***
Packing a small overnight bag with toiletries and some clothes, Nicole left a brief note for Danielle saying that she was going home to her parents’ house for a day or two. This was another lie in a steadily growing list, but who was really keeping track anyway?
After leaving her apartment, Nicole went to the nearest Hertz location, and rented a red Ford Fiesta.
It was a five-hour drive to Bristol, Vermont. The day was warm and dry, the sky blue and almost cloudless. Nicole missed driving—in New York, there was little reason to have a car, and flying down the road at her own speed made her feel a little more in control.
She kept her windows down, put some cheesy pop music on, and sang along with the songs—even the ones she hardly knew.
It was important to get to Vermont as early in the day as possible, so Nicole stopped only once at a rest stop, where she got a couple of cheeseburgers from McDonalds and went to the bathroom.
Finally, she was just a few miles outside of Bristol. The landscape had changed to one that was very familiar to her from her childhood in upstate New York. She was used to seeing long stretches of farmland, trees, barns and tiny houses, pickup trucks parked in the driveways.
Once she entered Bristol, Nicole felt a pang in her chest. It was a beautiful little town, like something from a Norman Rockwell painting.
The first thing she thought when she drove down quaint little Main Street with its Cup a Joe café, and Danny’s Barber Shop with the spinning pole out front:
This would be a wonderful place to start a family.
And then the tears were in her eyes and Nicole let them stream down her cheeks. She was being silly again, but her hormones were probably going crazy after all.
She pulled into the tiny little two-pump gas station and a girl that looked around seventeen or eighteen with strawberry-blond hair, jeans and a halter top, came over to the car. “Hi,” she said to Nicole with a simple smile.
Nicole noticed the girl had one of those tribal tattoos on her left bicep.
“Hi. Could you fill up the tank with regular, please?”
“Sure.” The girl started the pump and then stood beside it, whistling an unrecognizable tune, until the tank was full. She put the nozzle back in the pump and came over to the window. “That’ll be twenty two, thirty.”
Nicole gave her twenty-five bucks. “Keep the change.”
“Thanks! Much appreciated,” the girl said.
“Do you happen to know how I can get to Beauford Farms from here?” Nicole asked her.
“Sure,” the girl said. “Keep on going up Main Street, when you hit the third light from here—you go left on Dawson Street. Follow that all the way down to the end. Then you go right on Wilmington Road. And then you’ll see the signs.”
“Would you happen to know of a small cabin right around that area, near the lake?”
The girl laughed. “Sorry, there’s got to be at least a dozen cabins that fit that description,” she said.
“Oh, okay. Thanks again!” Nicole said, her heart sinking. A dozen cabins? Would she even be able to find them all? And then even if she did—what would she do? Would she walk up to each and every cabin, knock and hope that Red would come to the door?
Still, she tried not to let herself get discouraged. She had about two or three more hours of daylight and maybe she’d get lucky. If not, she’d have to find the nearest motel to hole up in and start looking again in the morning.
A few minutes later, she arrived at Beauford Farms and a store that sold all kinds of stuff; canned jams, apple cider donuts, fresh produce grown on the premises.
There was a sprightly white-haired lady standing next to a register. She greeted Nicole with a very friendly smile and asked if she could help her find anything.
“Actually, yes. But not something in this store.”
The older woman’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Oh?”
Nicole began describing the cabin and its possible location, but the woman stopped her mid-description. “Hold on a sec. Let me get my husband, he knows everything within fifty miles of here.” And she waddled off to a door that led to a back room.
A moment later, she reappeared with her husband, a tall man—though the years seemed to have bent him over. He wore brown slacks, suspenders, and an off-white collared shirt. His whole body was browned from years toiling in the sun, but his light blue eyes were kind. “My wife says you’re looking for someone in a nearby cabin.”
Nicole went through all the details she knew about the place from what Jeb had told her—which admittedly wasn’t much.