The drive to her parents’ house took around twenty minutes, and there wasn’t a single second of that time when she didn’t feel like turning around and driving back to Snow Crystal. It had been snowing steadily for days, but not enough to make the journey treacherous, and the road had been cleared so she had no reason to postpone her visit. Her mood plummeted along with the temperature. Visiting her parents was a duty, not a pleasure, and it was a duty that always left her feeling flat, depressed and more than a little guilty. Compared to Kayla and Élise she was lucky, wasn’t she? She had two parents still married and living together. She pulled up outside the vintage brick colonial that was her mother’s pride and joy. To Brenna, a house was somewhere to be indoors when you couldn’t be outdoors. She’d as soon live in a tent. Occasionally in the summer, she’d done just that, erecting her little tent in the backyard until her mother had forced her back inside, worried about what the neighbors would say.
