“Could be livable,” he said.
“Could be full of raccoons,” Lena replied.
“That too.”
She glanced through the van window at Ivy, who was awake now and pretending not to listen.
“Does it have heat?” Lena asked.
Mercer blinked. “I don’t know.”
“Then that’s the first thing we find out.”
They left by noon.
The drive west through the mountains felt unreal, like someone else’s memory she had accidentally stepped into. Asheville thinned behind them. The highway curved and rose. Service bars vanished from her phone. Pines crowded closer to the road. December lay across the ridges in muted browns and grays, every slope quiet under a low iron sky.
Ivy sat in the back seat with the cracked snow globe in her lap and watched the scenery with wide, solemn eyes.
“Are we moving there?” she asked once.
Lena gripped the wheel. “We’re looking.”
“Is looking different from moving?”
“Sometimes.”
Mercer, following behind them, led the final stretch up a narrower road
