Forty minutes later, Vernon came down, dressed in his road clothes. I handed him the bag of food.
“Will you call when you get there?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Yeah,” he threw back shortly. He did not even kiss me goodbye. Just gave a short nod. “Look, make sure you shovel the snow, you hear? Or it will drift up again overnight, and you won’t be able to get out in the morning.”
The door slammed with a dull thud. I heard his old pickup truck start up and roll down the snowy street. The sound of the engine gradually faded into the distance.
I was alone.
I sat at the kitchen table, wrapping my hands around a cup of cold tea. It became quiet, empty, and somehow anxious in my soul.
Do not touch the snow.
I shook my head, trying to chase these thoughts away. Foolishness. But something held me back from dressing warmly and going out to shovel the yard as Vernon had ordered.
Fatigue crashed down all at once like a sack of sand on my shoulders. The day had been long. My legs buzzed, my back ached. And the blizzard was raging so hard that everything would just be covered again by morning anyway. What was the point of suffering now?
I decided I would not go out into this bitter freeze to drag a shovel around. I would deal with it in the morning. Vernon was already far away. He would not see, would not know.
I went upstairs to the bedroom, changed into an old, warm nightgown, and lay down. But I could not read. The letters swam before my eyes. My thoughts returned again and again to the strange meeting in the store. Why did she look so persistently, so seriously into my eyes?
