She edged into the far right lane, toward the exit to the bridge. The wall of the tunnel was just feet away. She could have stuck her fist into one of the holes.

“It’ll be all right.”

Audrey Villeneuve knew it would be many things, but all right probably wasn’t one of them.

TWO

“Get your own fucking duck,” said Ruth, and held Rosa a little closer. A living eiderdown.

Constance Pineault smiled and stared ahead. Four days ago it would never have occurred to her to get a duck, but now she actually envied Ruth her Rosa. And not just for the warmth the duck provided on the bitter, biting December day.

Four days ago it would never have occurred to her to leave her comfortable chair by the bistro fireplace to sit on an icy bench beside a woman who was either drunk or demented. But here she was.

Four days ago Constance Pineault didn’t know that warmth came in many forms. As did sanity. But now she knew.

“Deee-fenssssse,” Ruth shouted at the young players on the frozen pond. “For God’s sake, Aimée Patterson, Rosa could do better.”

Aimée skated past and Constance heard her say something that might have been “duck.” Or “puck.” Or …

“They adore me,” Ruth said to Constance. Or Rosa. Or the thin air.

“They’re afraid of you,” said Constance.

Ruth gave her a sharp assessing glance. “Are you still here? I thought you’d died.”

Constance laughed, a puff of humor that floated over the village green and joined the wood smoke from the chimneys.

Four days ago she thought she’d had her last laugh. But ankle-deep in snow and freezing her bottom off beside Ruth, she’d discovered more. Hidden away. Here in Three Pines. Where laughter was kept.

The two women watched the activity on the village green in silence, except for the odd quack, which Constance hoped was the duck.

Though much the same age, the elderly women were opposites. Where Constance was soft, Ruth was hard. Where her hair was silky and long, and done in a neat bun, Ruth’s was coarse and chopped short. Where Constance was rounded, Ruth was sharp. All edges and edgy.

Rosa stirred and flapped her wings. Then she slid off Ruth’s lap onto the snowy bench and waddled the few paces to Constance. Climbing onto Constance’s lap, Rosa settled.

Ruth’s eyes narrowed. But she didn’t move.

It had snowed day and night since Constance had arrived in Three Pines. Having lived in Montréal all her adult life, she’d forgotten snow could be quite so beautiful. Snow, in her experience, was something that needed to be removed. It was a chore that fell from the sky.

But this was the snow of her childhood. Joyful, playful, bright and clean. The more the merrier. It was a toy.

It covered the fieldstone homes and clapboard homes and rose brick homes that ringed the village green. It covered the bistro and the bookstore, the boulangerie and the general store. It seemed to Constance that an alchemist was at work, and Three Pines was the result. Conjured from thin air and deposited in this valley. Or perhaps, like the snow, the tiny village had fallen from the sky, to provide a soft landing for those who’d also fallen.

When Constance had first arrived and parked outside Myrna’s bookstore, she’d been worried when the flurries intensified into a blizzard.

“Should I move my car?” Constance had asked Myrna before they went up to bed. Myrna had stood at the window of her New and Used Bookstore and considered the question.

“I think it’s fine where it is.”

It’s fine where it is.

And it was. Constance had had a restless night, listening for the sirens from the snow plows. For the warning to dig her car out and move it. The windows of her room had rattled as the wind whipped the snow against it. She could hear the blizzard howl through the trees and past the solid homes. Like something alive and on the hunt. Finally Constance drifted off to sleep, warm under the duvet. When she awoke, the storm had blown by. Constance went to the window, expecting to see her car buried, just a white mound under the foot of new snow. Instead, the road had been plowed and all the cars dug out.

It’s fine where it is.

And so, finally, was she.

For four days and four nights snow had continued to fall, before Billy Williams returned with his plow. And until that happened, the village of Three Pines was snowed in, cut off. But it didn’t matter, since everything they needed was right there.

Slowly, seventy-seven-year-old Constance Pineault realized she was fine, not because she had a bistro, but because she had Olivier and Gabri’s bistro. There wasn’t just a bookstore, there was Myrna’s bookstore, Sarah’s bakery, and Monsieur Béliveau’s general store.