Snowstorm of Our Past novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Crack in the Door
Eight months pregnant, Mallory finds her husband at the post hospital holding the widow's newborn son, puts her ring in the baby's bassinet in front of his friends, and drives into a snowstorm, until her car slides into a ditch and her water breaks.
The nurses were talking about my husband's baby before I knew he had one.
"Major Keller booked her the best private room on the floor," the tall one said. "The second that boy was born."
"The widow?"
"Mrs. Dwyer. He's been sleeping in the chair every night for three days."
I was sitting in the hallway outside the prenatal clinic at the post hospital.
Thirty-five weeks along, with my coat open because nothing closed over my belly anymore.
They walked right past me.
"Isn't his wife about to have one too?"
"That's what I heard." The short one lowered her voice. "I'd love to see her face when she finds out."
They turned the corner.
I sat very still.
Clint was on a training exercise.
He had kissed me goodbye three weeks ago at our front door on Fort Carson and said a month, maybe more.
He had called me every night since, just like he always did.
Last night he'd told me the wind in the field was so loud he could barely hear me.
I stood up.
The maternity ward was one floor down.
I took the stairs because I couldn't stand to wait for the elevator with anyone.
The private room at the end of the hall had its door open a few inches.
I heard men laughing before I got there.
"Congratulations, man. That's a big, healthy boy."
"If Mallory has a girl, you've got the perfect pair."
"She doesn't know about this one, does she?"
I knew those voices.
Two captains from Clint's battalion. They had eaten my chili at our kitchen table on Super Bowl Sunday.
I stopped at the crack in the door.
Clint stood by the window in jeans and a gray sweater.
Not a uniform. Not a field jacket.
His sweater, the one I'd bought him in Durango.
"Of course she doesn't know," he said. "And none of you are going to say a word to her. She's in her third trimester. She can't handle this right now."
"So when are you going to tell her?"
Clint was quiet for a second.
"After she has the baby. Once she has the baby, she won't leave."
"Will this make things hard for you?" a soft voice asked from the bed.
I knew that voice too.
Amber Dwyer sat propped on the pillows with her honey-brown curls brushed out and a newborn in a blue blanket on her chest.
"Clint, I never asked for anything," she said. "After losing Dale, just being near you and giving you a son is enough. I don't want anything else."
My husband crossed the room and sat on the edge of her bed.
He put his arm around her and the baby both.
"I promised I'd take care of you," he said. "And I will. I just hate that you've had to hide for three years."
His face had gone soft.
I had seen that face exactly twice in our whole marriage.
Once at our wedding. Once in Durango, when he was kneeling in the snow outside my apartment.
Five years ago I caught him kissing Amber in her kitchen on the anniversary of Dale's death.
I asked for a divorce. Amber swallowed a handful of pills right in front of us.
Clint chose her hospital bed.
Two years later he drove five hours to Durango and got down on his knees in a snowbank.
He said he'd only ever loved me.
He said he'd been terrified Amber would die and terrified of failing the man who died saving him.
He said he'd moved her to Denver, and he'd never see her again.
I believed him.
I quit my job and married him a second time at the courthouse.
He had butterscotch shipped in from a shop in Santa Fe because I liked it.
He ripped the lining out of his own field jacket and sewed it into my coat because I'm always cold.
I was wearing that coat right now.
Two weeks ago I'd found a tube of nipple balm in his pocket.
I told myself it was a gag gift from the guys. I put it back.
The baby kicked me hard, twice, right under the ribs.
I grabbed the door frame and the sound came out of me before I could stop it.
"Who's out there?" one of the captains said.
Every head in the room turned toward the door.
I could have walked away.
I pushed the door open instead.
Clint stood up so fast he knocked the water pitcher off the tray.
"Mal."
"How was the training exercise?" I said.
Nobody answered.
One of the captains looked at the floor. The other one already had his phone out.
Amber pulled the blanket up around her son.
"Mallory, please," she whispered. "I just had a baby."
"I can see that."
I walked to the bassinet by the bed.
The card on the end said BABY BOY DWYER, 8 LBS 2 OZ.
"Mal, listen to me." Clint caught my arm. "You can't get upset right now. Think of our daughter."
I looked at his hand until he let go.
Then I twisted my wedding ring off my swollen finger.
It took two tries.
I set it in the bassinet, on the little white mattress, where his son would lie.
"There," I said. "Now he's got everything of yours."
"Mallory."
"I'm filing today," I said. "And this time I'm never coming back. Not on your knees, not in a snowbank, not ever."
I walked out.
He followed me down the hall and down the stairs and into the parking lot, saying my name.
Snow had started while I was inside.
Big flakes, coming down fast and straight.
"Where are you going? You're eight months pregnant!"
"Home."
"This is home!"
I got into my car and locked the doors.
He slapped his palm against my window once.
I pulled out and didn't look in the mirror.
Gran's diner was two and a half hours away in Leadville.
I'd driven that road in worse weather a hundred times.
By Buena Vista the snow was coming sideways and the plows were nowhere.
Ten miles below Leadville, the back end of my car slid out on a curve.
I felt the wheels go and couldn't catch it.
The car spun once and dropped nose first into the ditch.
The airbag didn't go off.
I sat there with my hands shaking on the wheel.
Then something warm soaked through my jeans and onto the seat.
My water had broken.
I had one bar of signal.
I called the only number I knew by heart that wasn't Clint's.
"Lake County dispatch."
"This is Mallory Brooks. I'm off Highway 24 about ten miles south of town. I'm in labor."
There was a click.
Then a man's voice, low and calm, with a helicopter rotor winding down somewhere behind it.
"Mallory? It's Gabe. Don't you move. I'm coming."
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