poles or chimney smoke. As far as I knew, no one lived this far from town. Strange spot for a life coach to set up shop. I hoped he or she wasn’t some kind of hippy woo woo tree hugger that lived in a yurt. Frostbite wouldn’t make for a pleasant working environment.
Then again, the views were incredible. I chanced a glance to my right. Through a gap in the trees there sat a jaw-dropping meadow. Slanted sunlight kissing rolling hills. A waterfall crested downward into an ice-encrusted pool. I couldn’t hear the roar, not over Earl’s grumbling engine, but I could feel the power of it—nature. Raw, untamed, wild. Having lived in the mountains all my life, I’d grown accustomed to breathtaking vistas as just part of the landscape but this was something special.
The trees swallowed the view and I could see the incline crested up ahead. The trees had thinned as well. There was the occasional pop of gravel. I saw two deer darting through the trees and they gave the truck a curious look. No sign of humanity or my potential job interview.
An unexpected bump in the road lifted my ass off the seat. I banged my head on the roof hard enough that I saw stars. Then Earl just…stopped. Like he had been caught in a great big butterfly net. The engine chugged once, twice, and then sputtered its last.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I yelled. I’m not sure to who, maybe the universe. Earl was a behemoth, a beast. His engine was Hulk-smash strong.
And yet it had given up the ghost in the middle of nowhere.
My rotten luck had struck yet again.
Grammy B was going to kick my butt halfway down the mountain.
My suit was ruined. Possibly my fingernails too as I’d been digging around in Earl’s innards, trying to look for the reason why the big engine would have just died like that. No torn hoses, or leaks. No weird steam billowing out. The oil level was fine according to the dipstick. Plenty of gas. Of course, I wasn’t a mechanic but I was putting off the inevitable—calling for a tow for the second time in a day.
Could Georgia’s truck even make it up those series of switchbacks? Only one way to find out.
Not bothering to lower the hood, I used one of my grandpappy’s handkerchiefs that Grammy kept in the glove box to root through my bag and extract my cell.
The face of it was blank. Weird, I didn’t turn it off, did I? I depressed the power bar on the side and waited for the face to light up with a picture of me and Darcy, Margaritas in hand on her last birthday party. Nothing.
“Oh no,” I breathed. “No no no no NO!”
But like Earl’s engine, the battery was kaput. My heart thumped against my chest in a frantic tattoo and for a second, I wondered if I was gonna have a heart attack. That would be just my luck, wouldn’t it? Fired, stranded at the ass-end of nowhere and cardiac arrest? Maybe my luck was trying to do me in.
I gripped the door of the truck and tried to focus on my breathing. “Okay, Joey. Don’t panic. Analyze the situation from a place of reason. Consider your options.”
I could hike back down the hill to the county road and flag down help. People knew me around town. Someone would stop and pick me up. My teeth chattered as I imagined that long, slow, slippery slog. The sun was already going down. No way I could make it before dark.
I could stay inside Earl. He blocked the wind at least. But the temperature was dropping. More snow had been predicted in the overnight forecast. Without heat, I would freeze.
My gaze lifted to the crest of the hill, about a hundred feet ahead. I’d come up the mountain for a job interview. That meant there must be someone up there. A person who presumably had a working vehicle and a functioning phone. Not that my current state was the best first impression for a potential employer. But compared with my other options, there really wasn’t much of a choice.
I abandoned my heels but retrieved my purse and then closed Earl’s hood and turned to tackle the hill. My grimy suit wasn’t the best at cutting the winter gusts or for allowing freedom of movement but at least I had on good hiking boots. The wind tugged hair out of my twist. I swiped