Page 17 of Snow Going Back

‘You, too,’ she replied.

The call ended, and Kate stared at the screen. Two days ago, she’d just been minding her own business and living her life, happily chugging along in her own lane with her easy-going boyfriend and her annoying but manageable clients, and nowher whole life had been turned upside down. Two days ago, she’d thought she and Lance were on the same page, but suddenly he was ambushing her with proposals and arguing over her body clock. Planning out their future with a bunch of kids they’d never discussed but who he suddenly expected her to give up her career for to raise full-time. Kate didn’t know what she expected the picture to look like when, or if, she had children one day, but she knew it wasn’t that. She moved her gaze to the small iceberg sitting on her finger and sighed.

Why would Lance assume she’d be happy to throw away her career after all the years of hard work she’d put into building it? She’d always thought he respected her career. That he’d respectedher. At the very least enough to ask for her opinions. She’d always thought they saw each other as equals. But suddenly she wasn’t sure. In fact, after the last few days, Kate wasn’t sure she knew Lance very well at all.

TEN

Kate woke up bleary-eyed and momentarily confused. She squinted one eye open, noting the slow pound of a brewing headache, and looked around.

Rolling over, she picked up her phone from the bedside table and checked the time. It was already past nine.

‘Crap,’ she muttered, instantly following it with a sneeze. She reclosed her eyes. ‘Double crap.’

She really couldn’t afford to get ill right now. Not if she was going to get this tied up and sorted before Christmas. And there was no way on earth that she was spending Christmas away from home.

She sat up and stretched, pausing to gaze through the window after opening the curtains with a tired smile. Snow was still falling steadily outside in thick fluffy clumps. It was beautiful. As the sight stirred up memories of building snowmen and snowball fights, Kate’s thoughts naturally drifted to Christmas.

Eleanor always went all out at Christmas. From the first of December the house was taken over by Christmas in every way possible. Every room, door and hallway was decorated with perfect precision. Matching pyjamas would appear – a traditionher father always complained about, though they all knew he secretly loved it. There would be eggnog constantly warming and games by the fire every night, while the Nat King Cole and Michael Bublé Christmas albums took turns on endless repeat.

Kate would go with her dad to find the perfect tree for the living room. Then, as it was the only part of the decor Eleanor ever allowed them to touch, they’d dress it together, purposely overfilling the branches with every contrasting colour and shape known to man, just because they could. Eleanor would smile afterwards and tell them it looked wonderful, unaware of her complete inability to hide her true feelings from her expression. And Kate and Henry would pretend to believe her. Just like they’d pretend they never noticed that their tree decorations always looked a little tidier and their baubles more neatly spaced the next day. Eleanor would sing cheerily along to the music in the kitchen as she baked enough festive goods to feed a small army. And, as she actually had quite a good voice, and as Kate loved to hear her mother happy, sometimes she’d just sit quietly on the stairs for a while to listen. The warm spicy aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg would fill every corner of the house, and the three of them would tramp through the fields on long family walks with flasks of hot chocolate between stints of curling up on the sofa with a good book.

Christmas had always been her favourite time of year. And the one time of year she usually tried to spend as much time as possible at home. This December was going to look a little different though, it seemed.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and Christmas from her mind and got dressed, layering up and stuffing a decent supply of tissues up her sleeve in between increasingly snotty blows. She made a mental note to stock up on enough cold medicine to knock out a small elephant, then set out on her quest to find the nearest Walmart.

She carefully backed the hire car off the drive, slowing to a snail’s pace after sliding on the frozen ground almost straight away, then navigated her way out to the main road, relieved to find this one was well gritted. Fifteen minutes later she was there, and after an hour inside the large superstore, Kate reappeared, laden with bags and wearing a coat that made her feel like the Michelin Man with its padded white rolls. It was a fashion sacrifice she was willing to make though, as it kept her toasty warm from head to mid-shin. After dumping the bags in the boot, Kate took a quick swig from a bottle of cold medicine, then set off back towards the house feeling much more prepared.

When she reached the suburban edge of the town, Kate slowed to a crawl, careful to stop at each intersection, as Bob had reminded her to do. The rule in America about coming to a complete stop even if there were no other cars around was something she’d never understood. But the law was the law, especially for a lawyer.

Coming to another stop, Kate glanced down the road to her left. A black pickup truck was headed towards the intersection, but as it was still a little way off, she pulled forward to cross. Partway across, she suddenly realised that the pickup wasn’t slowing down the way it should have been. A zap of panic shot through her body and she instinctively slammed her foot on the brakes. To her horror, her car kept moving, sliding on through the snow as she lost traction.

‘Shit! No!No, no, no…’ She tried to get the car back under her control and just about managed it, but it was too late. She’d stopped right in the middle of the intersection. Kate felt a cold stab of terror as she watched the pickup hurtle towards her, and she braced for impact, realising she was out of time.

She cringed, waiting for the explosion of pain she knew was coming, but at the last second the driver finally seemed to wake up and the truck jerked sharply away, missing the front of hercar by inches. It veered into a spin across the icy road, then crashed, nose first, into a tree.

‘Oh my God!’ Kate exclaimed.

Smoke began to rise in thin ribbons from the top edges of the truck’s doors, and she quickly got out of the car, leaving her door open as she rushed across the road.

The driver’s door swung open and a man stumbled out, coughing and waving the smoke that accompanied him out of his face as he walked a few paces and then turned back to look at his truck. He bent forward and rested his weight on his thighs for a moment.

Kate closed the distance quickly, searching for any obvious sign of injury as she stopped. ‘Are you OK? Are you hurt?’ she asked urgently.

He didn’t answer her, instead just stared back at his truck with a pained expression.

‘Excuse me?’ Kate eyed the smoke still filling the cab. ‘Er, you really need to move away from the vehicle. With smoke coming out like that it’s not safe to?—’

‘Smoke?’ he repeated in an incredulous tone, straightening up and turning towards her. He looked her up and down, his expression contemptuous. ‘That ain’tsmoke. It’s just the powder from the airbags. Any idiot above the age oftwelveknows that, ugh…’ He looked back at his truck.

Kate stopped short, her eyes flashing with annoyance. ‘There’s no need to be sorude. I was just trying to help.’

‘Help?’ He reached up and gripped two fistfuls of thick silver-streaked dark hair. ‘Look what you’ve done to mytruck!’

‘WhatI’vedone?’ Kate exclaimed indignantly, angry now. ‘Youwere the one who didn’t stop at the intersection.Iwas already on it!’

‘Yes, and if you’d just kept moving instead of losing control of your car like the amateur tourist you clearly are, you’d havebeen well away by the time I passed,’ he yelled, raising his voice to match hers. ‘I mean,Christ, who lead-foots the damnbrakesonice!’

‘You did!’ she reminded him, gesturing towards his truck.

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