PENNY REACHED Sandborn Main Street as the snow began to fall, large sticky flakes coating her shoulders and hair. The cold didn't matter—if it sank deep enough inside her, it wouldn't hurt anymore. After setting the geese free and after Cora had dropped her off in this town where no one knew her, she decided that she was turning into something feral, too. Just a stray that didn't belong anywhere. She couldn't imagine returning to Minerva to go to high school, any more than she could picture going back to her mother. And when she located Swenson's Ladies' Guesthouse, she couldn't bring herself to write Penny Niebeck in the register. That girl didn't exist anymore—she had died along with her innocence and the man whose life she had taken. Hazel Leith, she wrote instead. That had been Mrs. Hamilton's maiden name. If she couldn't be Penny anymore, she would be Hazel. Maybe it would bring her better luck. Someone named Hazel probably wouldn't do what she had done.
The guesthouse was as respectable as Cora had promised, the sheets on the bed immaculate and freshly ironed. She stood in front of the long narrow mirror on the door and examined her face from all angles. Her cheekbone was still tender, but apart from some puffiness, there was no mark, no sign that a bruise would form. So that was one less thing she would have to explain. Her mother always told her that she was the tough kind of girl who didn't bruise easily. She fingered her braid snaking over the front of her snow-dusted coat. Tomorrow she would go to a beauty parlor and get her hair cut. The braid was part of Penny, so it had to go.
As she stepped out of her heavy new coat, she heard something rustling in the inside lining. Unzipping the inner pocket, she took out the envelope Cora had given her. It was much thicker than she had realized. When she tore it open, she found a fat wad of twenty- and fifty-dollar bills bound together, more money than she had ever seen. There was also a folded note.
Dear Penelope,
This is for your education, so spend it wisely. I hope you can put this behind you. You are such a promising young woman. You're not going to be foolish like I was; you're going to be brilliant, much better than I could ever be. Think of me sometimes and know that I wish you well. I will always remember you.
Your friend, Cora
She sat for a long time reading and rereading that note. If she closed her eyes, she could hear Cora's voice as clearly as if she were standing just behind her chair. She was talking about Patagonia. "We lived on the edge of a long fjord. There were swans that were half black, half white. White swans with black necks. They swam in salt water. Here, if you talk about salt-water swans, people think you're lying."
She could see Cora driving down the endless moonlit roads. Would the snow block her way? If she drove south, heading down to Mexico, maybe then the roads would be clear. Perhaps she would ditch her pickup, hop a freight train like a hobo, her baby tied to her back with a shawl. She could do it if she had to. She was a swan, half black, half white, that could survive in a cold salty fjord. Ave, ave. On the inside of her closed eyelids, she saw silver feathers brushing air, long necks stretching. She heard beating wings, the wind rushing past. Flying, soaring, and far below, the snowy spines of mountains, their peaks like the white caps of storm waves.
When she lay down and finally slept, she didn't dream of Cora or of the man she had shot. She dreamt of her mother hanging up wash on the Hamiltons' clothesline. Her mother turned to her and smiled. "Penny," she said, opening her arms, and then Penny jolted awake, feverish and cotton-mouthed as the wind rattled the windows and whistled down the chimney with a haunted sound. Burying her face in the pillow, she tried to go back to sleep.
She woke up with the chills, her throat sore, her forehead burning. When she tried to get up and get dressed, she felt so weak that she crawled back under the covers. What did she have to get up for anyway? For the next three days, she drifted in and out of fever, shivering and then sweating until the bedsheets were clammy and sour. Mrs. Swenson, the landlady, brought her hot tea with lemon. "Oh, poor Hazel," she said. "Would you like me to call the doctor?"
"No, ma'am, please. No doctor. I'll be all right."
When her mind was clear enough to concentrate, she read Great Expectations. She had promised Cora she would keep up with her schoolwork. And Cora had promised her she would love the book. So she read about Pip, Estella, and Miss Havisham while the snow kept falling, covering the town in dazzling white crystals. Frost etched her windowpanes in a landscape out of a fever dream. On a tree outside, a blood-red male cardinal perched and sang.
It would not let her go, the vision of the bullet exploding in his chest. His dead eyes staring at her. She kept reliving that scene. If she hadn't been blocking the door. If she could have protected Cora without killing him.
Mrs. Swenson stood over her bed, her face a haloed blur in the lamplight. "Hazel, if you're not better tomorrow, I have to call the doctor."