They’d crossed the Colorado border from Wyoming over an hour ago as the sun was rising. They’d stopped three times already since the border, all in towns she’d never heard of before. She’d asked the driver to warn her when they were close to Loveland, where she was headed, but she needn’t have bothered. Once they’d crossed into Colorado, the billboards practically screamed it at her, letting her know almost in real time that Loveland was coming their way. Every single sign she saw announced some kind of major Valentine’s Day festival—Fire and Ice, it was called. She had to hand it to the town—it was smart marketing. She couldn’t imagine they had much else going for them to bring in tourists, so banking on Valentine’s Day and dropping the name Loveland every five miles on the interstate was pretty clever.

The bus finally made it to the Loveland exit, pulling in next to a dirty, gray slush pile that had been cleared to the side to make room for vehicles. She was the only person to stand up. The kid who had been eyeing her most of the ride here stuck his tongue out at her, and it took everything in her power not to flip him off. She made eye contact briefly with the mother, glared at her, and stumbled the rest of the way to the front, tripping and nearly going down on the wet rubber steps.

The bus driver closed the door so quickly behind her she was worried her blazer would be caught. She jumped forward, right into the slush, the icy mixture instantly saturating her favorite heels.

“Great,” she said, shaking some of it off her foot. “Just fucking great.”

The driver didn’t seem to notice her obscene gesture at him, so she made her way slowly toward the depot, stumbling on her sodden feet through the ice and snow and almost falling inside after wrestling with the door and wind.

Unlike the other depots she’d explored—mainly to get off the bus and use the toilet—this one had been jauntily decorated. Nearly every inch of the place was covered in either a heart or a cupid cutout, with white and pink heart streamers crisscrossing the room above her head. An enormous red mailbox stood in one corner, above which a sign read “Loveland Remailing Program,” which was also festooned with little silhouettes of cupids and hearts. Someone was kneeling in front of the mailbox, fiddling with the locked door, their back to Ryann.

She stamped her feet a couple of times on the sodden floor mat, splashing more wet water on herself. Disgusted and enraged, she marched directly to the front desk and the only other person in the room besides the postal worker.