Left in the Blizzard: My Twin Stole My Husband, I Rule the City novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Map Lady

Stranded in a drift with a dying battery, I radio the plows and the driver I've fought for two winters digs me out, then shows me a Thorsby truck parked at a diner at the minute my street was logged plowed.

I hung up on the dispatcher and tried the engine again.

It turned over once, slow, and quit.

The dashboard lights went brown.

Snow had packed itself against my window, so the whole car glowed a dull blue.

The cramp came back.

I folded over the wheel and took slow breaths the way the clinic pamphlet said.

Four in. Hold. Four out.

It eased, but it didn't leave.

The handheld radio was still in my bag, because I never go anywhere in January without it.

I turned it to the city plow channel.

I pressed the button.

"This is Signe Sandvik, city engineering. I'm off the road at the bottom curve of the hill above Fourth. I'm alone, I'm hurt, and I'm pregnant."

It was the first time I'd said the last word out loud.

The channel went quiet.

Then a voice I had heard every snow day for two winters came on.

"Map Lady?"

I closed my eyes.

"Brekke," I said. "Of course it's you."

"That hill isn't on my route anymore. Somebody took it off."

"I know who took it off. I drew the map."

"Yeah. I noticed." A pause. "I'm on Third. Four minutes. Don't get out of the car."

"I wasn't planning a walk."

"You argued with me for forty minutes about salt ratios once. You'd argue with a drift."

The radio clicked off.

I laughed, and then the cramp took the laugh away.

I heard him before I saw him.

The growl of a city plow, and a blade scraping a street that should have been scraped an hour ago.

Amber lights flashed across the snow on my window, around and around.

Then something knocked on the glass.

A gloved hand cleared a circle.

A face looked in: a short dark-blond beard full of ice, gray eyes, a knit cap pulled low.

He couldn't open my door against the drift, so he dug.

He dug with a shovel from his truck.

When the door finally gave, he crouched down in the opening.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Jens."

"I know who you are."

"Can you stand?"

I tried.

My legs had gone stiff, and my boots were full of snow.

He didn't ask again.

He slid one arm under my knees and one behind my back and lifted me out.

"I'm five-eleven," I said into his collar.

"I've plowed bigger."

He carried me through the wind to his cab and set me in the passenger seat.

The heater roared.

It smelled like coffee, wet wool and diesel.

He climbed in, pulled off his gloves and pressed two fingers to my wrist.

"St. Mary's," he said into his radio. "Unit fourteen off route. Taking a civilian in."

The plow lurched forward, blade up, toward the lake.

The cramp came back halfway down Third, and I grabbed his arm without meaning to.

He didn't take his eyes off the road.

"How far along?"

"Ten weeks."

"First?"

I looked at the snow coming at the windshield in long white lines.

Nobody knew.

Not Anders, not my mother, not Marit.

"Three," I said.

He took his eyes off the road for a moment.

"Three babies?"

"Three babies."

"Okay," he said. "Okay. That's a lot of car seats."

Then, because I was shaking, he started to sing.

He sang "Jingle Bells" like it had done something to him.

He was off key on every line, and he forgot the second verse and made one up about sand trucks.

"Please stop," I said.

"You're awake, though."

"I'm awake because it hurts."

"That's the idea, Map Lady."

He sang the whole way to the emergency doors.

A nurse took one look at Jens carrying me in and found a wheelchair.

The doctor on shift had cold hands and a kind voice.

She ran the wand over my stomach and turned the screen so I could see it.

Three flickers.

Three tiny, fast, stubborn hearts.

"Strong," she said. "All three. The cramping is your body making room. You need fluids and rest, not a ditch."

I cried then, for the first time all day.

Jens stood in the curtain gap with his cap in his hands, looking at the ceiling.

When they discharged me, he offered his arm.

I took it.

We walked out past the curtained beds toward the exit.

The last curtain was open.

Marit sat on the bed in her cream coat with a hospital blanket over her knees.

Anders stood beside her holding her purse.

A nurse was telling them it was a false alarm, everything looked perfect, she could go home.

Anders saw me.

He saw my hand on a stranger's orange sleeve.

His mouth opened.

"Signe. How did you get here?"

"The plow came," I said.

I didn't stop walking.

Marit's eyes went to my stomach and stayed there.

Jens helped me back up into the cab and didn't start the engine.

He took a phone out of a mount on the dash.

"I want you to see something before you go home and forget it."

"I don't forget anything."

"I know. You remember every salt ratio from two years ago." He tapped the screen. "Dashcam. Mine. I came off London Road about two."

The video was grainy and white.

It showed the lot of the twenty-four-hour diner on London Road.

A Thorsby Paving truck sat by the door with its engine running and its blade up, dry as a bone.

The number nine was painted on its door.

The timestamp in the corner read 2:10 p.m.

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