Now was as good a time as any to try again. He wasn’t feeling very much in command of all he surveyed, so a little mimicking of his father couldn’t hurt.

In a rare break in the trees, he was afforded a narrow view of the lake. It was still as glass today. The old kayakers were nowhere to be seen. Sometimes up here, he felt like the only person left in the world. The silence and solitude could be overwhelming. Right now, they felt just about right.

A kayak. I really should rent one from that place by the barbershop. It’ll be nice to get on the water. I’m pretty sure I can strap it to the roof of the car.

Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice the little homemade shelter until his wrist banged off one of the support branches.

“What the heck is this?”

He wasn’t sure how he’d missed it when he first set out on his run. Not far from the cottage, someone had gathered fallen branches and fashioned them into a kind of makeshift tepee, the triangular opening revealing a bed of leaves and pine needles inside. Heavily leafed branches were woven between the supports to keep out the elements.

Crouching down, he found a stick and poked around the floor of the tepee. It smelled damp and mossy with a hint of old shit.

It smelled wretched, but an animal hadn’t done this.

Andrew looked above the structure and could just see the cottage through the low-hanging branches.

Is someone spying on us?

It could be kids. It looked wide enough inside to fit up to three preteens comfortably. He hadn’t seen a single soul in these woods since they settled in weeks ago. If there were kids about, he would have at least heard them. The cottage and surrounding acreage were so quiet, so far removed from the regular white noise of civilization, he joked to Kate they could hear a frog fart from a hundred yards away.

And when was this little hut away from home erected? He was pretty sure it hadn’t been here a couple of days ago. On the other hand, when he ran, he noticed very little. Maybe the people who’d rented the cabin before them had creative kids who watched a lot of Survivor.

It could be some homeless person erecting a shelter to keep out of the storm. There didn’t seem to be anything left behind, no sign of food or scraps of clothing. Maybe whoever built it had just needed a place to stay for a night and had moved on.

It could be a bunch of things, and all of them bugged Andrew. Maybe if it were deeper in the woods, he wouldn’t mind. But he could see their cottage from here. Why build it so close, unless it was to keep an eye on them?