Page 96

Josie

Daylight arrived without improving anything.

The sky went from black to dishwater, the snow kept coming sideways, and the road narrowed to two faint trenches that might have been tire tracks or wishful thinking.

I drove inside them at twenty-five miles an hour.

Both hands on the wheel. Eyes moving.

Trenches. Reflector post. Fence. Windshield. Mirror.

Again.

My socks were still wet.

The heater had dried the cuffs of my jeans and made the rest of me smell faintly like hot wool, old fear, and Derek's apartment, though the last part might have been inside my nose instead of on my clothes. My toes had gone from cold to numb to an unpleasant burning that suggested they had not fallen off yet. The truck cab was hot enough to make my eyes grit, but if I turned the temperature down, shivering started in my shoulders and worked into my hands.

So the heat stayed high.

The window stayed cracked half an inch to keep me awake.

I had been awake twenty-six hours.

That number was not useful, so I tried to stop counting it.

The next reflector post was useful.

The dark hump in the road ahead was useful.

The left trench pulling toward the shoulder was useful.

Fix the fence before you complain about it.

Big John's line had come to me somewhere after Norris, though I had never heard him say it. Cash had quoted him over a gate hinge in March, doing a voice too gravelly to be respectful while Boone repaired the hinge and ignored him.

Calloways fix fences before they complain about them.

At the time, I had thought it was funny.

Now it became the only sentence I could hold.

The road was the fence.

My hands fixed the next hundred feet.

Complaining could wait.

A pickup appeared, angled across the opposite shoulder with its rear wheels buried. A shape sat behind the wheel, bundled and still, one gloved hand raised as I passed.

I raised mine.

Stopping would not have helped either of us. That knowledge felt brutal and clean.

The radio had become mostly static. Every so often, the weather voice fought through long enough to say travel prohibited or emergency conditions, then disappeared again beneath a rough wash of signal. I turned it lower. Not off. Low enough that it stayed information instead of company.

A gust struck the passenger side.

The Ford shifted left.