This novella was a Hugo and Nebula nominee twenty years ago. I lost both to Charles Sheffield -- whom I married five years later. Life sometimes really is just as strange as fiction.

Pearl’s a recluse - she hasn’t left the house in twenty years (no one knows why), and her cousin Eve has avoided her for years. But now Pearl’s mother dies, Eve makes a condolence visit, and Pearl spills out her secret: A wildly passionate relationship she had with a mysterious man one freezing winter’s day. The romance of a lifetime...