that old self loathing gripped him as it did so often when he was faced with challenges he was too afraid to tackle. He stood by the boulder frozen in a panic of indecision– fight or flight? But he was a coward after all, ignoble in the face of danger or threat of harm, so he turned south and headed back.

The wind had picked up and the light from the moon flickered between fast moving clouds. It made the trees appear to be jumping in and out around him. Philip could see yellow eyes flashing between the trees. He knew there were wild foxes here, maybe even coyotes. His blood pounded in his ears. His heart hammered with the speedy rhythm of his own footsteps and it jolted suddenly when the moon revealed the lurking body of a lone coywolf so close that he could smell its musky scent. Philip started to run.

It took him thirty minutes to get to the Heath Street end of the trail. He stopped to catch his breath and tried to eradicate the image of Lucy being threatened. He developed other scenarios to rationalize his retreat. Maybe she was just luring the guy into the bedroom. Maybe they were at this very moment, having the torrid sex that Lucy had so often initiated with him. The thought of it made him hard. He wanted her. And he was filled with wrath for the guy who was with her. It made him bold enough to imagine himself trouncing the rapist and becoming Lucy’s hero, so he retraced his earlier footsteps that had by now been covered over by the snowfall.

Clouds hid the moon. It had stopped snowing and it was much colder than it had been an hour ago. Philip jogged to keep himself warm. He heard the shrill screams of wild canines. The sound was chilling, like human babies being tortured. He ran faster.

He was around the last bend before the Ava Road end when the woo-woooo of sirens pierced the silence and stopped him in his tracks. He could see flashes of blue light through the bare trees. His instinct was to turn and bolt but his curiosity impelled him forward. Fear led him to shelter in a small grove of trees that ended at the boulder. He crouched behind it and saw that there was a cop car in front of Lucy’s house and he saw an ambulance turn the corner from Gloucester Grove onto Everden.

He waited for many agonizing minutes in the freezing cold until he finally saw a stretcher being loaded into the ambulance and two cops, now backed up by another two, started to search her backyard, while the other two headed into the ravine. With flashlights illuminating the iridescent path, they went right past him when they suddenly noticed the fresh footsteps heading north. They turned to follow them toward the grove of trees that sheltered him.

There was no escape.