In Virginia. An inch thick on everything it hit, had made Jo Grant’s pickup slither and slide the twelve miles of hills and hollows west from Middleburg to her brother Tom’s farmhouse on the highest hill she’d faced yet. Trees and power lines had come down all around her, turning the roads into obstacle courses that took two hours to cross. And by the time she’d turned into the lane that led to Tom’s house, if she’d thought she could’ve walked up the hill, she would’ve left the truck where it was, stuck off to one side. When she’d finally flogged it to the top of the drive, inching and crawling and sliding back down – when she’d turned the engine off in front of Tom’s door – Jo’s whole body was rigid, and her jaws felt soldered together. Ice had melted on her chin and her throat, and her face was raw from sticking it out the window, straining to see what she couldn’t. She sat there for half a minute, shivering in her seat, listening to sleet peck at ice-covered metal, telling herself to breathe again, and stop thinking about Tom.
