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“Does it feel lonely?”

“At times. Actually most of the time.” She sighed, tightening her grip on my arm. “I see all my med school friends getting big jobs and making money, and I wonder if I made the right choice.”

“Do you wonder that when you help a sick kid whose parents can’t afford healthcare?” I asked.

“No, I don’t wonder then.”

“Even so, I get that it must be hard. You picked a harder career route than most. But you’re a better person than most of us, so it makes sense.”

“That’s very sweet of you to say, but it’s not really true. I’m simply afraid to spend my life doing something irrelevant. All those years in Stonehaven, I felt invisible. One of the shabby kids no one cared about or thought would amount to anything. I can’t stand the thought of any kid feeling like that.”

We were at the hardware store. I held the door open for her and we slipped inside the warm shop. I breathed in scents I knew well from my childhood—sawdust, machine oil, hints of rubber and cold metal. My father had loved our local hardware store when I was a kid. Some of my happiest memories were from those times, the two of us browsing the aisles for materials for my father’s projects. Over the years he’d constructed an entire obstacle course on his property, a free-standing gym, workshop, shooting range, and a generator. One summer, he and I had prepared a “ready room” filled with packs, boots, cold-weather gear and whatever other thing he thought we needed in case the end of the world happened.

So yeah. I knew this kind of place like the back of my own hand.

A grizzled clerk with stooped shoulders and only a few white wisps of hair on a mostly bald head asked if he could help. He seemed like a man who had been born and raised in the store and had no intention of dying anywhere else. “I’m Wayne. What can I do for you?”

Luci told him she was in need of some snow boots.

“Follow me.”

I caught a whiff of stale cigarette smoke coming from Wayne’s flannel shirt as he led us over to a section with boots and other snow gear.

“Size?” Wayne asked.

“Eight,” Luci said.

Wayne grabbed a pair of winter work boots with a thick rubber sole, nylon upper, and a thick removable felt liner. Perfect for the weather we’d most likely experience in the next few weeks.

Luci took them from Wayne, her nose crinkling as she looked down at them. “Do you have anything cuter?”

Wayne looked at her, no expression on his wrinkled face, and simply shook his head. “We ain’t that kind of shop.”

“Right. Okay.” Luci sat on a stool to try them on.

She slipped her feet out of her cowboy boots and into the snow boots. Narrow feet, with almost no arch. I remembered that from Thanksgiving. She’d had an array of funny Christmas socks—one with reindeer, another with Santa—that she said she wore for the kids at the clinic. “That and my clown routine really cheer them up.” Apparently, she did magic tricks while dressed as a clown if a child was scared or sad. Totally cute.

“Do you think they fit?” Luci asked, lifting her left foot to show me.

Wayne had wandered off to help another customer, so I knelt on the floor next to her, feeling the tip of the boot. “Wriggle your toes.”

She did as I asked. Her toes were in the right place.

“Yep, these are a good fit,” I said. “There’s nothing Montana can bring this month that these boots aren’t ready for.”

“They’re kind of ugly,” Luci whispered. “Madeleine will hate them.”

“She’s not wearing them,” I said, smiling. “But you’re right. I hope she doesn’t twist her ankle wearing the boots she brought.”

“I’ll tell her about where to find these. I’m sure she’ll rush right into town.”

“Should we make a bet?” I asked.

She laughed, shaking her head. “I never bet on anything I won’t win.”

“Good policy.” One I should pay attention to this month.

I was still on the floor and looked up at her. She’d stuffed her cap in a jacket pocket. Her hair was in a simple braid down her back, cheeks rosy from the cold.