Chapter 4
Five Days Until Christmas
teddy
Weak sunlight filtered through the dense clouds, painting everything the color of dirty dishwater. I stared at the spot where Kelsey’s rental SUV should have been, the coffee turning to acid in my gut.
I’d barely slept after leaving last night.
Kept replaying our conversation—if you could call that disaster a conversation—wondering how we’d gone from touching in the kitchen to her slamming the door on me like I was some door-to-door salesman.
The look on her face when she thought I was confessing to spending my time with the club whores.
Christ. Like I’d confirmed every fear she’d ever had about us.
And then I had to go and make a shitty comment about the money, had to get another dig in, as if I was hurting for cash.
The thing was, I’d come here to make amends.
Or explain. Or something. I’d rehearsed it on the drive over, had a whole speech about how I hadn’t meant what she thought I meant, how there’d never been anyone else—ever—how the guys at the club were just easier to be around because they didn’t look at me like I’d killed our son.
But her car was gone, and with it, any chance of fixing what I’d broken.
I killed the engine and climbed out, boots crunching through the fresh powder. Maybe she’d just moved it. Maybe the girls had told her about the large shed I’d built around back. The cold bit through my jacket as the wind picked up again, sleet peppering my face like tiny shards of glass.
No tire tracks leading around the cabin. The shed revealed nothing but a stack of firewood and some rusty garden tools. I circled back to the front porch, noting the single set of footprints already being erased by the storm.
She was gone.
I pulled out my phone, thumb hovering over her contact. We hadn’t spoken on the phone in almost two years. Every communication had been filtered through lawyers or the girls. But this was different. This was about safety, not our failed marriage.
The call went straight to voicemail. Her professional message, the one she’d recorded for work contacts. “You’ve reached Kelsey Riggs with Home Again Transitions. Please leave a message, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
I hung up without leaving anything. Tried again. Same result.
“Come on, Kels,” I muttered, hitting redial. “Don’t do this.”
Four more attempts. Four more trips to voicemail. By the sixth call, I was pacing the porch, my free hand clenched into a fist. The sleet had graduated to something meaner, ice pellets that bounced off the wooden railing like bullets.
I switched to texting, typing with numb fingers.
Me
Where are you?
No read receipt. No delivered notification.
Storm’s getting worse. Just let me know you’re okay.
Same thing. The messages hung in digital limbo, which meant one of two things: either she had no service, or she’d blocked my number.
Given how we’d left things last night, I had a pretty good idea which one it was.
My jaw tightened until my teeth ached. Figured she’d blocked me.
God forbid we act like adults about this.
God forbid she let me explain or apologize or do any of the things I’d driven here at dawn to do, like offer to grab what she needed from the store, so she didn’t have to get out in this mess.
No, better to just cut me off entirely, like the past three decades meant nothing.
My phone buzzed. For a second, hope flared. But it was only a weather alert. The winter storm had been upgraded to a blizzard.
…BLIZZARD WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM MST SATURDAY TO 6 AM MST SUNDAY FOR THE CENTRAL ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION.
Snowfall: 2–4 inches per hour, with total accumulation expected between 24–36 inches.
Winds: Sustained at 30–40 mph, gusts exceeding 55 mph.
Visibility: Near zero at times due to blowing and drifting snow.
Travel: Extremely dangerous to impossible. Road closures are in effect.
Warning: If you become stranded, remain with your vehicle. Emergency response may be delayed due to hazardous conditions.
I stared out at the swirling white. It was just after eight, but knowing Kelsey, she’d probably left for the store at first light to avoid getting caught in the storm.
Two to four inches of snow an hour, whiteout conditions, roads already closing—she didn’t stand a chance. I tried calling one more time, knowing it was pointless, but unable to stop myself. This time I left a message.
“Kels, it’s me. I know you’re pissed about last night, and you have every right to be. But the storm’s getting bad. Really bad. If you’re heading to town—” I paused, swallowing past the sudden knot in my throat. “Just call me back. Please.”
There. I’d even used the magic word on the off chance the etiquette gods were watching.
I ran a hand through my damp hair, sick at the thought of her navigating mountain roads in a rental car she wasn’t familiar with, in conditions that were deteriorating by the minute.
She’d learned to drive in West Texas, where snow was rare and measured in scant inches, not feet.
To her, it was a thing of beauty, not something that could kill her if she didn’t respect it.
A part of me hoped she’d know to turn around when conditions got bad, but this was also the same woman who’d once driven through a tornado warning to get Sky from dance class. Stubborn didn’t begin to cover it.
Summit Ridge was only twenty minutes down the mountain in good conditions. Maybe thirty in this weather. I could check the grocery store parking lot, make sure her rental was there, then leave before she even knew I’d been worried.
Not worried. Just... concerned.
The way you’d be concerned about anyone driving in this mess.
It had nothing to do with the way my chest had gone tight when I’d seen her standing on the front porch last night, or how good she’d looked in that tight sweater, or how, when she’d leaned back against me in the kitchen, everything in my life made sense again.
No, this was just basic human decency. Making sure the mother of my children didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere.
I headed back to the Bronco, already second-guessing myself. She’d blocked my number. The message was clear: Leave me alone.
But as I started the engine and pulled out of the driveway, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Call it intuition, call it knowing someone well enough to sense when they were in trouble, but something in my gut was screaming at me to find her.
The twenty-minute drive took almost forty, with visibility dropping to ten feet in places.
The Bronco’s four-wheel drive was the only thing keeping me from joining the collection of vehicles I passed—some abandoned at odd angles, others creeping along like they were trying to sneak under the blizzard’s radar.
Black ice lurked under the fresh snow, revealing itself only when my back end started to slide, that sickening weightless feeling before the tires found purchase again.
The kind of conditions that would terrify someone who’d learned to drive where ice meant the stuff you put in your sweet tea.
She’d be fine. She had to be fine.
By the time I reached the grocery store parking lot, my shoulders ached from tension, and my jaw hurt from grinding my teeth. The place looked like the last helicopter out of Saigon. Cars were parked at angles that suggested their drivers had abandoned any pretense of following the painted lines.
I cruised the rows slowly, looking for a white SUV with New York plates. Kelsey always parked in the same general area—not too close to avoid door dings, not too far because she hated walking in bad weather—creature of habit, even in unfamiliar places. But there was nothing.
No white SUV. No New York plates. No Kelsey.
Inside, tinny Christmas Muzak played over the speakers, some synthesized version of “Silver Bells” that sounded like it was being performed by dying robots.
The contrast between the cheerful music and the barely controlled panic of the shoppers would have been funny if I weren’t one of them—scanning faces, looking for one in particular.
The produce section had been picked clean except for some sad-looking Brussels sprouts and a few bruised apples.
An elderly woman clutched the last bag of potatoes like someone might wrestle her for them.
Maybe someone would. The storm had everyone spooked, turning neighbors into competitors for the last loaf of bread.
I moved systematically through the store, trying to look casual while my eyes searched for dark brown hair with highlights.
Streaks of blonde that caught the light, making her look ten years younger.
Not that she’d needed them. Kelsey had always been beautiful to me, even during the brutal months leading up to our divorce when grief had left her with dark circles beneath her eyes and a permanent shell-shocked expression.
The breakfast aisle turned up nothing but a harried mother with three kids arguing over Pop-Tarts. In the dairy section, two men were playing tug-of-war with a gallon of whole milk.
Each aisle I checked without finding her made the knot in my stomach pull tighter. Maybe she’d already come and gone. Maybe she was back at the cabin right now, blissfully unaware I was out looking for her.
But that meant I would have had to have passed her on the way down, and I was damn sure I hadn’t.
A stock boy pushed past with a cart full of canned goods, and I grabbed his arm. “Hey, you been here all morning?”
He looked about sixteen, with acne and an expression that suggested he’d rather be anywhere else. “Since five, yeah.”
“You see a woman with brown hair, about this tall?” I held my hand just under my collarbone.
The kid shrugged. “Man, I’ve seen about two hundred people this morning. They’re all starting to look the same.”