Two hours passed uneventfully.
Before long, the sign for Edson appeared. She drove through the small town with barely a second thought. But then further down the highway, the traffic stalled.
The silence had ended.
17
Flashing lights and sirens greeted her.
Sadie eyed the bag on the passenger seat. “Crap!”
Obeying an orange-vested traffic cop, she slowed the Mercedes to a crawl behind a wood-paneled station wagon filled with tattooed rockers who, between the four of them, had every facial feature pierced with shards of metal. One young man in the back seat turned his head, grinned at her and made lewd motions with his spiked tongue. Ignoring him, she focused on the road.
“Come on. Move!”
A minute later, she saw the problem. Up ahead, a silver-bellied oil tanker had flipped across the meridian. Traffic was being re-routed.
She let out a frustrated sigh. “Where am I going anyway? I need a sign. Come on, Sam, show me where to…”
A crow silently watched her from the top of a wooden post. Suspended below the bird was a sign. Some of the words had faded, but she could still make it out.
Cabins for rent! Bat cave! Follow signs to Cadomin, Alberta.
And there it was. Her sign. Once again, fate had intervened.
She turned off Highway 16 and followed the road south to Robb. She was grateful for the lack of traffic, having seen one vehicle—an old Airstream trailer—by the time she reached the point where the paved road disappeared and was replaced by gravel.
“Could you possibly be any further from civilization?”
In response, the winter tires of the Mercedes kicked up rocks and chunks of melting ice. At the sound of scraped metal, she flinched. “Philip is not gonna like this.”
She guided the Mercedes down the road until she passed the small town of Cadomin. Following the signs for the cabin rentals, she navigated the craters in the road and slowed for a sharp curve.
A horn blasted.
“Jesus Christ!”
A black pickup with tinted windows came out of nowhere. It careened toward her, forcing the Mercedes precariously close to the ditch.
She slammed on the brakes.
As the truck sped past, she saw the silhouette of a man in a cowboy hat. He waved an angry fist at her.
“Moron!” she yelled, even though he couldn’t hear her.
In the rearview mirror, she watched the truck disappear in a trail of dust. She tried to calm her pounding heart, all the while wondering why she even cared if he had hit her. It would have been a blessing.
But you’re not finished Sam’s book, her conscience urged.
Easing back onto the road, she drove another fifteen minutes before the scenery changed from flat, treed land to a silver ridge of rolling hills in the distance. Far beyond them, the Rockies rose majestically, so pale that they seemed to float in the sky.
She slowed as she reached another intersection.
A sign read, Cadomin Cave, left. Harmony Cabins, right.
She steered right and headed down a narrow lane that wound through the trees. A few minutes later, she saw a small, hand-hewn log cabin. A sign staked into the ground near the front door designated the building as Harmony Cabins Office.
She let out a sigh of relief, parked the car and climbed out, stretching her aching legs.
“Travel a long way?” a voice rasped.
Sadie jumped.
A pencil-thin elderly woman with dove-gray hair sheered short like a man’s stood near the side of the cabin. Her faded jeans, thin winter jacket and tanned, freckled face was evidence of someone who spent a lot of time in the great outdoors.
“Cat got your tongue?” the woman asked, swinging an axe back and forth in one hand as she walked.
Sadie stepped backward with a gasp. “I, uh…”
“You’re from the city.” Near black eyes squinted.
“Edmonton.”
The woman reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a slim pack of cigars. She shook one out. With the flick of a lighter, she lit up, the smoke streaming from the corner of her mouth.
“And you need a cabin,” she said.
Sadie nodded. “For the rest of this month and next.”
The woman took a thoughtful drag and broke into a fit of coughing. The rattle that erupted from her chest sounded like an old freight train on a rickety track.
“There’s four days left this month,” she said. “I’ll just charge you for May. I got one cabin left, so you’re lucky. Hasn’t been cleaned though.”
“That’s okay,” Sadie said quickly. “I’ll take it.”
The woman turned and swung the axe hard. It sliced into a stump beside the cabin door with a resounding thwack. To Sadie, it was as if the guillotine of fate had just come down upon her head, slicing it clean off.
“I’m Irma,” the woman said, holding out a bony hand.
Sadie shook it carefully. “Sadie O’Connell.”
“Nice to meet you.” The woman flicked a look at the Mercedes. “You head into town, be sure to drive careful. This road ain’t the safest, ’specially with Sarge hogging it.”
“He doesn’t by any chance drive a black pickup, does he?”
Irma scowled. “That old heap belongs in the junkyard.”
Sadie bit back a reply as her eyes latched onto a prehistoric cattle trailer parked behind the office cabin. The trailer looked like a candidate for the junkyard too. But she didn’t say so.
“C’mon, Sadie. I’ll show you your five-star accommodations.”
Irma chuckled at her own joke, then motioned her down a well-trodden path. After a few yards, the woman paused to discard the cigar.
“You’re in the last cabin,” she said, using the toe of her boot to grind the cigar into the ground. She immediately lit up another one. “Want one?”
“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”
“Yeah, me either.” Irma grinned, displaying a mouthful of neglect and decay. “Every day I swear I’m gonna quit. Then I pick up another one. It’s a bitch when you make the devil your best friend.”
Sadie swallowed. “Sometimes he’s your only friend. You know what they say, the devil you know…” Irma’s dark eyes burned into her, so she changed the subject. “Is it this one?”
Ahead, a cabin with daisy curtains sat amidst bare poplars.
Irma shook her head. “Yours is down by the river.”
“There’s a river back here?”
“Well, it’s more of a creek in some parts.”
As they passed the cabin, Sadie noticed a sign over the back door. It had one word on it. Peace.
She smiled. “Nice name.”
“My daughter’s idea. She named all of ’en. Said it would make ’en more appealing.” Irma looked over her shoulder. “Does it?”
“Well, it works for me,” Sadie said, amused.
“Mine’s the office—Harmony,” Irma said. “Then there’s two in back of mine. Hope is close to the road and Inspiration is deeper in the woods. Down here, there’s Peace and Infinity.”
Sadie stumbled. Had she heard right?
“Infinity?”
Irma smiled. “It’s got the best view. You can see forever.”
“And that one’s mine?”
“Yup, only one I got left.”
Sadie drew in a deep breath. The coincidence was disturbing.
“No such thing as coincidence,” her mother always said.
“Does your daughter live with you, Irma?”
“Naw, she used to run this place. Before she and that husband of hers ran off to the big city. Country life just wasn’t good enough for her once she met up with him. ’Specially after them kids were born.”