Chapter Three
Winter, eighteen months later:
The clock by the front door had just chimed nine. The snow falling outside was more than a foot deep, and the raging wind suggested a lengthy blizzard. Paula’s husband, Roy, had telephoned just before dark to say he couldn’t get home because of the weather and she was more appreciative of his absence than a newly opened virgin. Christ, she hated this wilderness town, this lonely big house surrounded by nothing, and her teaching job at the high school. Though most of all, Paula despised the Hillbillies. City girls and mountain men don’t mix.
Rather than grade papers, Paula relaxed on the sofa and watched the last episode of Gypsy, a Netflix miniseries about a psychologist recreating her life while abandoning her family. Paula switched off the
