Cora Gundersun lived in a rural area of broad rolling fields and conifer forests—Koster pines, coerulea, jack pines, Norway spruce—the meadows now blanketed with pristine snow and the trees garlanded like those on Christmas cards. The county road had been well cleared, unspooling as black as tuxedo satin through the bridal-white land.
White seemed to be the theme of the day: the landscape through which she passed, the vehicle she drove, the dress she wore, the fog that obscured her memory and veiled her intentions from her. That mental cloud did not trouble her, in fact comforted her now that her dog was safe at home and she was warm while gliding through a winter wonderland. Freedom from too much thinking was a blessing. All her life, her mind had raced as she had written reams of fiction she’d never dared submit to an agent or publisher, as she had devised new classroom techniques to reach the special-needs children who had been entrusted to her, as she had lobbied the school board to better serve girls and boys that too many people were quick to dismiss as inconvenient, a drag on society. Now she thought only of the beauty and peacefulness of the land through which she passed, of the inner voice that cared about her and promised her fulfillment.
The drive into town would take half an hour if she did not speed. And she must not speed. She had never received a ticket for speeding or for any other violation. She took quiet pride in a life lived by the corpus juris of her country during a time when the rule of law seemed everywhere under assault and corruption rampant. For a reason she did not understand—or need to understand—she knew that on this day of all days, she must drive with respect for the rules of the road and not be stopped by a patrolman.
Twenty-five minutes into her journey, the storm imprisoned in the frozen heavens suddenly broke free. From a sky invisible, a dazzling quantity of snow shimmered down. In the SUV with windows all around, Cora seemed to float through this spectacle as if the mechanics of a snow globe had been reversed, so that around her lay a worldwide winter, while she marveled at it from within a snowless sphere of glass.
The lovely inner voice encouraged her to view this snowfall as an omen. The storm could not frost her curly hair or chill her, just as the fire in her dream could not harm her. Here was an omen that confirmed the invulnerability that had been conferred upon her, absolute protection from all things hot and cold, from all things sharp and blunt, from all mortal forces.
She passed through the outskirts of town. She pulled to the curb at the head of Fitzgerald Avenue, a long and easy slope that formed a T intersection with Main Street. She picked up the butane lighter and tested it to be sure that it worked. If for any reason it failed her, there was another lighter in the glove box. It did not fail her.