I was going to do it. I was going to make a move.
The decision settled into my chest like a stone—heavy but certain. No more circling. No more careful. Life was too short for careful, especially when careful had gotten me seven years of playing a fake doctor and a real identity crisis.
Farley climbed back into the driver’s seat, bringing with him a gust of cold air and the faint scent of something woodsy—cedar, maybe, or pine.
“Success,” he announced, holding up the bag. “Fresh eggs from Mabel Shifflett’s chickens and cream from her neighbor’s dairy farm. My grandmother would approve.”
“No church choir ambushes?”
“Not a single one.” He started the engine. “Shall we?”
“We shall.”
The drive up the mountain was quieter than the drive down—not awkward, but contemplative. We’d talked ourselves out in Charlottesville, spilled secrets we’d been holding for months, and now there was a comfortable silence between us.
I trusted Farley Davenport. The realization hit me somewhere around the third pothole, unexpected and undeniable. I trusted him with the real parts of me—the scared parts, the confused parts, the parts that didn’t know who they were without a script to follow.
That was terrifying.
That was also, I suspected, why I was about to do something very stupid.
We were passing the entrance to Pine & Dandy Resort when I saw her—Gladys Pritchard, bursting out of the office cabin like it was on fire, waving both arms over her head.
“Is that—” Farley started.
“That’s Gladys.”
He was already pulling over, the Range Rover crunching onto the gravel shoulder. Gladys rushed toward us with an urgency that made my stomach clench—had something happened? Was there a problem with the cabin?
Then I saw it.
The bag of cat food. Sitting there in the back seat like evidence at a crime scene. Farley saw it at the same moment I did. Our eyes met in a moment of pure, shared panic.
I moved without thinking, yanking my coat off and tossing it over the cat food just as Gladys reached the driver’s side window. The coat landed in a heap that didn’t look remotely natural, but it was better than the alternative.
Farley lowered the window. “Gladys. Is everything—”
“Storm’s coming,” she announced, slightly out of breath. Her puffy vest was half-zipped, like she’d thrown it on in a hurry. “One of those freak blizzards. The weather service just updated the forecast—we’ve got less than twenty-four hours before it hits.”
“A blizzard?” I leaned forward to see around Farley. “In December?”
“Welcome to Virginia, city boy.” She scowled. “Mountains don’t follow your California weather rules. We could get two feet by tomorrow night—maybe more.”
Farley’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “What do we need to do?”
“Stock up. Food, water, batteries. Make sure you’ve got enough firewood inside.” She paused, squinting at both of us. “You two been shopping?”
“Charlottesville,” Farley said smoothly. “Supplies.”
“Good. Good.” But her eyes narrowed, sliding past us to the back seat. To the suspiciously coat-shaped lump. “What’s that?”
“My coat,” I said, too fast.
“Just got warm,” Farley added.
“It’s thirty-eight degrees.”
“Great heater in this thing,” I said.
