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back, but at least they wouldn’t demolish her car fund.
    Before leaving the store, Amanda insisted that Chloe don her new footwear, and she stowed the child’s school shoes in her ever-present backpack. Without a car, Amanda had learned that grocery shopping—or anyother on-foot activity—required more carrying capacity than her arms alone could provide.
    After leaving Charlie’s, Chloe pleaded with Amanda for a visit to the Mystic Creek Menagerie, a gigantic circular structure, once a sawmill but now converted into a mall. The center focal point was a slowly revolving roundtable restaurant. Chloe yearned to eat on what she called “the merry-go-round.”
    “Not today, sweetie.” The prices at Dizzy’s Roundtable Restaurant, run by Tony Chavez, made Amanda dizzy just looking at them. “But buying snow boots does call for a celebration! How about lunch at Taco Joe’s?”
    Chloe clapped her hands. “I love Taco Joe’s!”
    So did Amanda. Eating there didn’t cost an arm and a leg.
    As they once again crossed the town center, Amanda caught the delicious aromas drifting from Pecks’ Red Rooster Restaurant, Mystic Creek’s one fine-dining establishment. The owners, Chris and Kimberly Peck, had built the restaurant to optimize views of the creek and natural bridge, and though Amanda had heard from her boss that the Pecks were generous people, she doubted their menu prices reflected their largesse.
    After a fun lunch at the taco place, with the owner, handsome young Joe Paisley, capping off the meal with complimentary root beer floats, they began the long walk home. As Chloe chattered, Amanda’s mind drifted. She was jerked from her mental meandering when Chloe said, “Taco Joe is really cute. Maybe someday you’ll meet him on the bridge!”
    Amanda smothered a startled laugh. “Maybe so,” she said. But a man wasn’t really the answer to her problems.She was still married, a concept Chloe didn’t yet comprehend.
    On the way home, Chloe’s new boots leaked.
You get what you pay for
. Still, the poor quality irked Amanda. Not that she could blame Charlie Ramsey. At least he carried items for those who couldn’t afford better.
    On Monday morning, she stowed Chloe’s regular shoes in her school backpack and slipped bread sacks over the child’s feet before putting on the boots, hoping that the plastic would help keep Chloe’s socks dry as they trudged to the bus stop. She thanked God for small blessings when it worked.
    *   *   *
    A little over a week before Thanksgiving, on a Monday afternoon, Amanda was surprised when, just after lunch cleanup, a time set aside for the cafeteria team to do next-day prep, Delores announced that she was letting everyone off early.
    “School is closing early, too,” she explained.
    Amanda’s heart sank. Normally her shift ended well before Chloe, attending first grade in the same building, hopped on a bus, giving Amanda time to reach the drop-off point before Chloe did.
    “The forecast says an ice storm will hit sometime tonight, with temperatures as low as minus thirty,” Delores continued. “Right now, freezing rain is falling on top of the accumulated snow, which is turning it to solid ice. It’ll be dangerous getting home, and I’m guessing if the storm actually hits, school will be canceled tomorrow.”
    Again, Amanda’s heart took a plunge. She got paid only for the hours she worked, and received no health benefits. She couldn’t survive if the school stayed closed for long.
    Mary Lou Hansen, another assistant, with kinky red hair and merry blue eyes, said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it that cold in Mystic, and I’ve lived here all my life!”
    The gray in Delores’s brown hair, twisted into a French roll, gave testimony to the twenty years she had on her helpers. Wiping her hands on a chef’s apron that barely covered her belly, she fixed a solemn blue gaze on them and said, “Back in the eighties it got that cold, or at least close. Living