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SNOW CRUNCHED BENEATH Florence's boots as she exited her car with a sigh.
She took one look around the mountain before she began hyping herself up for what she hoped would be a weekend filled with reconnection and closure. If not reconnection, at least closure. She could only hope, though.
After locking her car and stashing her keys in her coat pocket, she began her trek to the cable car station where she hoped some of her friends would be. Being on the mountain alone was something she vigorously detested, considering the tragedies that haunted it.
Sharp shivers cascaded down her spine, the wind nipping at her reddened cheeks and nose.
It was strange to revisit the origin of her most painful heartache.
It seemed as though she could feel the lingering bitterness the police left behind in the form of tattered fragments of crime scene tape and old missing-person posters.
Harsh memories of the moment she and her friends realized that Hannah and Beth weren't returning came rushing back to her.
She relived everything as she made her way through the snow-covered forest atop Mount Washington: the way her stomach dropped and how quickly she ran to awaken Josh and Chris, how her hands trembled furiously as she called the police in a panic, how everyone began to fall into chaos and yell at one another in attempts to shift the blame off of their own shoulders, how none of them could bare the weight of their guilt as the police interviewed them.
What shook her the most was the utter guilt she was struck with when she remembered that she wanted to go after Beth once she ran off to find Hannah. She desperately wanted to assist her friend in bringing Hannah back, but she figured it would be best to leave her twin sister to calm her down.
She never stopped wondering if things would have happened differently, or if the twins would have ever gone missing at all, if she had gone after them. Maybe she would've found them and lead them back or maybe she would've gone missing, too. Those were all just maybes, though.
Overall, nothing compared to the traumatic events that they all lived that night.
Florence wiped away the single tear that had fallen unto her numbing cheek after snapping out of her daze.
There was nothing she wanted more than to see her boyfriend find some form of happiness, but she still wasn't certain of how good of an idea it was to return to the lodge — on the anniversary of the twins' disappearance, no less.
As she walked through the snow and listened to a distant owl hooting, she felt eyes on her back.
Unsettling goosebumps formed on her arms, the hair sticking up from underneath her coat.
