Chapter 1

Laurie

The first snowflake hits my windshield like a tiny, splattered star. It’s followed by another, and then a whole swirling cosmos of them. Beautiful, if you’re the type of person who finds beauty in impending chaos. I, Dr. Laurie Dixon, am not that type of person. I’m the type of person who sees a forecast of one to three inches and packs for six, who maps her route with three alternate options, and whose idea of a perfect Christmas Eve is driving toward a cardiology conference in a blissfully sterile hotel, leaving a hundred and fifty miles of festive pandemonium in my rearview mirror.

My phone buzzes in its dashboard mount, flashing a picture of my mother with a flower in her hair. I tap the screen.

“Laurie, baby! Are you almost there?” My mother’s voice crackles through the speaker, layered over what sounds like a war between a jazz rendition of “Jingle Bells” and a barking dog.

“Nowhere near, Mom. I’m about three hours out from Syracuse. Did you forget I’m not coming home for Christmas this year?” I keep my tone light, practiced. It’s the same tone I use to tell a patient they need to cut down on sodium—calm, reasonable, and utterly non-negotiable.

“Of course not, silly. I just meant are you almost to the hotel? Your father’s trying to build a nativity scene out of cinnamon sticks and candied ginger and I think the dog is eating the Baby Jesus.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose, a familiar ache starting behind my eyes. This is precisely what I’m escaping. My parents, two brilliant, celebrated painters, live their lives like a perpetual art installation where everything is vibrant, spontaneous, and perpetually sticky. My life, by contrast, is a carefully curated exhibit of order. Scalpels, sutures, and scheduled surgeries. Clear, definable problems with clear, logical solutions.

“That sounds… creative,” I offer. “Just tell Dad to make sure the dog doesn't get a splinter.”

“Oh, he’s fine! He’s moved on to the wise men now. Anyway, honey, it’s not too late to turn around. Taylor called, she said the conference is just a bunch of boring old men arguing about statins. We’re about to have our annual neighborhood caroling flash mob!”

My knuckles are white on the steering wheel. A caroling flash mob. My personal ninth circle of hell. “Mom, I have to go. The snow’s picking up. I need to focus.”

“Alright, baby. Just… be safe. We miss you. I packed you some of my rum-soaked fruitcake, it’s in your passenger seat. Don't eat it all at once!”

“I won’t,” I lie, eyeing the foil-wrapped brick on the seat beside me. It will go directly into the hotel trash can, a sweet-smelling sacrifice to the gods of discipline and controlled blood sugar. “Love you.”

I hang up before the chaos can seep any further through the phone and turn up the volume on my meticulously curated podcast about the history of surgical knots. Silence. Order. Control.

This is what I need. It’s what I’ve built my entire life around. There has only been one deviation, one catastrophic, electrifying lapse in judgment. And, of course, it happened exactly one year ago tonight.

Christmas Eve. At the same conference, in the same hotel. I’d been hiding from my family’s incessant FaceTimes in the dimly lit hotel bar, nursing a glass of overpriced wine. And then he walked in.

He was tall, with shoulders that seemed to carry the weight of the world, and a rugged, weathered face that suggested he’d wrestled that world and lost. He didn’t speak, not to the bartender, not to anyone. He just ordered a whiskey with a single, sharp gesture and retreated to the darkest corner of the room. He was a black hole of silence in a universe of forced holiday cheer.

He approached me. 

I don't remember what I said. Something forgettable. But he looked up, and his eyes—a piercing, startling green—pinned me in place. We didn't talk. We didn't need to. The desperation for a moment of oblivion was a shared language between us. An hour later, we were in his room. It was frantic, nameless, and utterly anonymous. A collision of two strangers seeking a temporary anesthetic. The next morning, I was gone before he woke up. I never even learned his name. He was a footnote in my life, a secret anomaly I diagnosed as a one-time stress response and filed away.

The memory is so sharp, so vivid, that I almost don’t see it.

A flash of white at the edge of the woods. My foot slams on the brake by pure instinct. The car, a sensible sedan with excellent safety ratings, has other ideas. It skids on a patch of black ice hidden beneath the fresh powder. The world becomes a dizzying, silent spin. There’s a sickening lurch, a crunch of metal and plastic against something hard, and then a final, jarring thump as the car plows headfirst into a mountain of snow.

And then, silence. A silence more profound than any I've ever known. The engine is dead. The podcast is off. The only sound is the frantic thumping of my own heart against my ribs.

My training kicks in. I do a quick self-assessment. Airway, breathing, circulation. All systems are a go. No pain, other than the dull ache of my seatbelt against my collarbone. I try the ignition. Nothing. Just a pathetic click. I grab my phone.

No Service.

Of course.

I let my head fall back against the headrest and close my eyes, the irony washing over me in a cold, brutal wave. I ran from the chaos of my family only to find myself stranded in the heart of a blizzard, in a dead car, completely alone. My fortress of control has been breached, its walls crumbled by a patch of ice and a suicidal deer.

Panic, cold and sharp, begins to prick at the edges of my composure. I force it down. Panicking is an inefficient use of energy. I need a plan. Option A: Stay in the car. Wait for a snowplow that may or may not come down this deserted country road. Risk hypothermia. Option B: Find shelter.

My eyes scan the oppressive darkness outside. The snow is coming down in a thick, suffocating sheet. But then I see it. Through the swirling white, a tiny, flickering pinprick of yellow. A light. A house. It’s maybe a quarter of a mile away, a beacon in the storm.

It’s a risk. A huge, unquantifiable one. But it’s a better option than freezing to death.

Slipping my phone into my pocket and grabbing the foil-wrapped fruitcake—my only potential offering to a stranger—I push the car door open against the resisting snowdrift. The wind hits me like a physical blow, stealing the breath from my lungs. My practical boots are no match for the depth of the snow, and my sensible wool coat feels paper-thin against the biting cold.

Every step is a battle. The wind howls, whipping my curls across my face and stinging my eyes. The cold seeps into my bones, a deep, invasive chill. The light is my only guide, the single point of focus in a world that has dissolved into a whirlwind of white and grey.

At last, I’m there, standing on the porch of a dark, rustic cabin. It’s a reclusive-looking place, built of dark wood, with a chimney puffing a steady stream of smoke into the storm. For a moment, I hesitate. This could be a mistake. A very, very bad one. But the cold is a powerful motivator. I raise a trembling, frozen hand and knock.

The sound is swallowed by the storm. I knock again, harder this time, banging my fist against the solid wood.

I wait. A minute stretches into an eternity. Just as I’m about to give up, to turn back and face the storm, a bolt slides on the other side of the door. It swings inward.

A man stands there, silhouetted by the warm, golden light from within. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, with hair that’s too long and a dark shadow of a beard covering his jaw. My mind short-circuits. The universe isn't just cruel; it's a comedian with a penchant for sick, elaborate jokes.

It’s him.

The stranger from the hotel bar. A year older, more weathered, but unmistakably him. The shock is a physical jolt, a current that runs from the base of my skull down to my frozen toes. I expect to see confusion in his face, maybe a flicker of dawning, awkward recognition.

I see neither.

His piercing green eyes fix on me, but they’re not mysterious or inviting. They’re cold. Glacial. He stares at me, his expression a mask of pure, undisguised anger.

He grits out two words, a sound like gravel tearing from his throat.

"What do you want?"