She started the car to let the heat circulate before she started the long drive up the mountain. The rain continued to pelt down like liquid ball bearings. At least it wasn’t snowing. Then the half-hour drive could easily stretch into two or three hours. She pulled out of the parking lot, the windshield wipers beating sheets of water off the glass.

Tamara slid a tape into the cassette deck, Wild Planet by the B-52’s, and killed the miles by singing along with Cindy and Kate, making up harmony parts as the duo wailed away in the high registers. Drivers passing her, seeing her bobbing up and down in her seat and shaking her head from side to side, probably took her for a drunk. But she was doing a great job of closing down, putting the workday behind her.

This was her time. She wasn't Dr. Leon and she wasn't "Mommy" or "honey," as she would be in a half hour. And time away from home meant a delay in defending herself from Robert’s increasingly cruel taunts. She could pretend, at least for another evening, that home was a happy place.

She often wondered if her whole life had been role-playing. Little tomboy, teenage jock, valedictorian of her college class, wife, professor, mother, unheralded backup singer for the B-52's. Everything but Daddy's little girl. The one thing she would have liked to have been, but had never gotten the chance.

The miles whirred by under her wet tires, and soon she hit the outskirts of Windshake. She drove past a stucco-sided motel that hugged the edge of a cliff. A plastic black bear stood by the motel office, its paws raised against the rain. It wore a black T-shirt that said John 3:16 in white letters. Most days, she could look out over the valleys below and see a 180-degree panorama. But today she saw only a mist that covered the mountains like a gray wool blanket. She had just crossed the county line when the first whispering of Gloomies echoed in the caves of her skull.