The river was frozen solid, snow drifts whipped by relentless wind like whitecapped waves on an unmoving surface. Maggie watched the bitter beauty of it from above, on the rocks facing west toward Wrightstown. The noise and misery of Lowertown was behind her, but never quite out of mind.
A cold blast numbed her cheeks, but she didn’t turn away, didn’t flinch.
“Stay steady, stay calm, disappear…” she whispered to herself. “Steady. Stay steady. Stay…” She flinched as tears froze to her eyelashes. “This is your penance.”
She turned back toward the town, the rickety taverns still packed with riotous voices oblivious to her pain.
One of them had caused her pain.
“I’m done with penance,” she said, and peered down the rocks to the messy shore below. It might not kill her, but it would get the process started. “I’m sorry, Rían…”