By the time the coffee maker clicked and sighed to life, the world outside my kitchen window looked like a blank TV channel—pure white, no signal, no sound. The little American flag magnet on the fridge sat crooked, like it had flinched in the night. I tugged my worn canvas tote off the chair back out of habit—the same one I’d carried to the store, with the faded flag patch my mother stitched on years ago—and padded to the front door in thick socks.
The porch light washed the snow in a soft amber glow. I expected chaos, drifted piles, my red plastic shovel leaning there like a scolding finger, Vernon’s voice in my head barking, Clear the drive before dark. Instead the yard looked untouched, a smooth sheet of white, almost pretty.
Then my eyes adjusted. From the gate to the house, to the living room windows, there were deep boot prints—big, deliberate, spaced wide like the person had all the time in the world. They stopped at each window as if someone had leaned in close to see inside.
They circled the house like a slow, patient question. Not Vernon’s. Not any neighbor’s.
My knees went loose and my hand caught the doorframe. The whisper from the grocery line the day before rose in my memory like a match struck in the dark: When your husband leaves, don’t touch the snow. And in that moment, I understood the snow had been holding a secret for me.
Yesterday afternoon, I’d been standing in line at our little grocery on Chestnut Street, clutching that same tote against my chest like it could keep me warm. A blizzard had been blowing in sideways, turning our quiet Ohio suburb into a snow globe somebody forgot to set down. The parking lot lights were halos in the swirl.
Inside, the store felt like damp wool and cheap coffee, the kind that sits on a warmer too long. A tinny version of Sinatra drifted from the ceiling speakers—something about summer wind—like it was trying to pretend winter wasn’t chewing on the windows. I was fifty-eight years old, the age where you stop treating errands like a race and start treating them like a routine: the same aisle, the same brand, the same cashier who says your name and means it.
Ahead of me at the register, a small elderly woman in a faded shawl was emptying a cracked coin purse onto the counter. Pennies rolled. Nickels clinked.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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