Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
T wo hours later, Natalie was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on a snow-covered highway in the middle of nowhere, flicking through the radio, trying to find a station— any station would do—that wasn’t playing Christmas music. The mountains on either side of the highway were draped in a thick, unyielding white, and the windshield wipers on her car were whipping back and forth manically, trying and failing to keep up with the relentless snowfall.
What was going on here? Not for the first time, Natalie craned her neck past the eighteen-wheeler in front of her to see why traffic had been locked in a near-standstill for the past forty-five minutes. The drivers in the cars on either side of her were beginning to look irate, and she couldn’t blame them—not only was the heater in her car barely functioning at this point, but the heavy snow pounding down from the sky was no match for the salted roads and had begun piling up at an alarming rate. If this kept up much longer, they would all be trapped.
But something worse was happening, too. Something much, much worse.
Natalie averted her eyes to avoid looking at the little red “check engine” light that had been flickering on and off on her dashboard for the past two hours… okay, fine, for the past three weeks, and why, oh why , had she spent so much time ignoring it? There was always somewhere more important to go, something more urgent to do, and besides, Devin had a car and they worked at the same place, so if hers conked out for a few days, no harm, no foul. Right?
Wrong. So wrong, and she had no one to blame but herself.
Please , she silently begged whoever might be listening. Please don’t make this day any worse . At this rate, she wouldn’t make it to the Sandersons’ house until well after nightfall, and the adrenaline of the past few hours already had exhaustion setting in.
The traffic inched forward, the snow fell faster and harder, and that little red light continued to taunt her. Thoughts of Devin threatened to fill her head, but Natalie did her best to squash them down, knowing that right now wasn’t the time to try and unpack what had gone wrong with their relationship. Besides, there was every chance he would change his mind, because she knew that he hadn’t been pretending to love her for the past seven years—no one was that good of an actor. Maybe he just needed time, she decided. Time, and a little bit of perspective.
Then he would undoubtedly come crawling back, and after a proper amount of cold-shouldering, she would let him.
“ New route found ,” a robotic voice blared in the car, causing Natalie to nearly jump out of her skin. “ Avoids three-hour slowdown .” She glanced down at her GPS screen to find it offering to recalculate her route, and she immediately punched the accept button. “ Take exit 48 in two-tenths of a mile ,” the voice squawked.
Squinting through the thick flakes still pouring down like raindrops, Natalie could barely make out the exit sign a little way ahead. Judging by the pace she was moving, she’d be there in, oh, say, another hour? Then she eyed the shoulder of the highway, and after a quick glance in all directions to check for a police car, she jerked her steering wheel to the right, nearly hitting the back of the eighteen-wheeler as she squeezed past it and found herself blissfully free.
She made it to the exit in a flash, ignoring the death stares of her fellow drivers, and saw that the relatively snow-free road that stretched ahead of her wound up the side of the mountain and was bordered on either side by enormous pine trees whose boughs seemed to brush the heavens. It was a magnificent sight—much better than the bumper of that eighteen-wheeler—and better yet, the road was completely deserted.
Up, up, up she went, gazing at the scenery in awe as she drove past an overlook and saw the thick groves of trees that covered the mountain in all directions, their leaves glittering with new-fallen snow. The sky overhead was a crisp, clear blue, and every now and then, she saw a deer darting through the woods beside the road, nothing more than a flash of brown amidst the white. Besides her, there wasn’t a soul in sight, and any twinges of concern she may have felt were immediately dispelled by Natalie’s regular checks of the GPS screen, which continued to assure her that she was on the right course.
A good thing, too, because the “check engine” light was now a steady red warning, and her car had begun making a low, insistent whining sound that she could almost— almost —pretend she couldn’t hear over the muffled country song playing from the staticky radio. But that was fine, of course, perfectly fine, because in just a few miles, she’d be off this deserted road, and surely she’d make it to the Sandersons’ house with her car fully intact, because it had been her faithful companion for a decade now, and it would not—she repeated, would not —let her down. Not now. Not here.
A bump jolted her back to attention, and Natalie realized that she had left the paved road and was now on what looked like a narrow dirt path, barely big enough for a car, nearly hidden by the thick layer of snow that was accumulating despite the dense evergreen branches that crisscrossed overhead.
“This can’t be right,” she muttered to herself, squinting down at the GPS, which stared back at her placidly, reassuringly. The route showed that she was near the top of the mountain, and in a few more miles, she would descend to a different highway, apparently bypassing the slowdown altogether. With a glance at the warning light, and a nervous pat to the dashboard along with a few whispered words of encouragement, she navigated the first part of the dirt road while clutching the wheel for dear life. The car bumped over rocks and fallen branches, and at one point bottomed out with an alarming scraping sound that had her squeezing her eyes shut in fear.
But she and the car continued trundling along just the same, and as a patch of sunlight emerged from the thick cover of trees, and the road began its long, snaking descent down the mountain, she released the tense breath she’d been holding. “You did good, girl,” she said, giving the dashboard another fond pat. “I’ll get you to the mechanic as soon as I can, and you’ll have a nice checkup.”
The car must have registered those last words as permission to finally rest, because after one last long, loud whine, the engine spluttered once and then died altogether.
“Oh no,” Natalie said into the sudden silence. “Oh no, oh no, oh no .” She pounded her fist against the dashboard, then the steering wheel, then the passenger seat, just for good measure. Then she removed the keys from the ignition and jammed them in again, hoping for a different outcome .
Silence, except for the jackhammering of her heart.
She was screwed. She was so, so screwed, because she was completely and utterly alone, and… yep. Her cell phone wasn’t getting any reception either, because this was the single worst day in the history of the world.
Natalie kicked open the driver’s door and immediately began shivering in her peacoat as she pried open the hood of the car and stared blankly at the many internal… thingies. She didn’t know how to change a tire, let alone diagnose and fix a dire problem, and did she mention she was screwed?
It didn’t take long for panic to start setting in, her breathing ragged and uneven as she debated her options. As she saw it, there were two of them:
Stay where she was and freeze to death.
Walk as far as she could down the mountain and freeze to death.
Tears were useless, because they were already hardening on her lashes, making her—if possible—even colder. Grabbing her purse from the passenger seat, along with the spare blanket she kept in the back, Natalie began walking back the way she had come, her tennis shoes slipping and sliding on the icy path. The world around her was entirely, eerily silent, not even a bird trilling in the trees overhead or a squirrel scampering through the undergrowth.
Before long, her feet were simultaneously numb and on fire, and a deep, throbbing ache had started in her bare hands, which were shoved in the pockets of her peacoat. Even though it felt like she had been walking for miles—for eons, maybe—when she turned back, her car was still in sight, a bright red smear against the backdrop of pure white.
Shivering from head to toe, she continued trudging forward, every so often tripping over a tree root embedded in the path, her mind wandering to dark, shadowy places as she tried not to think about what would happen if no one were to find her.
Which wouldn’t happen… right? Because surely someone had driven this road before. Surely she wasn’t the only idiot out there. In fact, Natalie was so certain that she’d hear the rumble of an engine at any moment that she continuously strained to hear it through the thick silence that blanketed the even thicker forest. But the only sound she heard was the occasional puff of her own breathing as she navigated the lonely road, the drumbeat of fear growing louder by the second.
Thirty minutes passed, and then an hour, and by now, Natalie’s feet were burning so intensely from the cold that her walk was reduced to a hobble. Deciding to reserve at least some of her strength, she found an overturned tree, draped her blanket over the trunk to provide some measure of protection from the snow, and then hoisted herself onto it. She gazed over the stunning yet forlorn landscape, then checked and rechecked her phone several more times before shoving it back inside her purse with a sigh. Still no signal.
She would rest for a few minutes, she decided, and then continue down the mountain until she had reception—she would slide down the mountain on her bottom if she had to, because this was not how it ended. This was not what was written on her tombstone, no sir, because she had things to do. Get married, for one—though that now seemed depressingly out of reach. Have children… which, yep, even further.
Be happy?
Yes, that would do. What Natalie wanted, above all else, was to be happy, though that feeling had eluded her for most of her life. She thought she’d finally found that with Devin. In fact, she’d been sure of it.
But as Natalie well knew, it only took an instant for everything to change .
The sun was high in the sky now, and Natalie turned her face up to it, reveling in whatever scant warmth it could provide. A bird was singing somewhere in the branches above her, which she took as a good sign, and so it was with a renewed burst of energy that she hopped down from the tree trunk, rolled her soggy blanket into a ball that she stuffed under one arm, and began trudging through the snow once more.
Shimmering flakes were still whirling and twirling through the air around her, though the snow was less urgent now, more light and peaceful. Instinctively, she caught one in her bare hand, taking a moment to admire its intricate beauty, and had just caught a second, then a third, when a distinct roar cut through the impossible quiet around her.
The unmistakable sound of an engine, growing louder and more insistent.
It was all Natalie could do not to drop to the snow on her knees and weep.
She was saved. Not by a Christmas miracle, because she knew those didn’t exist. But by some kind of miracle all the same.