Kasey stopped. Rain leaked on to the windshield. She put her bony fingers over the lower half of her face, and her breathing was ragged and loud. She closed her eyes and prayed that the fog would lift, but when she opened them again, she was still marooned in a cloud.

She knew she couldn't stay here. She had to figure out where she was and find her way home.

Kasey switched off the engine, shut down her headlights, and opened the driver's door. The bitter November air blew into the car with a thick cent of pine. She climbed out and eased the door shut behind her with it quiet click. Her boots landed in mud. Evergreen trees swayed like drunks above her. She pushed past the trees into the dark, and as her ryes adjusted to the night, she found herself on the edge of the stripped ruins of a corn field that hadn't been plowed in years. Short, knobby stalks pushed out of the dirt. It looked like a desolate moonscape.

People told her how much they loved fall in Minnesota, but Kasey hated it. She knew that the long death of winter was coming. The trees were already shrugging off their leaves and becoming frozen skeletons. This would be Kasey's fourth winter in Minnesota, and she was glad that they would be gone before it was over. She couldn't wait to escape with her husband and child to the desert of Nevada, baking in the heat, closing her eyes against the bright sunshine.

But that was far away. This was here and now.

Kasey realized what she'd done. In her panic, she had turned off the highway into the unpaved driveway of a Duluth farm home. She could make out its peaked roof and dark windows, and when she wrinkled her nose, she smelled a remnant of fireplace smoke. Beside the house, she saw the foundation of a steel tower, and as the fog ebbed and flowed, she glimpsed the soaring triple wings of a windmill overhead, turning with slow grace. She retraced her steps quickly. She couldn't afford to stray far from her car.