Page 97

I eased off the gas, turned slightly into it, and waited for the tires to answer.

They did.

"Good," I told the truck.

The wheel trembled beneath my palms. The hood vanished behind blown snow, returned, vanished again.

The road curved.

I followed the fence when the trenches disappeared.

Next post.

Next post.

Next—

Amber lights bloomed ahead through the snow.

I slowed to fifteen.

A county plow sat partly off the road, blade lifted, engine running. Snow curled around it in white ropes. Its revolving light turned the storm orange, then gray, then orange again.

A man in reflective coveralls stepped down and waved both arms.

I stopped alongside him without rolling the window all the way down. Wind shoved snow through the opening at once, needling my cheek and melting on the hot dashboard.

"Road west is closing," he shouted. His face was wrapped to the eyes. Snow clung to his lashes. "You need to turn around."

"I'm going to Silver Bend."

"You from there?"

"Yes."

The answer came without thought.

It was true before I had time to be surprised by it.

He leaned down, looking past me into the empty cab as if another adult with better judgment might be hiding there.

"You alone?"

"Yes."

"Road's drifting over past the county line."

"I'm turning off at Silver Bend."

Also true.

He pointed back the way I had come. "You got chains?"

"In the bed."

That was a lie.

Derek had once removed them because they rattled and never put them back. I had not checked. I'd spent six weeks driving ranch trucks through mud and late snow and had not once thought to inventory the Ford's bed because the Ford belonged to the previous version of me, the one who kept a quarter tank and a bag packed and believed mobility was the same thing as freedom.