After skirting Philadelphia, then New York, she stopped to gas up, stretch her legs. In the parking lot she ate half the PB&J she’d packed and watched a couple walk a big, curly haired dog.
A dog had been in her long-range plans, she remembered, after she’d established her own business. Not a big dog, she thought, but not one of those pocket jobs either. A nice sensible-size dog who’d curl at her feet when she did paperwork and romp around the backyard—no digging in the garden. A sweet and quiet-natured dog she’d raise from a frisky puppy.
She saw her imaginary dog stretched out on her finished back deck to soak up the summer sun. Sitting patiently in her open, cheerful kitchen while she filled his food and water bowls. Greeting her with wagging tail when she came home from work.
She’d need a dog door, of course, leading out from the kitchen to the deck and yard. And …
She caught herself, closed her eyes.
“Stop. Just stop. That’s done.”
Appetite gone, she wrapped the second half of the sandwich and continued on her way.
She drove through Connecticut, into Massachusetts. Snow, white and thick, covered everything on either side of the highway, and the sky—gray as lead—surely held more. Wind streamed down from the rising hills, sent snow flying, drifting.
Traffic slowed to the point she felt herself drifting like the snow. So she pulled off again, walked in the frigid air. With light leaching out of the day, she nearly gave in.
A decent motel, a warm, quiet space, sleep.
She bought a large coffee instead and texted her mother she’d arrive in a few hours.
We’ll be here. Got a big pot of beef stew waiting. Drive safe.
She added a heart emoji, and feeling obligated, Morgan answered with another.
Ignoring the signs of lodging, she crossed into Vermont and the Green Mountains.
There was beauty here—maybe frozen at this time, but beauty. She couldn’t deny it, and had always enjoyed it on her holiday visits, her short childhood trips in summer.
Mountains and forests and valleys, snow drenched, made a winter painting, all Americana. She drove and wound through the dream of it, and felt something nearly release when the moon—just a slice of it—broke through the clouds to drop its blue light on the white.
She’d hiked the forest with her grandfather on rare and all-too-short summer visits. He knew every trail. It struck her that she missed him more here as she drove closer to where he’d lived his life than she did anywhere else.
He’d listened to her dreams.
To be fair, so had her grandmother and her mother. Though her mother had always seemed just a little distracted. But Pa had listened, as if nothing else existed in that moment but her words and wishes.
She thought of him now as she traveled through his world and remembered the little things he’d taught her.
How to hammer a nail without banging her thumb. How to use a compass. How to recognize a deer print, a bear’s. How to fish, something she did not for pleasure but just to spend time with him.
He wouldn’t be here this time, she realized, and that cold, hard fact ached in her heart.
She pushed on, veering west with the road out of the forest, through the towns, their outskirts, the villages and theirs.
And at last, at last, nearly ten hours after she’d begun, she came to the sturdy old Tudor riding its slope of snow with lights shining in the windows, smoke curling from its pair of chimneys.
After parking in front of the garage, heaving a sigh that she’d made it, she got out on her rubbery legs to drag her pair of suitcases out of the car.
The cold cut like knives sheathed in ice, and the moan of the wind crackled through the frozen trees.
But they’d blown the snow off the drive, away from the wide bricked path. At her limit, she bumped the suitcases up the pair of steps to the covered entryway and knocked.
The door opened quickly, told her they’d been waiting. In an instant it hit her, that study in shared DNA. So alike, the slim builds, the bold blue eyes, the beautiful forever bones of their faces.
An instant more enfolded her in female arms, the scent of women.
“Close out that cold, Audrey. Let me get a look at this girl.”
Olivia Nash took Morgan’s shoulders to hold her back and take a good study. “Worn to the nub, aren’t you?”
“Long drive, Gram.”
“Well, get that coat off. We’ll get some stew in you. I’d say whiskey with it, but you never had a taste for it as I recall.”
Her mother took her coat, scarf, hat, then stood holding them, taking her own good study. “How about some wine to go with that stew?”