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I pictured her behind the counter with the coffeepot in hand, cardigan buttoned, the scar at her hairline pale under the prep lights. I pictured the cloth stopped beneath her hand while Derek walked out the door.

"All right," she said.

That was all.

Not: What do you expect me to do?

Not: Why are you telling me?

Just all right, flat and precise, like a fact accepted into evidence.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have—"

"Don't apologize, hon."

The endearment returned, but the warmth did not soften what sat beneath it.

"I have to go," I said.

"So do I."

Something in the way she said it made my chest tighten.

"Marnie—"

"Drive with both hands. Don't outrun your lights."

Then she hung up.

I stared at the dark phone for half a second before the road pulled my eyes back.

I did not know what I had done.

Maybe nothing. Maybe I had called a waitress at four in the morning and torn open something that had taken her five years to scar over. Maybe she would pour coffee, wipe the counter, and keep the silence Boone had protected because silence, once lived in long enough, becomes a house with all your furniture in it.

Or maybe not.

Behind me, Bozeman vanished into snow.

Ahead, the highway narrowed between black fields, and I drove into it.

***

The radio told me to turn around every eleven minutes.

Winter storm warning. Travel strongly discouraged. Heavy snow moving into the Madison Valley before dawn. Wind fifty sustained, gusting higher. Stockmen advised to protect newborn livestock.

I turned it down but did not switch it off.

The road ran black for another ten miles, wet and shining, then began whitening at the edges. Snow crossed the hood in long diagonal lines. Every mile west took me farther from streetlights and deeper into weather. Twice, plows passed heading east, amber lights revolving, their drivers going home or going where the state had decided mattered more.

Both times, the wake hit my little truck broadside.

Both times, I held the wheel and stayed off the brake.

Don't outrun your lights.

Marnie's voice lived beside Boone's now, one more instruction that was care because it left the decision in my hands.