She wrote out a note describing the problem and where she was staying. Hesitating a moment, she turned off the ignition. The engine went quiet. She tried to start it again, just to see, but nothing happened. The car was as dead as it had been back at the crossroads.

She wrapped the key in her note and slipped it through the mail slot in the front door. Collecting her fiddle and knapsack from the car, she set off the few blocks down the road to the Custom House and hoped that Siobhan hadn’t taken in a guy for the night because, until Lizzie had decided to drive back to Newford, they were supposed to share a room. That’s about all these places would spring for: separate rooms for the boys and girls. Con and Andy would be sharing the other room, and she wasn’t about to go knocking on their door.

The front door of the hotel/bar was unlocked, but there was no one at the desk. Lizzie stepped behind the counter, took the extra key for the room from its hook and went up the stairs. Inside the room she was as quiet as she could be undressing and using the toilet, and then finally she was lying down in her bed. In the other twin bed, Siobhan slept soundly and moments later, Lizzie was, too.

Geordie Riddell

When I stepped out of the door by the loading bays, the parking lot was empty except for my brother’s old station wagon, still parked where I’d left it late last night. There was the start of a morning glow on the eastern horizon, and the cloudless sky above promised another beautiful day even though there were still patches of snow on the ground. But this was March in Newford. Some years we get more snow in this one month than we do through the whole winter. So far, we’d been lucky. The temperature was mild this morning and the promise of spring—officially here already, but yet to make an actual physical appearance—was in the air. Living in this part of the country, you took what you could get.

“Sure you won’t stay?” Galfreya asked.

I turned to look at her, shifting my fiddlecase from one hand to the other.

“Not tonight.”

“It’s morning now.”

I smiled. “So it is. But I should get Christy’s car back to him.”

If anybody else was here with us, they’d think I was crazy for turning down the invitation. Galfreya’s gorgeous. Sloe-eyed—as they say in the old trad ballads—and tall, her waist-length hair a messy storm of braids and loose curls decorated with multicoloured barrettes, feathers, ribbons, tiny bones, and other found objects.