She didn’t have much money, and she didn’t have a job, and she didn’t have any family she could go to, and she had become distant from her friends because Eric liked it that way.

So it was going to be difficult for her to leave him.

But she had a car—an old Chevy Malibu.

So she could just go.

And when she realized that she could just go, that strange lightness filled up her insides. And it made her feel like maybe there was still a chance that she could be marvelous.

And she went upstairs to get her coat and her keys. So she could just go. And not come back.

She had no idea where she was going to go. But she was going to go.

If Eric was still asleep.

And even if he wasn’t.

5

As Ginette made her way past Ma Dudley’s, she wondered if she would have someone to dance with when she was as old as Ma and Sunny were.

Half an hour ago, she would have thought that that someone would be Pete. Because she and Pete had just told each other that they loved each other. And it seemed like they were together or that they were girlfriend and boyfriend or that they were dating—or something. And—whatever they were—it seemed like they were going to live happily ever after.

But they weren’t living happily ever after.

They were living—sadly ever after.

At least, Ginette was. Because she and Pete weren’t dating and they weren’t girlfriend and boyfriend and they weren’t together.

They were nothing—maybe not even friends anymore.

And that made Ginette’s heart so, so heavy.

And she wallowed in a deep, deep sadness as she continued west on the Road to Nowhere.

It was 8:05 when Ginette found herself approaching the Moose Paddy, which was about a quarter of a mile down the road from Ma Dudley’s.

She hated the name of Almost’s local watering hole. It had been so dubbed by its proprietors, a couple of brothers from Bangor who wanted the place to sound Irish—yet local.

Instead it sounded like what a moose’s bowel movement leaves behind.

A cackle from the Moose Paddy’s parking lot interrupted Ginette’s wallow in sadness. She looked across the Road to Nowhere, and a few exterior sodium lights allowed her to see the silhouette of a guy and a girl laughing and hugging and kissing and making their way toward the Moose Paddy entrance.

Jimmy Pelletier had pulled into the Moose Paddy’s parking lot moments ago and had seen the same girl and guy laughing and hugging and kissing. And it made him miss having someone to laugh with and hug and kiss.

But then he remembered that that was why he was at the Moose Paddy on the Friday night when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen—to see if he could find himself someone to laugh with and hug and kiss. And maybe even love.

And he could thank Mrs. Roy for giving him the confidence to see if he could find someone to laugh with and hug and kiss again (and maybe even love). Because Mrs. Roy’s pellet stove—a furnace that burned compressed sawdust pellets—was on the fritz that night. And since Jimmy ran Pelletier’s Heating and Cooling, he was the guy people called when their home’s main source of heat was down. And he always made sure to answer people’s emergency calls. Because—in the wintertime in northern Maine—it’s a matter of life and death when a home has no heat. So when Mrs. Roy called with her pellet stove emergency, Jimmy went over and cleaned and recalibrated her stove and got it working again.