TIRED? Asked a blue sign. FREE COFFEE INSIDE.
And a newer one, stamped with the Bush-era Homeland Security eagle: SEE SOMETHING? SAY SOMETHING.
A final sign, at the end of the off-ramp, was T-shaped. It directed trucks and campers to go left, and smaller vehicles to go right.
Darby almost ran it over.
Her windshield was now opaque with heavy snow — her right wiper was failing, too — so she’d rolled down her side window and palmed a circle in the glass. Like navigating while looking through a periscope. She didn’t even bother finding a parking space — the painted lines and curbs wouldn’t be visible until March — and she nuzzled Blue in beside a windowless gray van.
She cut the engine. Killed the headlights.
Silence.
Her hands were still shaking. Leftover adrenaline from that first skid. She squeezed them into fists, first the right, then the left (inhale, count to five, exhale), and watched her windshield gather snowflakes. In ten seconds, the circle she’d wiped was gone. In thirty, she was sealed under a wall of darkening ice, facing the fact that she wouldn’t make it to Provo, Utah, by noon tomorrow. That optimistic ETA had hinged on her beating this blizzard over Backbone Pass before midnight and reaching Vernal in time for a 3 a.m. power nap. It was almost 8 p.m. already. Even if she didn’t stop to sleep or pee, she wouldn’t be able to speak to her mom before the first surgery. That window of time was CLOSED INDEFINITELY, like yet another mountain pass on her news app.
After the surgery, then.
That’s when.
Now her Honda was pitch black. Snow packed against the glass on all sides like an arctic cave. She checked her iPhone, squinting in the electric glow — no service, and nine percent battery. The last text message she’d received was still open. She’d first read it back on the highway around Gypsum, crossing some causeway slick with ice, hauling ass at eighty-five with the little screen trembling in her palm:She’s okay right now.
Right now. That was a scary qualifier. And it wasn’t even the scariest part.
Darby’s older sister Devon thought in emoticons. Her texts and Twitter posts were allergic to punctuation; often-breathless spurts of verbiage in search of a coherent thought. But not this one. Devon had chosen to spell out okay, and end the sentence with a period, and these little details had nested in Darby’s stomach like an ulcer. Nothing tangible, but a clue that whatever was happening at Utah Valley Hospital was less than okay but couldn’t be expressed via keypad.
Just four stupid words.
She’s okay right now.
And here Darby was, the underachieving second-born, trapped at a lonely rest stop just below the summit of Backbone Pass, because she’d tried to race Snowmageddon over the Rockies and failed. Miles above sea level, snowed in inside a ’94 Honda Civic with busted windshield wipers, a dying phone, and a cryptic text message simmering in her mind.
Mom is okay right now. Whatever the hell that meant.
As a girl, she’d been fascinated by death. She hadn’t lost any grandparents, so death was still an abstract concept, something to be visited and explored like a tourist. She loved gravestone rubbings — when you tape rice paper against a headstone and rub black crayon or wax to take a detailed imprint. They’re beautiful. Her private collection included hundreds of them, some framed. Some unknowns. Some celebrities. She’d jumped a fence in Denver last year to capture Buffalo Bill’s. For a long time she’d believed this little quirk of hers, this adolescent fascination with death, would better prepare her for the real thing when it entered her life.
It hadn’t.
For a few moments, she sat in her darkened car, reading and re-reading Devon’s words. It occurred to her that if she stayed inside this cold vault alone with her thoughts, she’d just start to cry, and God knows she’d done enough of that in the last twenty-four hours. She couldn’t lose her momentum. She couldn’t sink into that muck again. Like Blue bogging down in this heavy snow, miles from human help — it’ll bury you if you let it.
Inhale. Count to five. Exhale.
Forward motion.
So she pocketed her iPhone, unbuckled her seatbelt, slipped a windbreaker over her Boulder Art Walk hoodie, and hoped that in addition to the promised free coffee, this dingy little rest area would have Wi-Fi.
*
Inside the visitor center, she asked the first person she saw, and he pointed to a cheaply laminated sign on the wall: Wi-Fi for our guests, courtesy of CDOT’s proud partnership with RoadConnect!
He stood behind her. “It . . . uh, it says it’ll bill you.”
“I’ll pay it.”
“It’s a bit steep.”
“I’ll pay it anyway.”
“See?” He pointed. “$3.95 every ten minutes—”
“I just need to make a call.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because if it’s going to be more than twenty minutes, you might want to do their RoadConnect monthly pass, which says it’s only ten dollars for—”
“Holy shit, dude, it’s fine.”
Darby hadn’t meant to snap. She hadn’t gotten a good look at this stranger until now, under the sterile fluorescent lights — late fifties, a yellow Carhartt jacket, one earring, and a silver goatee. Like a sad-eyed pirate. She reminded herself that he was probably stranded here, too, and only trying to help.
Her iPhone couldn’t find the wireless network anyway. She scrolled with her thumb, waiting for it to appear.
Nothing.
The guy returned to his seat. “Karma, eh?”
She ignored him.
This place must have been a functioning coffee house during daylight hours. But here and now, it reminded her of an after-hours bus station — over-lit and bare. The coffee stand (Espresso Peak) was locked behind a roll-down security shutter. Behind it, two industrial coffee machines with analog buttons and blackened drip trays. Stale pastries. A blackboard menu listed a few pricey frou-frou drinks.
The visitor center was one room — a long rectangle following the spine of the roof, with public restrooms in the back. Wooden chairs, a broad table, and benches along the wall. Nearby, a vending machine and racks of tourism brochures. The room felt both cramped and cavernous, with a sharp Lysol odor.
As for the promised free coffee? On Espresso Peak’s stone-and-mortar counter was a stack of Styrofoam cups, napkins, and two carafes on warming plates guarded by the shutter. One labeled COFEE, one labeled COCO.
Someone on state payroll is zero for two on spelling.
At ankle-level, she noticed the mortar was cracked and one of the stones was loose. A kick could dislodge it. This irritated a small, obsessive-compulsive part of Darby’s brain. Like the need to pick at a hangnail.
She heard a low buzzing noise, too, like the thrum of locust wings, and wondered if the site was on backup power. That could have reset the Wi-Fi, maybe. She turned back to the goateed stranger. “Have you seen any payphones here?”
The man glanced up at her — oh, you’re still here? — and shook his head.
“Do you have a cell signal?” she asked.