If it’s not buried.
Snow billows around my legs as I trudge to the front door. The lights are on, steam fogging the windows.
Yes! I grab the handle to pull, but the door doesn’t budge.
Oh,no! Are they closed?
I glance at the blinking neon open sign.Hm.
It looks like business as usual inside, lights everywhere, steam coming from a coffee pot that’s on a hot plate, but the parking lot is empty.
Shivering, I walk around the corner, back to the front, and the other corner, peering around the side of the building.
No tire tracks.
With the pit of my stomach getting heavier, I hurry back to my car.
“Ma’am!”
I whip around, holding up my hand to block the snow from my eyes. “Yes! Hello!”
In the doorway is a man who must be ninety-years-old.
“Oh thank goodness, I thought you were closed.”
“The door just sticks when it’s really cold.”
He holds it open for me, grinning at me with his cloudy eyes squinted. “You’re gonna freeze your tookus off out there.”
“Tell me about it,” I breeze into the store trying to leave as much snow as I can outside. “Crazy weather.”
“What in the world are you doing out on a night like this?”
“I’m on the way to meet my family and friends for Christmas at the resort on the mountain.”
He looks at me over his round glasses, all humor gone from his expression. “That road’s not passable tonight.”
For a second, I try to process what that means.
“It’s closed,” he states plainly. “Too slippery unless you've got chains. Even then, you’d be in trouble if you slide off the road.”
I do not have chains. I have all-weather tires. Not even those winter-rated ones.
Think, Liberty.Only I feel frozen. Trapped.
It’s a familiar discomfort that goes back to my teenage years.
I try to get my throat going on the swallow that’s hung halfway. “There wouldn’t happen to be a hotel around here, would there?”
“Nope. Hundred miles back.”
He says this with great finality.
I must look totally dejected because he pats my shoulder. “Let me make you some hot chocolate.”
“Thanks.” I try not to let the quiver in my voice show. “That would be really nice.”
He disappears into the back of a small kitchen at the rear of the store, his feet shuffling on the worn tiles. Christmas music is drifting out of some ancient speaker back there.
