She woke with a start, and a deep, cutting sense of panic that went straight through her, right to her heart. She scrambled out of the blanket and onto her feet, and quickly walked up the stairs toward Ella’s room, heart hammering, a feeling of dread eating at her insides.

It was weird, this feeling, this deep, instinctive belief that she should be afraid.

“Hey, Ella,” she said, knocking on the door. “Ella, are you okay?”

No answer.

She knocked harder, louder. “Ella, just say something, okay, so I know you’re in there,” she said, voice shaking.

Nothing.

“Ella!” she shouted again, voice high with panic, slamming her palm rapidly against the wood. “I’m not kidding. Even saying ‘fuck off’ is acceptable at this point. Just say something! Now. Please, or I’m coming in.”

Ella never refused to answer her before, no matter how moody she was. Tali had heard approximately twenty-five go aways, four fuck offs and several dozen unintelligible grunts, but never had she heard this piercing, heart-stopping silence.

She threw open the door and her stomach bottomed out. Ella wasn’t in there.

Somehow she knew she wouldn’t be, but it still turned her blood to ice.

Horrified, she ran down the hall to the bathroom and threw open the door there.

Empty.

Tali pounded her way through the house, screaming Ella’s name at the top of her lungs, tears stinging her eyes. She even went down to the basement, which she’d never done before. It was dusty, dark, full of cobwebs and old paint cans and a busted old pool table.

But no Ella.

She pounded back up the stairs and quickly shoved her feet into her heavy winter boots, not bothering with the laces or a coat and threw open the door into the night.

It was snowing.

It was always fucking snowing now.

How long had she been asleep? When had Ella left? How had she left?

On foot? It was so cold out, and there was almost nothing around!

Shaking with cold and fear, Tali screamed Ella’s name into the wind, which was whipping around so hard she could hardly even hear herself.

There were no footprints that she could see and that dread she thought couldn’t get any worse reached new heights. She thought she might just pass out right there in the snow from the sheer terror of it.

Ella was gone.

She was clearly gone, clearly not in the house, nowhere at all that Tali could see.

Which meant that she had left on her own. It was dark almost all the time now. Either she’d gone on foot, which made Tali more afraid than she could possibly imagine, or she’d taken one of the snowmobiles. Tali charged over to the shed and threw it open. Yes, one was definitely missing.

That wasn’t much better. It was freezing out and so snowy, and if she’d taken off into the woods, she could have crashed so easily. It was so dark, and if she’d been upset... there were no tracks. It had snowed too much for there to even be tracks.

Tali turned around, shivering, sobbing, and darted back toward the house.

Her cell phone. Ella had a cell phone. She could call that. She could call the police. She could call Hudson, and the Callaways. She would get the word out and then she’d go out looking, and she would find her, and she’d be okay. She’d be fine, and safe, and warm. She would not be frozen in the snow somewhere because of a stupid, worthless fight about middle-school homework assignments.

Tali charged back inside. She picked up the house phone and punched in Ella’s number with shaking hands.

Pick up, pick up, pick up, she prayed, eyes tightly shut. And then she heard it. That stupid boy band ringtone coming from her room upstairs.

She didn’t take her phone! What teenager leaves the house without a phone?

The police. She had to call the police now.

She’s just a kid. She’s just a kid. I was trusted with protecting her. She’s just a kid.

She was about to push her finger onto the 9 button when the phone started to ring in her hand, making her jump about a foot.

She hit the answer button with lightning speed and shrieked “Ella? Ella, is that you?”

“No, Tali, it’s Huds—”

“Hudson!” she cried into the phone, heart aching so badly she thought she might die. “Hudson, Ella’s gone! She’s not here, Hudson. We had a stupid fucking fight and she’s not—”

“Tali, I know!” she heard him shout on the other side. “She’s with me! She’s here, and she’s okay.”

“Oh my God,” she breathed. Her knees buckled and she collapsed to the floor. “I was...I was outside. I was looking for— She’s there? She’s really there? She’s okay?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “She’s okay. She’s fine. Tali—”

“I’m coming. I’m on my way. Right now,” she blurted, hanging up before he could respond. She pulled herself onto her feet, ran over to the kitchen counter, grabbed the keys to Matty’s truck, and charged out into the snow again, still in just her untied boots and sweater, fresh tears of relief pouring down her face.

She tried not to speed as she made her way down the road to Hudson’s. She knew where he lived. She’d dropped Ella off there a couple of times now, though she’d never once gone in, preferring to exchange whatever functional conversation they needed to have about pick up and drop off times from the doorstep. He always invited her in, still clearly determined to continue his plight to make peace.

She was freezing, her teeth chattering so hard she thought they might shatter. The truck always took at least ten minutes to heat up, and it was a refrigerator now. The tears on her eyelashes felt like they might turn to ice, and the snow was still coming down hard. As she drove, she tried not to let her relief turn into fury, but she couldn’t help it. The anger started to build in her like a raging inferno.

What had Ella been thinking? What she’d done had been beyond dangerous, charging off into the night without telling anyone. What if she hadn’t made it to Hudson’s, if she’d crashed somewhere on the road, hit her head, hurt herself? She would have frozen to death in minutes, and how would they have even found her with the snow coming down like this?

In spite of her desperation to get to Hudson’s as fast as she possibly could, to confirm with her own two eyes that her brother’s child was alive and breathing rather than frozen in a snowbank, Tali had to pull over at the bottom of the hill up to his cabin.

She got the door open just in time to puke onto the snow, heaving, gasping, sobbing.

When the last of her stomach contents had been emptied, she shakily closed the door and continued up the hill, finally pulling into the drive. She barely managed to turn off the ignition and pull out the keys before she was leaping out and throwing open the front door.

She’d been in such a frenzy she’d forgotten all about Hudson’s giant malamute, Koda, and was greeted immediately by the swift reminder as his massive paws connected hard with her abdomen, throwing her back a foot on impact. He lapped her salty tears and she was too stunned to shove him away.

“Koda, off,” she heard Hudson shout, and a moment later she heard him stomping over. He seized Koda by the collar and pulled him away.

“Where is she?” Tali cried, charging forward through the foyer and trying to barge past Hudson. In one swift motion, Hudson kicked open a door and shoved Koda through it, then slammed it shut before the wolf-like dog could bound back out for more attention.

Then he took a step forward and took a wide stance, his considerable bulk blocking her.

“Hudson, move,” she insisted, trying to shove him out of the way. “I need to see her.”

“Tali, I know. I know you do. And you will. But let’s you and me talk a minute first, okay?”

“No!” she shouted, still shaking heavily. “I need to see her, Hudson. I need to know she’s all right.”

“I promise you she is,” Hudson said, looking at her with deep concern in those green eyes flecked with gold. “God, Tali, what the hell were you thinking, leaving the house in that? You must be freezing. And the heat in Matt’s truck...” he muttered. “Nonexistent.”

She dived for the nearest door, the one he’d just sent Koda through, but before she could get it open his arm had snaked across her stomach and he physically lifted her away from it like she was a child. She elbowed him hard in the gut, making him oof.

“Get your hands off me,” she hissed, furious, and he set her down at once, though he slid around lightning-quick to block the door with his bulk. She sighed angrily. There was no getting around that much solid muscle.

“Tali,” he said, voice steady and calm. “I swear, I’ll let you see her, but I don’t think it’s going to be good for anyone for you to charge in there right now in the state you’re in. Please, just come into the kitchen with me. Just for a minute. I promise you, she’s okay.”

His house was warm, and coupled with his soothing voice, she should’ve felt comforted. Instead, she railed against them all, determined not to be cowed.

“She just left, Hudson. Alone, in the dark. She didn’t tell anyone! She could have died. She could have died in a dozen ways between there and here, and we might not have known how or why for days. She has to realize how dangerous that was,” Tali insisted, stomping her feet, new tears in her eyes.

“I know, Tali. I know. And she knows, too. I swear. She realizes what she did, and she’s really sorry, and she’s really upset, and obviously you are, too. Just come with me a minute, just a minute. You’re absolutely freezing.” He clutched her arms in his hands. This time, she didn’t hiss at him and he rubbed his hands up and down the length of her arms, creating friction, warming her. She allowed it, closing her eyes and even taking a step into it. She allowed herself to be still for a moment and take a few deep breaths, getting a whiff of his rich, masculine scent as she did. There was something comforting about that too.

“Come in here, Tali,” he said, tugging at her wrist softly. “I’ll make you something hot to drink, and we’ll just talk for a minute, and then you can see her, I promise.”

The melded feelings of exhaustion and relief had risen back to the surface again, overpowering the anger that had been swelling in her during the latter part of the drive here. Hudson guided her into the kitchen, his hands warm and firm on her shoulders, where he eased her gently down into a chair.

“Here,” he said, shrugging out of his flannel jacket and handing it to her. “Put this on. Warm yourself up some more. How are your hands?” He squatted beside her. Once she’d put the jacket on, he took her hands in his and looked at them closely.

Inspecting them for signs of frostbite?

What the hell were the signs of frostbite anyway?

She should probably Google that at some point, now that she was living here. He seemed to find her free of danger, because after a moment he stopped fussing with her hands and started rolling up the sleeves of the huge jacket he’d given her, as they were dangling off her arms by about six inches. “There,” he said gently when he’d finished, smoothing out the arms a bit.

He stood up, quickly filled the kettle, threw it on the stovetop, and switched it on. Tali felt almost numb now, simply watching him quietly and trying to regulate her breathing a little, get her heartbeat back to a normal rate. As soon as he’d gotten the kettle going, he turned his attention back to her, deep worry written all over his face.

“Oh, Tali,” he murmured, taking in the sight of her. “You’re still white as a sheet.”

“I was so scared, Hudson,” she gasped out, voice barely more than a whisper. “I’ve never been so scared in my whole life. I really thought she might be dead. I really thought so.”

“I know,” he said quietly, coming back over to her, squeezing her shoulders. “She shouldn’t have done that. It was goddamn stupid. We’ve— I’ve had it out with her already. She knows, Tali, and she feels awful. I think she’s probably sobbing her heart out in there right now, honestly. She was when we heard you pull up. She realizes what she put you through. She gets it.”

“I just… I woke up and I knew. I knew the second I woke up that something was wrong, and she was just gone,” Tali said, tears in her eyes again. “No sign of her anywhere in the house, Hudson, no note, no anything. And it was snowing so hard. I just thought, She’s dead. Matty’s daughter is out there in the snow somewhere, dead, because of me. She’s dead, and it’s my fault, because of a stupid fight about her goddamn homework and—”

“Tali, stop,” he said, giving her shoulders a shake. “Don’t you talk like that. Come on now, sweetheart, it’s over. She’s fine. And don’t even start with that blaming yourself bullshit, okay? She told me about the fight. You said nothing I wouldn’t have said, or Matt wouldn’t have said if he were here. You were right to come at her about it. I love that child with all of my heart, but she’s always been difficult. She went through a rough patch at the end of last year too, even before all this happened. She had Matty going prematurely gray with some of the stuff she was doing, and he did say the same things to her, he did ground her and yell up a storm and she said awful stuff right back. You didn’t do anything wrong. Kids are tough. This is what parenting is, and you’re doing a damn good job of it, all things considered.”

“I shouted,” Tali said, her voice coming out as a mix of miserable, flat, and totally exhausted. “I raised my voice. I upset her. I— I’m sure Matty never got her mad enough to run out in the middle of a snowstorm.”

“Tali,” Hudson said, pulling up in a chair beside her. “Enough of that, please. Ella wasn’t… she wasn’t just mad. She was overwhelmed. She told me. She doesn’t know why she’s doing the things she’s doing, or saying what she’s saying. Why she’s lying to her teachers. And she said she couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said to you, about wishing you’d gone back to LA, and she felt so guilty about it and didn’t even know why she said it. And, uh...” he paused, swallowing.

“She said she heard you crying afterward, and...talking to him. To Matty. And she just...she said she had to get away. I think she came here looking for advice on how to fix it between you, to be honest, but she didn’t think through what you’d do when you woke up to find her gone. But Tali, I’ve already yelled at her about how dangerous it was and—” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “This is what I’m talking about. It’s not just the two of you. Emotions are running high all around. But I wanted to take a minute for you to understand how sorry she really is. She’s a total mess in there. And I just… I didn’t want you to go in yelling. Not when there’s a better way. Do you get that?” he asked.

Tali nodded, trying to take it all in. What he said made sense. He understood Ella. It seemed like he understood Tali too, and it was hard to argue with his logic. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”

Looking relieved, Hudson stood up again and went over to the kettle that was starting to give off steam. “You two need a talk. An honest one. But she wants to say sorry, and I know for sure that she means it, so I hope you have it in you to let her,” he said, giving her a long look.

“Of course,” she breathed. “I’m just so glad she isn’t hurt, Hudson. That’s all that matters.”

“I said it before, and I’ll say it again. She’s lucky to have you. What’ll you have? Tea? Coffee? Hot cocoa?”

“Hot whiskey?” she asked, weakly. “Kidding,” she added, remembering that Hudson was inclined to judge and might not get the joke. “Tea is fine.”

He smiled. “You know, I may have a bottle lying around somewhere. I’ll fix you one later if you want, after you’ve talked,” he said, pulling out a jar full of tea bags. “But for now, what’ll you have? Honey lemon? Green? Uh... shit. That’s all I’ve got actually. Sorry, I’m not much of a tea guy.”

“Honey lemon sounds great,” she said and he brought her over a mug with a moose on it.

She took a sip and instantly felt the warmth start to move through her. She finished the cup. Hudson let her drink in silence, though she felt his green eyes on her the whole time. Weeks ago, she would have felt self-conscious and judged beneath his gaze, but she recognized it now as concern.

When she was done, she set the mug down on the kitchen table.

“Feel warmer?” he asked quietly.

“Much,” she nodded. “I guess I’d better go in there. I’m feeling way calmer. And a lot more nervous,” she admitted.

“You’ll be fine. Be honest. Reinforce the idea of how dangerous it was, but try to be gentle. And let her say her piece,” Hudson advised. “Come on.” He offered her a hand up.

She accepted. He pulled her to her feet. With a gentle push on her shoulder blade, he guided her to the door across the hall, the one he’d shoved the dog through. He knocked on it.

“Ella, honey,” he called through the pine. “You ready for some company in there?”

“Um. Yeah,” came her muffled voice through the door.

He turned to her. “Go on. You’ve got this,” he said, opening the door and pushing her through.

Once again, she was pounced upon by the overeager malamute, but she was ready for it this time, blocking him from connecting with her abdomen in a second attempt at causing internal bleeding.

“Get down,” she muttered, pushing him off and kneeling beside him to give him some proper attention, which seemed to be the only way to get him to back off. She pet him absentmindedly, letting him practically climb into her lap, but her eyes never left Ella, who was sitting on the couch hugging a pillow, her eyes splotchy and red, her lip trembling.

The image of pure vulnerability was everything she needed to realize how right Hudson was, and she was glad he’d made her calm down before coming in here. She would have come in like a raging fire, and that was clearly not what Ella needed right now. She had to admit, the man really knew his stuff.

She started to walk toward Ella, preparing to sit beside her and quietly say...something. She still wasn’t quite sure what, but she knew it would have to be quiet, gentle, understanding.

She didn’t make it to the couch before Ella’s eyes flooded with fresh tears and she was choking out, “T-Tali. I’m…I’m really s-sorry! I’m really sorry.”

In an instant, Tali crossed the remaining distance and engulfed the sobbing child in a crushing hug.

“Ella, shhh,” she murmured. “Shhh. It’s all right, baby. It’s fine. I’m just so glad you’re okay. I’m so glad you’re safe.”

Ella hugged her back fiercely, and her body shook with the intensity of her sobs, her head buried in Tali’s shoulder. “It’s…it’s not though. I wasn’t thinking. I’m so stupid! I just…I just ran out and…and you must have been so scared and I—”

“I was, honey,” Tali said honestly, kissing her on the top of her dirty-blonde hair. “But only because I care about you so much. Because I was terrified something awful might have happened to you. You know you can’t do something like this ever again, right? It’s okay to be angry with me, and it’s okay to hate me, but we’ve gotta make a deal, Ella. If you ever feel like you can’t be in the house anymore, like you just have to get away, you have to tell me okay? I promise, I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go, no questions asked. I won’t say a word. Even if you’re grounded, or whatever. I just need you to be safe, above anything else. Do you get that?”

“I do,” Ella said, pulling back to look her in the eyes. “I do, Tali. I’m so sorry I made you worry. I wasn’t thinking. I just…and…and before that... What I said to you. About...about LA—”

“Ella, you don’t have to—”

“I do! I didn’t mean it, Aunt Tali,” she said fiercely. “I really didn’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I didn’t mean it. I do that a lot. Saying things I don’t mean. I’m sorry. After all you’ve done for me. Giving up your whole life in LA to stay here… and I’ve been so ungrateful and I don’t d-deserve it at all and...and...” she gasped out, and dissolved into sobs once again.

Tali squeezed her again, tight.

“Ella, honey, please,” Tali said, heart aching. “It’s okay. I understand how much pain you’re in. I feel it, too. It’s okay to be angry and sad and hurt and confused. You’re too young to have do deal with something like this, honey. We get that. Everyone gets it. Me. Hudson. Your teachers. We all just want you to be okay, but it’s not going to happen overnight. We know that. Your dad was the person I loved most in the entire world, and you’re a part of him. There’s nothing you could say that would make me turn my back on you, Ella. You’re my family, okay? I love you.”

It was the first time she’d said the words to Ella since she was a little kid, and it surprised her to realize how deeply she felt it, and how truly she meant it.

I love this child.

This difficult, moody, unhappy, broken little girl who has suffered the most awful loss imaginable. I love her.

“I...I love you too, Tali,” Ella sniffed. The words were soft, muffled into Hudson’s sweater, but real, and they made Tali’s chest feel tight and full in a way she didn’t know if she’d ever felt before. “And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll— I will do my assignments and I will…I will ask for—”

“Ella, we don’t have to talk about that now,” Tali murmured, stroking Ella’s hair. “It’s been a long night.”

“No, I want to. School has been hard. Some of it is easy, but some of it’s not, and I can’t always concentrate and I am falling behind, I know I am, and...I’ll come to you. I’ll let you help me, like you offered to. You’re right. Dad was always super proud when I did well and...it used to piss him off whenever I slacked, too. I don’t want to let him down. I want to do well. I will.” When she pulled back, she looked determined.

“Good,” Tali nodded, smiling at her. “That’s great, honey. I promise I’ll help in any way that I can.”

“Thank you,” Ella said again. “For being here. For everything.”

Tali said nothing, just pulled her in for another hug.

For a long time, she simply held Ella, whose small body exuded the same exhaustion that Tali felt. After a spell of silence, she said in a tiny, soft voice, “I miss him.”

“I know, baby. I do too,” Tali said, heart breaking.

Ella was quiet for another long moment. “I heard you...I heard you earlier. You were talking to him. To Dad. I-I do that sometimes, too.”

Tali shut her eyes tight, but the tears still leaked out of them at the corners. She squeezed Ella to her tighter than ever.

“I wish—I wish I could hear him say something back,” Ella added, utterly broken.

“I know, honey. I know. Me too,” Tali said, kissing her head again. Tali held her for a long time, letting Ella sob her heart out, soaking Hudson’s flannel through with tears, and shedding more than a few of her own.