“You can’t stay way out there by yourself. If you don’t have anyone you could stay with, Joseph and I have an extra bedroom—two of them, in fact, now that the boys are married and gone.”
Lolly’s mind raced. She didn’t have any old school friends she could stay with for the duration of the storm, mainly because she hadn’t really been friends with anyone. Her school years hadn’t been good ones. She was much better at making friends now, but that meant all of them were back in Portland. She didn’t like the idea of staying with Mr. and Mrs. Richard—she liked them, but she wasn’t close to them—but with an ice storm looming she had to make some fast decisions.
“Thank you, I’ll take you up on that offer, at least for tonight,” she said, lifting her purse from the cart. She wouldn’t need any groceries, after all. “I need to go home and get some of my things. How much time do I have?”
“The weather service said it should start around dark. Don’t tarry.”
Lolly checked the time. She had a few hours, but the icing could start sooner than that at home because the house was at a higher elevation. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the offer.”
Mrs. Richard made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go on, hurry!”
Lolly did, though she took the time to return the cart to the small corral, pushing it past the woman wearing an oversized green jacket and carrying a dirty red canvas tote, as if that was her nod to the Christmas season. A sense of urgency drove her to almost run back to her vehicle; an ice storm was nothing to dismiss. Snow was nothing, at least to a native Mainer, but ice was unbelievably destructive. She could have been stranded for days, even weeks, if she hadn’t happened to stop by the grocery store and talked to Mrs. Richard.
So much for her plans, she thought ruefully as she wheeled out of the parking lot, but a looming ice storm trumped packing. There weren’t even that many personal items left to pack up, so it wasn’t as if she had to get everything done right now. The house had been used so seldom in the past several years, there was just the bare minimum of furniture and some odds and ends left, anyway. She had intended to take her time packing—in fact, her actual plans for the night had been to heat some soup, turn on the gas fireplace, and read, leaving packing for tomorrow morning. She enjoyed the peace and quiet, and there was something about being snug in a warm house on a snowy night that deeply appealed to her.
She had come here this week wanting to enjoy a few leisurely days in the house where she’d grown up, wallowing in warm fuzzy memories and, in her own way, saying good-bye to the house and to Wilson Creek. With her parents in Florida and her job keeping her busy in Portland, there was no need for a vacation home that was so rarely used.
The Helton house had once been the finest in the county, a large and somewhat extravagant—for the area—two-story house on the mountainside, just outside of town. For a lot of years all the important local political meetings and parties had been held there, which Lolly found slightly ironic, as she was the only family member left in Maine and she had no interest in politics and even less in partying. She’d outgrown some of her youthful awkward shyness, but she’d never be outgoing. She much preferred an evening at home to a night on the town.
She didn’t look forward to staying with the Richards, preferring to be on her own, but she’d deal. She worked for an insurance company and had learned, out of necessity, how to interact with people. As a child and, even worse, a teenager, she’d always hung back, never knowing exactly what to say and certain no one wanted to talk to her anyway. She’d hidden all those painful insecurities behind a wall of hostility, so it wasn’t surprising she hadn’t had any real friends here. She didn’t know why she kept coming back, but she managed at least one trip almost every year. She wished she could afford to live here, in the house where she’d grown up, but Wilson Creek simply didn’t have much in the way of job opportunities, and she didn’t have the money to open her own small business.
The windshield wipers swished back and forth, clearing away the light rain that hadn’t varied in intensity all day. There was something unnerving about the sheer unchanging relentlessness of the rain, as if the very lightness of it was proof that Mother Nature didn’t need to make a dramatic statement to squash civilization like a bug. All it took was a rain not much heavier than a mist, and some cold air in the right position, to wreak havoc. She felt a chill run up her spine; even though it was hours yet until nightfall, the gloom was deepening, and she had to turn on her headlights. She hadn’t met any traffic since turning on this road, and that in itself was kind of spooky. For a moment she felt the urge to turn around, buy some pajamas and underwear in town, and dart for the safety of the Richards’ house.
Then she saw the blur of a vehicle behind her, too far for her to make out any details, but just knowing she wasn’t alone on the road was enough to settle her nerves. She’d allow herself fifteen minutes, no more, to gather what she needed and head back to town. She should be safe and secure well ahead of the storm’s arrival.
Within minutes she had turned off the main road and was carefully navigating the narrower road that wound up the side of the mountain toward the house. She still knew every curve, every tree and rock, of this road, because she had driven it so often after she’d gotten her driver’s license. Even before that, her mother had taken her to school every day, and picked her up in the afternoons, so for almost her entire life she’d had at least two trips a day up and down this mountain. The road held no surprises for her, no fears; it was the weather that made her anxious.