Chapter 2 - The Blanket Around My Shoulders
I stopped because my sneakers slid on a patch of ice and I couldn't make them move again.
The snow was coming down harder in the headlights behind me. It stuck to my eyelashes and melted and stuck again. My gray sweater was soaked through at the shoulders and my jeans were stiff at the knees. I could hear my own breathing, fast and thin, and under it the crunch of someone running.
She'd left the driver's door of the dark SUV open. The headlights threw my shadow long across the snow-covered road in front of me. I didn't turn all the way. I didn't want another voice telling me to go.
Then she was there, breathing hard, a light-colored blanket bundled in her arms. Up close she was older than I'd thought from the voice, blonde hair damp and sticking to her cheeks, dark winter coat with the fur-trimmed hood pushed back. Snow caught in the fur. Her hands were shaking from cold or from running.
"It's you?" she said.
She wasn't looking past me toward the houses. She was looking right at my face. Like she'd hit something she recognized.
I didn't answer. My jaw ached from clenching it to keep my teeth from chattering. Behind us an engine ticked as it cooled. Snow kept falling between us, landing on the blanket she held.
She stepped in closer and shook the blanket open. It was light-colored with fringe along the edge, the kind of thing that belonged on a couch, not outside. It smelled faintly like car heat and perfume. She lifted it high and settled it around my shoulders, pulling the sides together in front of me.
The weight of it surprised me. Warm from the car. My fingers were too numb to hold it, so she held it for me, her hands over mine through the fabric for a second.
"Come here," she whispered. Not an order. Almost to herself.
She cupped my face with both hands. Her gloves were gone. Her palms were warm against my frozen skin and they trembled. Snow landed on her sleeves and on my hair. The headlights made everything behind her white and blurred, just the road and the falling snow and the dark shape of the SUV with its door still open.
I stared at her. I couldn't make my face move right. The cold had gotten into my lips. My shoulders started to shake under the blanket, small jerks I couldn't stop.
She studied me the way you study a picture, eyes moving from my forehead to my chin. Tears filled her eyes and didn't fall at first. Her breath came out in quick white clouds between us.
"You look exactly like your mother did at 14," she said.
Her voice broke on the last word. She kept holding my face like if she let go I would disappear into the snow.
I heard the words but they didn't land anywhere. Mother. Fourteen. I thought of the porch light back down the road and the door shutting and the money I hadn't taken. The snow in my wet brown hair dripped down my neck. My knees felt loose.
I wanted to ask what she meant, who she thought I was. My mouth opened and no sound came out. I just stared back at her while she held me, disbelief freezing me harder than the wind.
She pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders and stepped even closer to block the wind, her forehead almost touching mine. Her hands slid from my cheeks to grip the blanket at my collarbones, holding me upright.
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"Hey," she said softly, "I've got you. Stay with me."
The road tilted a little at the edges. The streetlight above us buzzed. My sneakers filled with meltwater. I leaned without meaning to, just a few inches, into the warmth of her coat, still wrapped and held and too cold and too stunned to answer.
