Her plan worked. It was hard, especially with her dyslexia. It felt like she had to work not just twice as hard as everyone else, but a hundred times as hard. But she did it. She finished high school in just two years and got a full-time job as a receptionist at the realty office.
No one thought that she could raise her sisters after her mom died when she was eighteen, work full time and continue her education. But she did it. No one thought she could earn her law degree in two years after graduating with an MBA at twenty-four. But she did it. No one thought the orphaned girl from Van Nuys would be a millionaire. But she did it. No one thought that same girl would make partner by the time she was thirty-five. But she did it.
Everything she’d set out to do, she’d done. And she felt empty, lonely, and honestly, lost.
Which was why she’d made such drastic life decisions and found herself white-knuckling it in a snowstorm in the Sierra Nevadas.
She was still ruminating on her current situation when she heard a loud pop and her car jerked to the right. She tried to right the vehicle, but the steering wheel wasn’t very responsive. Not having control of her SUV under any circumstance would be terrifying. Not having control of her SUV in a snowstorm on a mountain was horrifying, petrifying, and every other ‘ifying’ word that related to something as alarming as this.
As someone who grew up and lived her entire life in sunny Los Angeles and had never driven in weather conditions like this, she was not well versed in how to handle this dire situation. Her instinct was to shut her eyes and slam on the brakes, but she doubted seriously that would help. So instead, she took her foot off the accelerator and did her best not to hit a tree or fall off the side of the mountain.
Finally, thankfully, her vehicle came to a stop on the side of the road. After sitting in shock for several seconds, she decided to venture out and assess the situation. She flicked on her hazards and pushed the driver’s door open. Well, she tried to open the door. That simple task was made more difficult by the wind whipping against it with so much force it was nearly impossible for her to open it. She put all of her one hundred and thirty pounds into it and finally managed to crack it enough that she could step out.
But then she thought if it was this difficult to open from the inside, what if it slammed and she wasn’t able to get back into her vehicle? If that happened, she would be stuck out in the elements with no shelter.
What if she froze to death?
Or got frostbite and had to cut off her fingers or toes?
For some reason, the thought of losing digits scared her more than dying.
She let the door slam shut and she grabbed her phone. It didn’t surprise her at all that she had zero service.
So there she sat, stranded on the side of the road. And no one knew that she was there.
Her sisters had no clue that she’d left her apartment. Or quit her job. Or that she planned on moving to be nearer to them. So, they had no clue that they needed to be looking for her. Just as her mind wandered to the fact that they wouldn’t even know she was missing, the wind whipped up and she felt the SUV rock from its powerful force.
This was not good.
Not good at all.
As she sat in her SUV contemplating her dire circumstances, she couldn’t ignore the poetic irony of the situation. There was a good chance that Elsa the Ice Queen was going to die in a snowstorm.