It all started the previous summer, back when things were normal. Charlotte used to be a normal 23 year old- fun, vivacious, and carefree. She wasn’t a stickler for the rules but she never really got into trouble either. Charlotte was your typical young woman. That summer she had finally decided to take a vacation with her boyfriend at the time, Cooper. They wanted to go somewhere tropical where they could get a little crazy and no one would care. Each of them put their money together and bought the tickets, the date was set.

That’s when things started to go wrong for Charlotte. Now she was stuck in this barren town where it never seemed to warm up more than 50 degrees and snow covered the ground most of the year. She wondered how she got here and what choices she could have made differently- she thought about it so often that it nearly drove her insane. This wasn’t where she planned to be at 23 years old- no one did.

It was the war that turned her world upside down. Cooper had just gotten basic training when they decided to go on their vacation, but as luck would have it- they would never arrive. Two days before their plane was set to take off he got the call, they hadn’t even finished packing. Days later he was stuck in the sweltering desert and all because of some money hungry bastards.

After the accident, Charlotte had to get away from Savannah. She tried to stay for a few months, after all that was all she had known her entire life, but everywhere she went she saw his face. That was what pushed her to get as far away from Georgia as possible and that meant Helsinki. She’d never even traveled outside of the US before, but she when touched down and saw the ice and snow everywhere she knew she’d found a better place- or so she thought.

She only had a few things to move into her small one-bedroom apartment, but she was trying to start fresh and it worked out perfectly. The faded yellow building reminded her of the flowers her grandmother had planted along the walkway to her old house in Savannah. At least of all the memories to stick around it was one of her grandmother- she was the only one that could calm Charlotte’s nerves no matter what. Gran was the best thing in her life besides Cooper.

It wasn’t long before the warmth of Gran faded from the place, now it was nothing but cold and ice. Maybe Finland wasn’t such a great idea. Who knew that ice and snow wouldn’t be as numbing as she hoped.