Bryn checked the road behind her in both side mirrors, then glanced in her rearview. Nothing but darkness beneath a churning blizzard of white. The view ahead was similarly void, but instead of streaming away from her in frantic billowing swirls, the heavy snow pushed toward her windshield in precise, mesmerizing lines. It reminded her of the opening crawl in the original Star Wars movie. She half-expected yellow lettering to appear. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Bryn’s head bobbed—and the movement jolted her awake. She blinked hard and jerked the wheel, pulling her car back into what she hoped was her lane, though the centerline was impossible to see. Shoot. This was no good. Steve, who was curled into a ball on the passenger seat, lifted his head and whined.
“I know, baby, I know. We’re almost there.” She wanted to give the little terrier’s ears a reassuring scratch, but couldn’t risk taking her concentration off the road again.
The problem was, they weren’t close enough to there yet. She hadn’t made a hotel booking for Greenridge because she’d originally planned to push straight through, but even if she had, the small town was thirty to forty minutes away. Rupert, her destination, was three hours. The weather and road conditions had seriously slowed her progress.
Her Corolla’s belly caught a thick ridge of ice and careened toward the snowbank on the highway’s shoulder. Bryn fought the natural impulse to hit the brakes, knowing that would make the slide worse. In the nick of time, her wheels found purchase on the nearly indiscernible road. There was no good choice. She couldn’t go any faster; the roads were too treacherous—but she couldn’t go much slower either or her vehicle wouldn’t have the power needed to push through the ever-deepening snow.
She turned off the old CD of Christmas tunes that had been crooning away the past hour and clicked the radio on, letting it search for the local station. A croak of broken voices and static met her ear. Rats. She was still out of the radio station’s range.
A blast of wind slammed the side of her car and the whole vehicle shuddered. A snow-covered sign, marking what looked like a small rest area, appeared briefly, then was lost to the whirling white and deep shadows. It was increasingly impossible to see her surroundings. The clock on her dashboard read 8:14 p.m., but the sky was so dark and the traffic so sparse it seemed more like 2:00 a.m.
If her car kept high-centering on the unplowed highway—and if another vehicle happened by when she was out of control—it would spell disaster. Bryn decided to take the sign as a sign and turned on her signal light.
The rest area was to her immediate left now. She shoulder-checked yet again and pulled over as far as she could, noting with mild curiosity that the small clearing seemed to narrow at one end and become a one-lane road that wound away into nothingness.
She debated turning her four-way flashers on, but decided against it. She didn’t want to attract attention to herself alone in the night. This way, if anyone passing by on the highway did happen to spot her dark vehicle, they’d just think some smart person had abandoned his or her car until the roads cleared.
She unclicked her seatbelt and reached into the backseat to retrieve her bulky winter coat from where it lay covering a pile of wrapped Christmas gifts and seasonal goodies. She also had a blanket, a candle and a lighter, water and nuts, and dog food. She’d wait until the storm lightened, dawn arrived and/or a plow truck came by, whichever came first. You can never be too prepared was her motto—something she found ironic, seeing as despite all her preparations for life, the things she wanted most seemed to allude her.
“Oh, come on,” she muttered aloud. “Don’t go there. Go to sleep. Take a nap.”
Steve grunted from his seat as if in agreement.
But it was too late. Her brain, as ever, was already “there”—and the dangerous exhaustion that made her nod off on the road had evaporated. She felt wide awake. Great, just great. She’d known she’d have the blues this week. It almost couldn’t be helped as she contemplated the solo road trip and the big family Christmas—but this? No, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that she’d get stuck on a remote piece of road in the middle of nowhere with only herself and her spiraling thoughts for company.
She sighed and Steve echoed her, which made her smile the tiniest bit. At least she had Steve.
Yeah, Steve, a three-year-old mutt, your one—and only—true love.
Bryn’s smile died.
Why did you even come? Every year you promise yourself you’ll do your big visit in a less poignant season, yet every Christmas here you are…
It was funny to Bryn—and by “funny” she meant the furthest thing from—that even eight years since their divorce, her inner critic at its meanest still spoke in her ex-husband Brad’s voice.
You know your family couldn’t care less if you don’t show up, right? Christmas is for people with kids, Bryn, not old maids.
Okay, so the last insult was something she used on herself, not really Brad’s line, but the rest of the comment was pure him, verbatim. He’d said it one year when he wanted them to go to Mexico for Christmas instead of to the big family gathering Bryn used to love so much.
Bryn reached into her glovebox and withdrew a package of bacon dog treats. Snoozing Steve was suddenly as awake as she was. She gave him one snack, then another, and put the package away.
“Of course, my family wants me there. They love me,” she whispered defensively, feeling every bit of how pathetic she was: thirty-five years old, stranded alone in the dark in the boonies a week before Christmas, arguing with her long-gone ex that her mummy and daddy do so love her.
And they did—just maybe not quite as much as they loved her three sisters with their busy, happy hordes of kids and loyal husbands. Spinster Bryn, with her condo in an adults-only complex and full-time career focus, was out of the loop. It didn’t matter that Bryn was a homebody, who loved to bake and cook and decorate, her mom and sisters acted like she had nothing in common with them, nothing to add or contribute to conversations…
“Of course, you ‘love’ to cook—because you don’t have to, day in, day out,” her sister Sasha had laughed at Thanksgiving once, when Bryn chimed in on a discussion about recipes and volunteered to head up the bulk of the cooking.
“It is different when you’re cooking for a family instead of one person,” Bryn’s mom had agreed gently.
It was just one stupid exchange, but one of so many similar ones over the years that it became symbolic to Bryn of all the ways she was the outsider, the odd woman out—barren and husbandless in her close-knit, progeny-producing family. It wasn’t hard to pick out the instance of unintentional insensitivity that had hurt her most, however. Hands down it was when she’d broken the news to her mom and dad, still shattered and reeling from the unforeseen blow, that Brad was leaving her because she couldn’t have kids and it was important to him to have his own biological children.
“I know it’s hard, honey—but it’s nature, you know? Men want to leave a legacy.”
That had been her mother’s idea of sympathy. That. What about Bryn’s nature? What about her disappointment? She had always, always, always wanted kids. Some people weren’t sure or could go either way, especially when they were young, but all Bryn’s fantasies had centered around house and home: one husband to love her for all her days—and a handful of kids. It was embarrassing how traditional and mumsy she was at heart—and she’d tried hard to downplay it at university. Having or not having children was supposed to be a rational, intellectual decision these days, not a craving from some deep, ancient part of your body and blood, not taken as a given conclusion, the way you expect your arms and legs to work, your heart to thump, your blood to automatically pump. But that’s how she’d been when she thought about the children she’d have—that they would just… be. The idea of anything else had never occurred to her.
Bryn tucked her coat around her more securely and reclined her seat. Although she hadn’t been parked for long, the windshield was completely covered in snow. Bryn sighed again; Steve sighed again.
Just for kicks, Bryn turned the car on briefly and let the wipers clear her front and back windows—not that there was anything to see. She rechecked the radio—still nothing. Powered her cell phone on—no service, but she hadn’t been expecting any.
Her head was loud and whiney and sad and she was sick of herself. Outside the car, the silence was a heavy, breathing presence.
“Your life is lovely,” she whispered. “You’re healthy. You have friends who love you. You have work that matters to you and that supplies all your needs. No one gets everything.”
Her gratitude wasn’t feigned. It really wasn’t. It was just that Christmas, the season that celebrated new life and family from its very roots, was a raw reminder of things she didn’t have but had always longed for.
A distant rumbling registered in her consciousness. Something about it put her on alert, though she couldn’t say what exactly. Maybe just that until now the whole world had been devoid of sound, muffled in snow, like she was the sole inhabitant of the isolated road she found herself on.
The noise grew louder and louder—became the roar of a big diesel engine.
Bryn cracked her door and poked her head out, peering into the dizzying white. She saw high beams and caught the glare of a chrome grill. Then a Dodge truck, black as the night, hurtled past, pushing snow and sending huge plumes of exhaust into the frigid air. The driver noticed the sharp curve looming ahead, too late. The angry red glow of brake lights split the darkness. Bryn had time for only the briefest thought. That truck’s going too fast. It’s going to—
A spinning carnival ride of lights lit up the night before her shocked eyes. The truck spun donut after donut, totally out of control. There was no screech of metal or rubber on cement, just a heavy whirring shush as the vehicle whooshed through the snow. Then it disappeared off the side of the road in a cloud of powder.
Into a ditch? Into the river that ran parallel to this stretch of highway in places? Bryn hated that she didn’t know exactly where she was on the road. She had an idea, but any truly familiar landmarks were obliterated by the night and the white.
A flood of adrenalin made her nauseous. She thought she could see lights level with the highway, glowing almost yellow, from beneath a layer of snow. So not in the river then—please God not, she prayed.
Bryn sat back in her car and shut her door, fretting. She should check on the person or persons in the truck. What if someone was hurt? She knew first aid. But what if the vehicle’s occupants were as crazy and potentially dangerous as the way they drove? Still, she couldn’t just leave them. She’d bring her phone and as she approached, she’d speak into it, like she’d been able to reach 9-1-1 and there was someone on the way. Even the biggest psycho, upon crashing his truck in a storm, would probably have bigger things on his mind than attacking a would-be helper.
Not completely happy with her decision, but knowing she’d never be able to live with herself if someone was hurt, then worsened or died when she could’ve helped, Bryn climbed out of her car. She bundled herself up in her long down jacket and fastened its hood securely under her chin. Then she wrapped a scarf around her face, leaving only her eyes peeking out. She put her key fob in her pocket and zipped it up, then, for added precaution, took her extra key out of a hidden change drawer in the car and put it in the ignition.
“Hold tight,” she told Steve. “I’ll be right back.”
She closed her door, careful not to lock it, and waded through the deep snow toward the buried truck.