Myra
The North Side was a different world. While the village center had been salted and scraped by the state plows, the road leading out to the old Kent place was a jagged white ribbon of ice and drifts.
The truck’s headlights cut through the swirling snow, illuminating the skeletal branches of the maples that lined the drive. I knew these trees. I remembered riding in the back of Dot’s old Eagle station wagon when I was a kid, looking out at these same trunks. Back then, they didn't look like skeletal hands; they looked like guardians.
"Stanley’s place," I whispered, the name tasting like woodsmoke and old memories.
"He loved this ridge," Tony said, shifting into a lower gear as the truck groaned up the final incline. "He used to say the wind up here kept a man honest because it blew
