Tossing her purchases onto a chair, she lay down on the bed intending to gather her thoughts before checking her injuries but couldn’t stave off the stress induced exhaustion that pulled her under. She fell asleep with her sister’s laughing face merging with Brad’s furious image.
Lillian awoke to a pitch-black, strange room and a myriad of aches and pains. Rolling over, she winced, the pain radiating around her ribcage bringing clarification to her groggy, jumbled senses. Liana. A sob caught in her throat as she sat up and flicked on the bedside light. Blinking, she realized one eye wouldn’t open fully. Brad. A surge of anger tightened her muscles as she stood on wobbly legs. Vacillating between gut-clenching grief and a slow-burning fury, she padded into the miniscule bathroom, turned on the light and groaned out loud at her image in the mirror. Her topsy-turvy emotional imbalance took second place to the distress of seeing just how hard Brad had struck her.
Turning away from the view of her swollen black eye, cut puffy lip and bruised cheek, she retrieved the first aid supplies and did her best to doctor her injuries. It was too late for an icepack on her face to do much good, but the medicated salve eased the sting in her lip and from the small nick near her eye. Lifting her sweatshirt, she winced at the purple splotches forming under her breasts. The smart thing would be to find an emergency room and get x-rays, but her breathing wasn’t compromised, indicating no punctured lung, and she figured she could wrap her ribs as well as a professional.
The urge to get going, to put as much distance between her and the place she could never call home again, pounded at her temples. Lillian wrapped bandages around her ribcage and used medical tape to hold them snug, surprised by the relief the slight pressure gave her. It wasn’t much, but along with downing three extra-strength aspirin, the pain was now manageable. She ran a brush through her tangled, auburn hair and brushed her teeth before stepping out into the frigid early morning air. After checking out of the motel carrying a to-go cup of steaming coffee offered by the worried looking receptionist, she got on the road again, figuring she would stop when her body insisted, or she needed gas.
The desolate winter prairieland matched her bleak mood as she traveled north through Wyoming while replaying happy memories of her and Liana’s childhood; their first day of school when Lillian had shoved the boy who’d pulled Liana’s braid and made her cry; the time they’d gone bike riding and ventured too far from home, getting themselves lost until well after dark and the police found them; their double date to their Junior prom where they’d indulged in alcohol for the first time and ended up grounded for a month; the fun they’d had on their college spring break trip to Padre Island.
Heavy, grief-laden despair pressed down on her chest as she passed a herd of snow-encrusted, slow-lumbering bison traversing across a snow packed plateau. She shivered and nudged the heat up a notch as the thick gray clouds spit small flakes on her windshield. Liana used to love snow and catching Lillian unaware with a snowball to the back of the head. God, she would get pissed whenever her sister’s aim was spot on. As she reached the Montana border, her low gas gauge pinged, forcing her to find a gas station and take a break.
Despite her aches and pains making themselves known with throbbing intensity and the dark clouds swirling ahead, threatening more snow, Lillian got back in her car after filling up and drove on. Not yet, she thought, the memories are still too close. Her trek made no sense, but neither did her sister’s death at the age of thirty-four. Weren’t they just laughing about growing old together as two, eccentric spinsters a few weeks ago? With Liana’s nose always buried in a book she was editing and Lillian’s focus glued to her current painting, it was a wonder either of them had ever set aside their absorption with their work long enough to accept a date.
Lillian’s mouth curled in a derisive sneer as she recalled what the last date she’d accepted had led to. No fancy dinner or the mediocre pleasure of an orgasm was worth wasting her time. Give her a glass of wine and her pretty pink vibrator and she was content. There was no way she would relinquish control over her life again, especially not now, when there was no one left she cared enough about to sacrifice for. A pang gripped her abdomen at the reminder of how alone she was now, her gaze turning watery again.
Eight hours, two pit stops, three cups of coffee, one candy bar and a steady amount of snowfall later, Lillian passed a sign showing ten miles to the Billings, Montana exit. Figuring that was as good a place as any to spend the night, she slowed to a crawl, the winter storm that was closer than she’d guessed turning into a white sheet of windblown swirls. She was no novice to traveling alone having flown around the country and elsewhere for art shows by herself for the last eight years, nor was this the first time she’d driven with snow falling hard enough to warrant caution.
But it didn’t take long for Lillian’s first experience in leaving behind everything that was familiar to her, along with driving through a slow-building snowstorm sweeping across a wide-open, barren expanse of nothingness to turn treacherous. Controlling the car against the buffeting wind and slick roads zapped what little strength she had left after traveling all day and shunning food due to lingering nausea. The ten miles to the turnoff she kept an eye out for seemed to go on forever, the traffic on the now snow-hidden highway dwindling from sparse to almost nonexistent over the next thirty minutes. With no sign of another advertised turnoff, she took a wild guess born of worry and fatigue and opted for the next exit.
Gripping the wheel with sweaty palms, Lillian turned onto a much narrower road, hoping it would take her into Billings, figuring it couldn’t be that far. Right now, she would welcome the sight of any building, or heck, even another vehicle. At least her snow tires were holding out, helping her through the slow build-up. Her heater worked well and she was sure the spare blanket was still stowed in the trunk, if she needed it. That didn’t keep the tremors of unease from invading her sore, depleted body as her head grew fuzzy with disorientation from the blinding white terrain filling her vision no matter which direction she looked.
Staying along the wooded tree line helped guide her, but with darkness fast approaching and the constant struggle to stay focused, Lillian had just decided to stop and hope for a signal on her phone when a large, leggy elk darted out from the trees. Talk about startled like a deer caught in the headlights. She didn’t have time to giggle about that thought as her attempted swerve to miss the animal sent the car into a spin as slow and sluggish as her brain, the uncontrollable, rotating glide ending with the front end buried up to the windshield in a ten-foot snow bank.
With a frustrated swing and exasperated huff, Mitchell buried his ax in the wood stump and shook his head in disbelief. What the hell was someone doing driving a sporty Mazda Miata on a Montana back road during a raging snowstorm? They were lucky their inevitable stranded predicament occurred near his cabin, that he happened to be here and outside getting wood to witness their loss of control through the trees separating his place from the road. Yanking his sheepskin lined coat closed and his Stetson down to shield his eyes from the blowing snow, it was too bad he didn’t get to share in the occupant’s luck.
Mitchell trudged through the piling snow, bemoaning the loss of his solitude for the next few days. Given the weather and the distance between his cabin and the nearest towns of Billings and Willow Springs, it looked like he would have a guest for the next few days. He wasn’t happy about that; the month of February was still difficult for him two years following his wife, Abbie’s lost battle with cancer. This was his first winter in Montana, and he’d been looking forward to these few days away from his new practice as the encroaching memories pushed the heartache he kept tucked away to the surface.