I leaned over the hood of our SUV, scraping a thick sheet of gray ice off the windshield with a yellow plastic scraper.

Sam opened the heavy timber front door of the cabin, holding a yellow pad and a blue plastic school folder under his arm.

“The Caldwell estate is four point six miles up Red Mountain Road,” Sam said, adjusting his wire-rim glasses with his middle finger.

“At sixteen miles an hour on ice, it will take seventeen minutes and fifteen seconds.”

“I planned twenty-five minutes for the trip,” I said, knocking a chunk of frozen slush off the driver-side wiper blade.