The stranger appeared down the road in the middle of the afternoon, toward the end of the day’s long decline into night. If there’d been any sun for shadows, the shadows would have been long, but as it was, there was no way to mark the evening except for the world outside Jess’s window seeming to lose definition, slow and imperceptible, minute by minute, a steady diminishing of color and detail until, all at once, it would come dark.

Jess watched as the man walked up the road toward her house. He didn’t look like anyone she knew, though it was hard to tell: he wore a green rain slicker like Ty used to keep on the boat, the hood up over a baseball cap, hiding his face. She couldn’t see a vehicle, so he must have walked a ways; she wondered if he knew where he was going, if he knew there was nothing worth seeing this far up the road. Then she wondered if he was coming for her.

He walked steadily, with a purpose, and as she watched, he looked up at her house and changed direction toward it. Jess drew back from the window, felt ice down her spine. She wondered if the stranger was even real, if her mind might be playing tricks again, conjuring enemies where none existed.

This was what Lucy had been good for. If Lucy responded to a visitor, Jess knew they were real, and if that visitor had bad intentions, Lucy might very well scare them away. But Lucy had sure responded to the last man who’d come knocking, and that hadn’t exactly worked out, had it?

Jess drew back into the living room, thankful she’d kept the lights off. Her truck was parked up alongside the house, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe if she kept quiet and didn’t move, this guy would just leave her alone.

She stood in the stillness, listening to the rain on the roof, hardly daring to breathe. Waited, and prayed the stranger would keep walking. Then she heard the sound of his boots on the front porch, and she closed her eyes. She was fucked.

He knocked, three times, like the last guy who’d come. Jess didn’t move. The man knocked again. “Ms. Winslow?”

She drifted back, farther away from the door, ducked into the shadows where the living room met the kitchen, stood stock-still. Watched the man’s shadowed form as he peered through the window. She didn’t move. Her heart raced. She still couldn’t make out his face.

Go away, she thought. Go away go away go away.

Time seemed to still. The man called her name again, and she didn’t reply. She heard his boot steps on the porch again and prayed that was the end of it.