Chapter One | All Roads Pointed North

She didn’t run.
She didn’t cry, either.
She simply packed the car.

Not in a rush, not with urgency—just with the kind of quiet you feel when something is over before you’re willing to admit it. There was no dramatic farewell, no one chasing after her in the rearview mirror. Only two cats curled up in the backseat, a stack of books in the passenger floorboard, and the hum of a car that had grown used to long stretches of road.

Georgia had become a place she could no longer soften herself enough to stay in. The air was too heavy, the noise too loud, the expectations too constant. It wasn’t that she didn’t love parts of her life—she had, at one point. But love wasn’t a reason to stay where she was no longer growing.

So, she left.

The highway became a ribbon stretching toward something unspoken. Her playlist was a mix of old songs and silence. She stopped only when she needed to—coffee, gas, the occasional moment to stare at a sky that didn’t yet feel like hers.

Vermont wasn’t chosen for any reason that made sense on paper. But her body knew. Her nervous system knew. Her bones, somehow, knew. It was far from everything that had ever broken her. That was enough.

The first night in Stowe, she slept with the windows cracked just enough to hear the wind. The cottage smelled like cedar and old stories. It wasn’t hers yet. But it would be.

And as she lay there in the half-dark, the cats nestled close, she whispered thank you—to whatever version of herself had gotten her here. She didn’t need to know what came next.
Only that this was the first step.
And that—for the first time in a long time—every part of her agreed.