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“Um. Maybe down that fourth row?” she suggested, and Melisa started the car forward. They reached the end of the row. Melisa suggested they double back and Melinda nodded. Six passes later, Melinda was ready to give up. Melisa was as well, it appeared.
“Melinda, I think we have to call it,” she said. “Even if we found your car, it would take us an hour to dig you out.” She paused. “I’d be happy to take you to the police station...?”
Melinda heard the question but wasn’t interested. She wasn’t ready to face that decision yet. “If you have time to double back to my place in Golden, that would be great,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” Melisa steered the car toward the exit. “I imagine they’ll have been lenient with the parking restrictions here, but in case you find a ticket on your windshield, or in the mail, Paul and I will take care of it.” She pulled the Land Cruiser back into the slush of Ward Road and then merged onto I-70. Only then did she resume her delicate interrogation.
“So...?”
Melinda burst out laughing.
“I think I know where this is going,” Melinda said with a sidelong glance at the other woman.
Melisa laughed as well. “So he’s a heartbreaker, is he?” she asked.
“God I hope not,” Melinda answered, and that same organ quickened in her chest. My heart? Love? No way. It wasn’t possible in that short amount of time. She thought of her parents. Nothing good came of pressure-cooked romance.
“But...” Melinda picked up where her reverie had left off. “We...connected. He was so constant. So dependable. So caring. And if I’m honest, so sexy.”
It was Melisa’s turn to burst out laughing. “I can’t disagree with you there,” she said. “The man is a mountain! And that touch of silver in his hair? I mean, wow. Killer.”
Her tone softened from conspiratorial gossip to supportive girlfriend. “I can totally see it. Paul and I got together way too soon after I had been abducted, but I was helpless to stop it. He made me feel safe. That was the opposite of how I felt every other minute of the day. And he made me feel seen when I’d always felt invisible. I think it’s those rare times when your skin gets peeled off that you really see the truth of who someone is and how they affect you.”
Every nerve in Melinda’s body tingled with recognition at the truth of Melisa’s words. He saw me. He made me feel safe. Even after scaring me to death.
“It might even be because he scared me to death that I felt so safe with him later,” she mused. “I could juxtapose the decent man with the brute and could tell which one was real and which one was operating out of desperation.”
Melinda stared at piles of dirty snow kicked to the side of the road. Stupid snowplows. She’d never be able to look at winter driving the same again. Shit. He’s ruined this whole state for me. Time to move to Florida.
They had reached Sixth Avenue, partway into Golden. Melisa exited the main road, following Melinda’s directions to her condo.
“Take my spot. Number seven, over there. Oh.” She blinked. Melinda’s spot hadn’t been occupied for six days and was bracketed by two cars, so the plow hadn’t cleared it.
“No problem,” said Melisa as she steered the car into the lake of snow. “What’s the point of an SUV if you can’t deal with a little white stuff?”
The Land Cruiser’s tires chewed dully through the snow as Melisa nudged the vehicle forward. Then Melinda gathered her things while Melisa grabbed the groceries and they met on the mostly shoveled sidewalk.
“Would you like me to take those?” Melinda asked.
“Not at all,” Melisa answered. “Unless you’d like me to drop you here and not come with you. But I’d prefer to see you safely into your place, make sure your electricity is working. I’d hate for you to be out of the frying pan and into the fire. An ice-cold fire, that is.”
Melinda smiled. “That’s fine with me. Thanks for the concern. I’m this way.” They picked their way over the icy walkway to her front door. Keys, she realized. She would need her keys. She unzipped an accordion compartment in her bag to locate her small set of keys: one house key, one car key, one gym locker key. No office to speak of, no storage unit anywhere, storing stuff she cared about. No boyfriend’s house key weighing down her bag.
Stop wallowing.She jiggled the key in the lock, cranked the handle, and pushed open the door into a freezer. She’d known to expect it, since it was she who’d turned down the heat before she left, but still, the cold air was less than welcoming.
“Whoo!”
“Yikes,” said Melisa. “That’s some homecoming. Where’s the thermostat?”
“Right behind you to your right.”
“Want me to blast it?”
“God, yes.” Melinda continued tentatively into her foreign home. “Come on in. It’s no luxury cabin, but it’s got electricity.”
The living room was richly, if sparsely decorated. Two soft brown leather couches faced the pale amber partial wall of windows and Melinda’s television. A khorjin rug dominated by reds, browns, yellows, and aquas linked the perpendicular couches, and a square coffee table provided a landing pad in the space between them. The unfamiliar sight of her belongings overwhelmed her. She scanned each item like an amnesiac. Could she absorb their history within herself? Who had she been when she’d used these things? She was so different now.
She set her bags down and continued the reintroduction to her home. A trio of books about cooking, a set of orange, pink, and red pillar candles, and a deep green hoya house plant in a hammered brass pot adorned the low table. “Thank goodness I watered you before I left,” she murmured.
