Chapter One
Snowflakes danced wildly in front of Kira’s headlights creating a surreal, almost hypnotic feeling that she was traveling through a tunnel of stars.
Driving in a gentle snowfall usually brought her a sense of calm and joy.
But tonight, neither the frostbitten New Hampshire landscape, nor the festive songs on her Christmas playlist did much to ease her anxiety.
Kira used to love going home to Quebec for the holidays––getting away from her busy life in Boston and indulging in her mother’s home cooking.
But lately, it has been the most dreaded time of the year.
In her family, turning twenty-five meant it was time to “get serious about life, find a nice man, settle down, and start a family”, and at the ripe old age of thirty-six, Kira was the source of her mother’s anguish and the target of her family’s incessant questions.
Her parents couldn’t understand why she “refused” to follow in the footsteps of her two older sisters.
Four years older than Kira, Adeline, and her husband, Cooper, had a four-year old little girl, and three boys––ages thirteen, eleven, and eight––while thirty-eight-year-old Brielle and her husband, Logan, had two boys––ages twelve and nine.
One might assume that six healthy, adorable grandchildren would satisfy her parents, but no. They wanted Kira to be just as “settled” as her sisters. “Don’t you want to be as happy as the women in those books you write?” her mother loved to ask.
Kira tucked strands of her long dark hair behind her ears and pursed her lips thoughtfully.
As a romance author of twenty-three novels––fifteen of which had remained on the New York Times Bestsellers list for weeks––she knew that perfect happy endings where couples walked hand-in-hand toward the sunset only happened in books and movies.
In real life, plans fell apart, dreams died, betrayals transpired, and people grew apart––or realized that they should never have been together to begin with.
Kira wasn’t cynical about love. As a matter of fact, each time she published a book, she hoped the happiness of her fictional couples inspired her millions of readers to find their own soulmates.
It just wasn’t for her. She was quite content being the doting aunt who spoiled her sisters’ children––the piles of gifts in her back seat attested to that.
“Call from Sasha Sullivan.” Her car’s Bluetooth rang over Elvis Presley’s “Here Comes Santa Claus”.
Sasha’s profile picture––red, thong bikini, arms outstretched, face tilted to the sky, and thick braids cascading down her brown, toned body––flashed on her phone screen.
Sasha stood at the edge of the Caribbean Sea in Jamaica where she’d spent Christmas last year.
Grinning, Kira answered. “Hey, Sash, what’s up? ”
“Tell me again why you didn’t just come to Mexico with me?” her best friend asked, her tone somewhere between chiding and playful.
“Uhh… Let me think…” Kira played along. “Probably because my mother would never forgive me if I missed another Christmas.” Due to pressing deadlines, Kira had missed two in the last five years, and she was sure she’d be hearing about it until the end of time.
“Right, and because freezing your butt off in Canada is so much better than lounging on a sunny beach with me.”
Sasha was only kidding, yet every year she tried to entice Kira to join her annual tropical Christmas getaway, hoping she would eventually cave.
Sasha’s parents divorced when she was young.
Both had remarried and had other children, leaving Sasha in the middle of two new families, neither of which she felt she belonged to.
She alternated Thanksgiving between the two homes, but she often spent Christmas somewhere warm, either by herself or with whatever guy she was dating at the time.
This year it was Mike, a trainer at the gym Sasha had recently joined.
“Actually, anything sounds better than the third degree I know I’ll be getting from my entire family about when I’m going to bring a nice guy home and let him put a baby in me, or some crap like that. Ugh! I’m so tired of it.”
“Mmhmm, I can believe that. Why do parents assume we all want the same thing? Or that we want anything at all?”
Kira laughed. No wonder she and Sasha had become friends during their years at Boston University. Even back then, they were so unfazed by society’s expectations for a woman to get married before her eggs dried up.
After graduation, Sasha had landed an internship with Vérité, a prestigious Boston magazine known for getting to the core of socio-political issues around the globe.
After just four years with the publication, she was named Editor-in-Chief.
Kira, on the other hand, after ten months, had ditched her formulaic job as a features writer at a daily newspaper in Somerville to create exciting, fictitious worlds and dynamic, hopelessly romantic characters to populate them.
“I think most parents just want their kids to be happy, and for mine, happiness means starting a family.”
“Well, I think they should know by now that you are happy. You are the hit writer that you always wanted to be.”
“You’d think, right? But according to my mom, a romance novelist who is perennially single just makes it worse. The irony is apparently très tragique.”
“It’s comedy gold, if you ask me. Look, just know I’ll be soaking up enough sun for the both of us and enjoying all that you’re missing––warm, gentle waves, white sand, and sexy waiters to keep those margaritas coming.”
“And what does Mike think of all those sexy waiters hovering over you?”
“Oh please, he knows what he signed up for. He only agreed to come ‘cuz the hotel is already paid for, and I only invited him for some no-string-attached sex.”
“Ha! I’d drink to that!”
“Here, here, sister.”
The thought of Sasha getting laid down and dirty, while she suffered through her extended family’s inquisition about her love life filled Kira with envy, especially as the snowflakes hitting her windshield seemed to be getting much heavier and falling faster than before.
The road, too, was beginning to disappear under a layer of white, wind-swept powder.
“Oh boy,” she murmured, increasing her wiper speed.
“Everything okay?” Sasha asked.
“Yeah, the snow is just coming down harder now. I didn’t think it would pick up for hours.
” She shook her head as a few cars whipped past her as though it were a clear, summer day.
“I’d better focus on driving. You know how it is.
I gotta drive for me and the crazy idiots I’m sharing the road with. ”
“Good idea. Love you. Please drive carefully.”
“I will. Thanks for calling. Love you, too.”
“Send me a text when you get home, and maybe reconsider going tropical next year. There’s no snow in Mexico…” Sasha said, taking one last shot before the line went dead.
Kira’s playlist resumed and she squinted at the road.
She was accustomed to, and usually comfortable driving in winter weather.
There was just something about cruising alone on picturesque, winding country roads that sparked her creativity.
This very route had been the springboard for several of her bestselling novels.
But as she cautiously drove on, and the snowfall thickened, and the trees, signs, and guardrails faded into eerie shadows, she wished she’d left Boston a little earlier.
She’d wanted to wait out the traffic, and weather reports had only hinted at the possibility of a light dusting, but this was becoming more hazardous than she’d bargained for.
“Oh, crap!” Kira eased her foot off the gas pedal and gently pumped her brakes, holding her breath as the pickup truck that had just flown past her suddenly lost control and skidded across the road, nearly colliding with the vehicle in the other lane, before miraculously righting itself.
She let her breathe out and bellowed. “That’s why you shouldn’t speed when it’s snowing! ”
Kira tightened her grip on the steering wheel and tensed her shoulders. With another three hours to go before she reached home, she was in for a long and arduous drive.