Chapter 1 - Thrown Out Into the Snow
The door shut behind me and the lock clicked before I could turn around. Snow was already in my sneakers, soaking through my socks, and the wind cut straight through my gray sweater. Down the driveway the porch light threw a yellow square onto the white yard, and I could hear them through the thin wall, still talking like I was gone. My hair was wet and sticking to my neck. I didn't have a coat. I hadn't been given time to grab one.
My hands were shaking so hard I tucked them under my arms. The road in front of our place was empty except for tire tracks filling back in with fresh snow. Every streetlight buzzed blue-white overhead. I started walking because standing still felt worse, toward the main road where the plows had been through, my jeans stiffening as the snow melted into them.
I was fourteen that night on County Line Road.
It must have been close to nine. The snow was coming down sideways, the kind that stung my cheeks and settled in my eyebrows until I had to blink it away. I could hear a car engine idling somewhere behind the houses, and then the front door opened again just wide enough for their voices to carry out to me. "Go outside." A pause, a chair scraping inside. "I can't believe you'd take from us." The words hit harder than the cold. I kept my eyes on the white center line disappearing under my sneakers.
Snow caught in my hair and melted down the back of my sweater. My arms hung at my sides until I couldn't feel my fingers, and then I crossed them tight over my chest. Step by step the houses fell behind me and there was only the road and the dark fields on either side. I stared straight toward the headlights far off, not blinking, and the hot pressure built in my throat until I said it out loud to no one, to the falling snow.
He lied.
I didn't.
Please let me back in.
"I didn't take the money," I said, and my voice shook on the last word. I kept walking toward the glow of the oncoming lights because stopping meant thinking about where I was supposed to go in just a sweater and jeans at night. The snow squeaked under my sneakers. My breath came out in short white clouds that vanished fast.
Then the headlights behind me swung wide and slowed.
A dark SUV pulled onto the shoulder maybe twenty yards back, its high beams washing over my shadow stretched long on the snow. The driver's door opened and the dome light flared. A woman got out fast, blonde hair catching the light, her dark winter coat with the fur-trimmed hood already dusted white. She had something light-colored folded over one arm, fringes moving in the wind. She didn't call out to the house. She didn't hesitate. She slammed the door and started running toward me through the snow, holding that blanket out in front of her like she was afraid I'd disappear before she got there.
May you like
I stopped in the middle of the road. The snow kept falling between us. She got close enough that I could see her face in the headlights, eyes wide, mouth open, the blanket shaking in her hands. She stared at me like she knew my face from somewhere she couldn't place, and her steps faltered.
"It's you?"
