But circumstances had gotten difficult lately and besides, Christine loved the old log cabin. It had a rustic warmth and she didn’t usually mind trudging up and down the driveway to get to her Camry, which was parked on the side of the main road. Then again, there wasn’t usually this much snow, she thought, as she lifted her feet high and tried to pick her way through the shallowest parts of the drifts.
There were ruts in the road that were rendered invisible by the blanket of white—she needed to be careful where she put her feet down so she didn’t twist her ankle. Thank goodness for the new boots her youngest girl, Maggie, had given her for Christmas. They were nice and high, coming up past her knees, and they kept Christine’s feet warm and dry, even in weather like this.
Thinking of Maggie made Christine sigh. She was the last one off to college and since she’d gotten a scholarship to go out of state—all the way to Berkley in California—Christine didn’t get to see her much anymore. And of course her two oldest, Lisa and Steven, were busy with their own lives. Steven had graduated and was starting his own business in Colorado and Lisa was in her second year of Med school at UVA.
Christine couldn’t have been prouder of her kids. Their father had walked out on her when all three of them were still young, leaving her a single mom. Their life hadn’t been easy, but somehow she had seen all three of them through and now they were successful adults.
Of course, none of it would have been possible if her Great Uncle Harvey hadn’t left her the little cabin to live in at just the right time. Christine had been able to keep all her kids in the divorce settlement, but she had lost the house. They had been living in Roanoke, Virginia at the time and she had been at the end of her rope, wondering how she was supposed to raise three kids with no place to live. It was at this critical time she’d gotten the word that the Great Uncle she had hardly known had died and left her a log cabin in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
It was clear that her Great Uncle had used the cabin mostly as a hunting lodge, but Christine had worked hard to make it a home for herself and her kids. Luckily, the busses ran on the main road just past her driveway so she was able to send the kids to school with no problems and then get herself to Whiskers and Tails to work her shifts.
Once upon a time, Christine had cherished dreams of being more than a tech—she had even taken a few semesters of Veterinary School. Of course, that was before her ex-husband had gotten her pregnant with Steven—and after that Lissa and then Maggie.
“And then, of course, he decided he didn’t want to be bothered raising them,” Christine muttered to herself as she trudged. But this was an old wound—it really didn’t hurt much anymore. She wondered why she was even thinking about it—probably just because she was missing her kids and wishing she wasn’t all alone in the cabin.
Up until the past Fall, Maggie still been with her, since she’d been a senior in high school. Now that she had graduated and was off to college, it was just Christine and a few feral cats who came around because she put food out for them when it got too cold for hunting.
Speaking of the cats, Christine hoped they were all doing okay in this snow and that they were staying out of trouble. She had names for them all—Twitchy and Itchy were two black cats who looked like shadows when they slinked up to her back porch at night. And Queen of Sheba was a proud Siamese mix who always yowled loudly until Christine came to put the food out. Then there was Captain Bart—so named because he had lost an eye in some scuffle years before and looked like a pirate—at least to Christine.
She’d had Steven build her a little kitty house which was lined with some old rugs for warmth and all four of the cats would pile into it on cold nights, forgetting their rivalries in the need to get warm.
Wish I had someone warm to cuddle with myself tonight, Christine thought ruefully. She didn’t have central heat so it was pretty chilly in her little cabin. Thank goodness there was a wood burning stove and a fireplace in her bedroom—otherwise she would have frozen to death on one of these snowy nights. Especially since her ancient hot water heater had chosen this moment to break, which meant she was either taking freezing cold showers or heating water in the kettle to wash her hair and take a sponge bath in the sink.