I check the door again. I check the window again. I check Violet’s room again.
Empty. Silent. Wrong.
I try calling Jax again.
Nothing. No connection. No hope.
My fingers are shaking when I pull up Ranger Tom’s number.
ME:Violet is missing. Storm. Please help.
The message sits there, unmarked, unreceived. The little wheel spins, searching for service that has long since died.
I send it anyway.
Because doing nothing feels like drowning.
I pace to the kitchen, wipe snow-melt tears from my face, and try to breathe through the kind of fear that unthreads a person from the inside.
Be a mother first.Being a mother means not collapsing while your child is out there.
I grab my coat. My boots. My gloves.
The storm roars when I crack open the door like it’s laughing at me — like it’s delighted to have been given something precious to hunt.
I shove the door shut again so hard it rattles the frame.
Jax’s voice echoes through me:“If Violet comes back and you’re gone…”
And God help me—that stops me. That one detail, that one possibility, that one terrifying scenario of her stumbling back home beaten and frozen and alone while I’m out blindly running the wrong direction…
I can’t leave. Not yet.
My legs fold beneath me, and I sink into a chair, gripping the edge so hard the wood creaks.
What if she lost the path? What if she slipped? What if she can’t see her hands in front of her face—can’t even see the cabin light through the white?
What if she’s lying somewhere just beyond reach?
Not yet. Not now. Don’t think it.
I press my palms into my eyes, forcing myself to inhale.
One. Two. Three.
I count the breaths she took when she was born. Tiny ribs rising under my fingertips. Her first cry louder than her whole body.
“Come on, baby,” I whisper. “Please come back.”
Something thumps on the porch.
I jolt upright—lightning in my veins—and rush to the window—
Only to see a branch, ripped off a pine and slammed against the siding.
I sag forward, forehead hitting the glass.
“This storm,” I breathe, “is going to kill me before it kills anyone else.”
