“Mr. Vance, wait—your change is—”
The aluminum door clicked shut behind him, cutting off her voice.
The cold hit Arthur like a physical blow to the sternum. The sleet had transitioned into that heavy, wet, driving Appalachian slush that coats asphalt in treacherous gray grease within minutes. The wind howling down Route 30 smelled of diesel soot, salted asphalt, and the sharp, freezing ozone of a brewing blizzard.
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Fifty yards ahead, walking along the unpaved shoulder where the ditch fell away toward an abandoned drainage culvert, were two small figures.
They had no car.
They had no umbrellas.
The mother had her arm wrapped tightly around Chloe’s small frame, pulling the child against her hip to shield her from the spray of passing semi-trucks that threw sheets of freezing slush across the guardrails. Every time a truck roared past, shaking the telephone poles, the mother would turn her back to the road, hunching her body like an umbrella to take the brunt of the muddy spray against her own worn winter coat.
