Page 113 of The Girls in the Snow

“I know, honey. Give me just one more minute.”

Okay. Call me tonight?

Nikki quickly sent a thumbs up and hoped she wasn’t coming across as too cold. They were all navigating uncharted waters.

“It’s been a minute, Mom. I’m dying of starvation here.”

Nikki laughed and merged into traffic. She listened to Lacey chatting as she drove through town and thought about how life tended to come full circle. A few weeks ago, Nikki wouldn’t have considered setting foot in Stillwater, and when she did arrive, everything felt foreign to her. Stillwater had grown and changed, and yet so much of it stayed the same, just like Nikki. She was no longer the wild teenager, but she remembered those days much more clearly now. She wasn’t as scared to look back at the past.

Nikki wasn’t sure exactly where her life was headed, but she was no longer “the girl whose parents were murdered.”

And that was good enough for now.

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