It didn’t fall. It attacked.
It slammed into windows like handfuls of gravel, piled up faster than plows could scrape it back, and turned the main street into a white tunnel where the streetlights blinked once—twice—and then surrendered. The silence that followed was worse than the wind. No hum of refrigerators. No distant television glow through curtains. No gentle buzz of normal life.
Just the sound of the storm trying to erase the town.
At seventeen, Maya Thompson and Lily Thompson were already used to surviving storms—just not the kind that swallowed a whole place at once.
Three months earlier, a logging accident had taken their father. Their mother had passed years before from cancer. No grandparents. No safety net. Just a narrow farmhouse at the edge of town, a stack of unpaid bills, and each other.
People had murmured the usual things at the funeral: If you need anything. You’re so strong. He’s in a better place. Then they’d gone home to warm kitchens and full pantries, leaving Maya and Lily to stand under gray November skies with their black coats too thin for the wind.
In Ironwood, most people didn’t mean to be cruel. They were just busy being comfortable.
