town, she didn’t know any of them well enough to call them on a whim on a Saturday afternoon and ask if they would like to go hiking with her.
Anyway, she had stocked up on survival supplies at the sporting goods store, extra rations in her backpack, even bear spray.
None of that would do her any good if she slid down the mountain in her car.
She should have heeded the warning signs that a storm was coming. Clouds had been gathering all afternoon. She had thought she might have to deal with one of the regular squalls that hit the area in the afternoons. She just never expected the rain to turn to sleet and now full-on snow.
What had been her big hurry, anyway? She could have saved her exploring for the following spring and summer, when the weather would be nicer and she wouldn’t run the risk of frostbite. She was in Haven Point for the long-term. This was a life choice she had made, a chance to start over away from her family’s loving but suffocating influence.
The vehicle slid again on the slick road. Gemma gasped, her hands sweaty and her stomach in knots. From the depths of her subconscious, memories clawed to the surface.
A screech of tires, shattering glass, the sickening, horrible silence afterward as she cried out her brother’s name and received no answer in return.
Her right leg ached a vicious echo of her thoughts, a constant reminder of that horrible day.
As she had been trying to do for three years, she attempted to push away the memories so she could focus on the crisis at hand. They never entirely left her, always hovering just on the edge of her awareness.
This wasn’t at all the same situation. She was in full control, even when the tires were sliding. The car’s all-wheel drive and traction control were doing their job. An out-of-control lorry was not about to run through a stop sign and plow into her.
She had only to drive slowly, carefully, down the mountainside to her cottage, where she could turn on the gas fireplace, change into dry clothes and drink something hot and comforting.
The sun seemed to set extraordinarily quickly. One moment she was driving through murky, snowy twilight, the next it was full dark.
Only a little farther. She had to be close to where the dirt road changed to pavement. A few more moments. She could do this...
She heard a rumble outside the car, distant at first and then growing louder. The trees on the mountain side of the road seemed to tremble and then the next instant, before she realized what was happening, a river of mud and rocks and debris poured across the roadway directly in front of her.
She slammed on her brakes and felt the vehicle’s rear tires fishtail. She had braked too fast, too hard. The car was out of control now, heading for the trees on the downward slope. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. She couldn’t die in a car accident, after all the work it had taken her to survive the last one.
She hit the brakes again and somehow, miraculously, the car bumped gently into the trunk of a pine tree and came to a shuddering stop just inches from plunging down the mountain.
She wasn’t dead. How was she not dead?
Gemma could feel herself shaking violently. What the bloody hell had just happened?
Her mother would die if she heard such unladylike language coming from her. But Margaret wasn’t here, was she? She and Henry were safe and sound at Summerhill.
A wave of homesickness washed over Gemma and for a wild moment, she wanted to be with them, even though their overwhelming concern had been strangling the life out of her.
She sat for another moment, trying to calm her racing heartbeat. How was she going to get out of there? She checked her phone. While she had some remaining battery life, she didn’t have a signal, something not uncommon, she had learned, in the mountains surrounding Lake Haven.
So she couldn’t call someone to rescue her. She would just have to find help. She thought of those ranch houses again. Maybe someone would be home at one of them and she could call for a tow—though how a tow truck from Haven Point would cross that mountain of debris that was taller than she was, Gemma had no idea.
Still shaking, she opened her vehicle door and started to climb out. The snow immediately soaked her coat, cold and merciless.