Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 22 of 32
Chapter 22: Zone Forecaster
"Not if I can help it," Gran said.
She'd come up behind me and read the program over my shoulder.
The agent looked at her.
"Ma'am, I'm asking for discretion."
"You'll get it." She took the program out of my hand and pinned it to the corkboard by the register, under the pie prices. "Nobody in my diner says a word about last night. And on April twelfth, my granddaughter is going to be standing on that pass."
The agent looked at me.
"Ms. Brooks?"
"I'll be there," I said.
He left his card and a twenty under his coffee cup.
Gran gave the twenty to the kid as a tip.
Then she climbed up on a chair behind the counter and clapped her hands until the breakfast crowd looked up.
"Anybody who talks about who sat on that end stool last night gets decaf for a year."
Nobody talked.
It was the most frightening thing she'd ever said.
On March first, I went to work.
The forecast office in Frisco opened at four in the morning.
I left Tilly asleep in her crib at three, with Gran snoring across the hall and a bottle of milk in the fridge.
I drove over Fremont Pass in the dark with my coffee in my lap.
My old boss was already there, eating a granola bar over the keyboard.
"Brooks," he said. "Your desk is by the window. The coffee's still terrible."
"Some things you can count on."
The weather models came up on three screens.
I read the overnight weather station numbers from the ridges.
Wind from the west, forty miles an hour, gusting sixty.
Fourteen inches of new snow on top of the frost layer that had broken in my test pit in January.
The highway over Vail Pass ran right under a path that hadn't slid in six years.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I called it.
High danger on the east side of Vail Pass. Recommend the highway close for control work.
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