Damn, what have I done? How cold-hearted can I be?
I grab up my coat and shove my arms through the sleeves. By the side of the door, on a small side-table, I find a hat with earflaps that I jam on the top of my head. A skin-crawling sensation creeps at the back of my neck, as I wonder which selfish dead person the hat might belong to. I shake the thought away and open the front door to the snowstorm. The scent of pine needles and ozone burns at my nose.
I rush out into the thick whiteness, my shoes sinking down through the icy snow. My socks are instantly soaked and the chill of them bite at my ankles. What the hell was I thinking coming out here in this? Even this coat isn’t heavy enough to withstand this kind of cold.
Claire raced out of the house like a madwoman before, she’s probably already far gone.
But up ahead, a few yards away, I catch a quick flash of taillights and hear the choking sounds of a car engine fighting to start.
She’s stuck in the snow.
I have to push myself to move. If I talk her out of that car, we’re stranded here together until the storm blows over and I don’t want to be anywhere near a Radcliffe. I don’t want to be alone with any crazy Radcliffe voodoo vagina magic she might throw my way.
I’m thinking crazy. She’s a woman stranded in her car in the snow.
I walk a few steps forward and thunder rumbles in the distance. Warning bells and red flags are screaming in my head, but I trudge through the snow anyway. I feel like a lamb being pulled to its slaughter. This woman is going to tell me information about my father that I’m going to hate hearing, and it’s going to make me despise the Radcliffe name a thousand times more than I do already.
The car window is fogged up, but I can still see through to the inside. Claire is leaning on the steering wheel, crying. Her shoulders are shaking, whether it’s from the cold or the intensity of her sobs, I’m not sure, but I pound my fists on the window to find out. Startled, she bounces away from the window. And when she looks up at me through the hazy glass and I see those red teary eyes, something in my chest breaks loose.
