Chill Factor by Sandra Brown Page B

every morning and make the trip down the mountain into town to the automotive shop where he worked. He returned home in time for dinner, which he ate methodically. He grumbled answers to direct questions but otherwise had nothing to say that wasn’t a criticism or a reprimand. After dinner he took a bath, then retired to his bedroom,closing the door behind him, shutting out his family.
    Marilee had never seen him derive pleasure from anything except the vegetable garden he cultivated each summer. It was his pride and joy. She was seven years old when her father caught her pet rabbit nibbling at a cabbage plant. He’d wrung its neck right in front of her and made her mother fry it for their supper. Marilee considered it poetic justice when he dropped dead of a heart attack while hoeing a row of onions.
    Their mother had been a complainer and a hypochondriac who referred to her husband as an uncouth hillbilly behind his back. For forty years she made sure everyone knew that she’d married far beneath her. Her misery was the focus of her life, to the exclusion of all else.
    When failing health made her practically bedridden, Marilee took a semester’s leave of absence from Cleary High School to tend to her. One morning when Marilee tried to awaken her, she discovered that her mother had died in her sleep. Later, while the minister consoled her with platitudes, Marilee’s only thought was that a woman as embittered and self-absorbed as her mother hadn’t deserved such a peaceful departure.
    The two children of these emotionally disabled people had learned early in life to be self-sufficient. Their family home had been on the far side of Cleary Peak, away from town, isolated from neighborhoods where children played together. Their parents had been lacking in social skills, so neither she nor William had been taught them. Theways and means of how people interacted had been awkwardly acquired in public school.
    William was a good student who’d applied himself to scholastics. His efforts were rewarded with excellent report cards and prizes for achievement. He tried to make friends with the same kind of determination, but his overzealous attempts usually had the opposite result.
    Marilee had found the nurturing that was missing from her own life in the pages of books. William, being several years older, was the first to learn to read. She prevailed upon him to teach her, and by the time she was five years old she was reading literature that would challenge some adults.
    With the exception of the years they were at college, she and William had lived in the same house all their lives. After their mother died, he decided it was time they move into town. It would never have occurred to him that Marilee might have plans of her own. Nor did it occur to her to live independently of him. Actually, she’d been thrilled at the prospect of leaving the ugly, sad dwelling on the mountain that evoked so many unhappy memories.
    They bought a small, neat house on a quiet street. She made it into a comfortable home, full of color and light and potted plants, which had been missing in the house of her upbringing.
    But after the last curtain was hung and the last room arranged, she’d looked around and realized that nothing except her surroundings had changed. Her life hadn’t taken an exciting, new direction. Her rut was prettier and better furnished, but it was still a rut.
    As for the family homestead on the mountain, she would have sold it, or let it rot until the wilderness claimed it. But William had other ideas.
    â€œThe storm is going to suspend your work on the house for a while,” she remarked now as she wiped the dining table with a damp cloth, sweeping cornbread crumbs off the edge into the palm of her hand.
    From behind his newspaper he said, “True. It may be days before anyone is able to navigate the main road. The back road up to our place will take even longer to clear.”
    The back