Free A Wee Dose of Death by Fran Stewart

if I hadn’t, he would have been telling me what to do and how to do it or what not to do and how to avoid doing it. It was just as well he was off wherever he went. “Let’s leave him in there. We haven’t had any girl talk in a long time, and he’s too bossy.”
    She nodded, but took her sweet time doing it. “I have to use the facilities.”
    I pointed toward the powder room on the main floor. “You know where it is. I’ll use the one upstairs.” We’d both learned over the years never to head out onto snowy roads without emptying our bladders. No telling how long you might be stuck behind a wreck or slowed down by a tourist who didn’t know how to drive on snow. “I ought to feed Shorty, too, just in case it takes longer than we planned.”
    She hung her parka on a hook behind the door and headed for the bathroom. “Well, hurry. This won’t take me a minute.”
    I threw my coat across the wingback chair, picked up Shorty, and headed upstairs. I intended to put on a heavier sweater whether Karaline was in a hurry or not. She could jolly well wait.
    *   *   *
    Emily was not a fast driver even in the summer, but in the winter, she felt compelled to crawl as slowly as possible. The road wound through the mountains. Whoever had plotted the trail originally must have been planning for bicycles—or, more likely, for horses—not for cars. When Mark drove it, she enjoyed watching the scenery unfold, but now, driving it herself, she wished she’d hired someone to come along with her.
    If she were honest with herself—and she was trying tobe—she had to admit that she didn’t have any friends close enough to chat with: nobody who would be willing to make this trip with her, either as driver or passenger. Sandra might, but she was on the wrong end of the road. And even Sandra didn’t like to linger too long over a cup of coffee. Emily’s sister might have, if her sister hadn’t moved to Washington D.C.
    What’s wrong with me?
Emily wondered. Deep down, she knew the answer.
    She crept around the next few hairpin turns, her thoughts tunneling deeper with each change of direction.
    My sister loves me
, she thought.
Mark loves me.
She was sure of that. But something more than her voice had died when the cancer hit. Emily loved Mark, but afterward . . . after she . . . It was like nothing existed for her. She was in a cold place. And she had pushed Mark away, not let him comfort her. Instead, she had chattered, chattered all day long. No wonder Josie moved away. And poor Mark. What a good man. Maybe she could change somehow. Maybe she could make it up to him.
    There had been times she should have been able to relax a bit, like that party they’d had when they first bought the house in Hamelin. The easy conversation in the kitchen felt forced to her; the laughter-filled hike up the mountain trail, except she wasn’t laughing with the others; the campfire in the clearing. She grimaced. She hadn’t even enjoyed the s’mores.
    The back end of the car slipped a little on an icy patch and Emily’s stomach turned. Even though she recovered quickly, she felt shaken. Icy roads were a fact of life in Vermont, something she’d learned to deal with years ago. Why had this one little fishtail bothered her so much? At the next scenic overview she pulled off the road and turned off the engine. She clasped her gloved hands at the top of the steering wheel, benther head onto her hands, and thought, long and hard, about her way of dealing with life. The scenery may have been spectacular, but Emily Wantstring never noticed it.
    *   *   *
    I took a quick glance sideways at Karaline. Her parka looked bulkier than usual. Maybe that was what was making her hunch up so much. Or maybe it was her appendectomy scar. “Are you feeling okay?”
    â€œI’m fine. Keep