I’d never been a good sleeper, but the previous weeks—enduring Christmas, the winter break at my college, New Year’s Eve with Jep, my best friend Julie and her husband, Hal, and a few other couples, all with my mind arrowed toward this moment—had been impossible.

“Let’s just stay here until the storm eases up,” I told Stefan. “I’ll get us hotel rooms. You can...relax, have a nap or watch a movie. Later on, we’ll get a fancy meal.”

I was, as always, too optimistic. I had in mind a steak house like Bee’s and B’s, the place I took him to for birthdays when he was a kid, with the whole family, grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and a couple of neighbors at a table nearly as big as the room. Who knew? Three solid college campuses and a sizable airport were within fifty miles. Maybe there would be at least one luxurious hotel, with flat-screens and plunge tubs and blackout shades and a pricey, chef-owned eatery on the first floor. As it turned out, our options were limited to Pizza Hut and Panera Bread. Apparently boutique hotels were scarce near a prison. How had I not known this before?

Well, for all my weekly visits, I had never spent an overnight in Black Creek. Nor had any of Stefan’s aunts or grandparents who visited. When I came alone, which was most often, I would hit the road again right after visiting hours, bombing my way home along the back roads in the summer, the highway in the winter. Then I would slam into the house straight upstairs to sit in a tub filled with scented oil and hot water for over an hour, adding more hot as needed, an almost holy observance after the stench of the place where Stefan lived. I would sit there and cry. I cried so hard each week it seemed impossible that I did not actually lose water weight.