“No. You asked me if I moved it last night. And I said I did. I moved it when we were sitting on the couch. I took it down. You saw me take it down.”

Oh God. This is not what I needed to hear. “Ethan, last night when I went downstairs, the painting was back up. So if you didn’t do it, somebody else did.”

He drops the frying pan in the sink with a clank and turns to look at me. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, Tricia. You think somebody came into the living room and put the painting back up? Then later in the night, they took it back down? That’s what you think?”

Well, when he says it like that… “I know it sounds crazy.”

“A bit.”

“But I know what I saw.”

“Do you?”

I glare at him. He is seriously losing all the good-husband points he earned a few minutes ago. “Yes.”

“I’m just saying…” He folds his muscular arms across his chest. “It was three in the morning. The house is really dark. You were kind of sleepy and out of it. Is it possible you could be mistaken?”

“No. It’s not possible.”

“Are you sure?”

I want to shout at him that I know what I saw. I could never imagine those green eyes staring at me. It’s not something I could make a mistake about.

But the more times he asks me about it, the more I wonder. It was the middle of the night. And the house is very dark. Is it possible that I could have thought I saw it, like a mirage?

“I guess it’s possible,” I mumble.

Ethan seems satisfied with this. But I’m not. Something is going on with this house. I’m sure of it, even though he doesn’t believe me.

Chapter 18

After breakfast, we regroup at the kitchen table and come up with a plan to get out of here.

Neither of us has cell service and there are no land lines to be found in the house. Moreover, the storm last night dumped what looks like about ten feet of snow on the area surrounding the house. We can just barely see Ethan’s BMW from the window, and it looks like it’s just a big mound of snow. He’s got a shovel in the trunk, but it won’t be enough. Not enough to get out of here, anyway.

“I’m hoping a plow will come at some point,” Ethan says. “I assume Judy would have called one.”

“Yeah.” He looks more optimistic than I feel. “Maybe.”

“Look, worst comes to worst, we may be stuck here for the day. We’ve got food and water and electricity. It’s not that bad.”

“Yeah…”