I feel like if I don’t get out of the tent soon, there’s a high probability I’ll projectile vomit all over the entire table. It wouldn’t be the New York Times article I’d envisioned—Bride Vomits All Over Family at Rehearsal Dinner—but it would be equally as memorable, I guess.

Outside the tent, it’s cold, bitterly so, and I feel goose bumps growing on my arms and legs immediately. But I like it. It’s a good feeling. A clean feeling.

I walk over to the porch and sit on the edge of the lowest wooden step, slightly damp from the cold air. I’ve never gotten over how dark it is out here. The ground blends into the trees, which blend into the sky. It’s the kind of darkness where my imagination goes wild. Anything can be in those woods, standing just behind the tree line, watching me, watching us. The fear, I guess, isn’t that you’re alone in the dark, but that you’re not alone.

“Hello, Eliza.” I look up to see Lorraine standing over me, a silhouette of a person backlit by the soft light from inside the house. “Can I join you?”

I motion toward the step beside me, be my guest, and she sits down. Her legs are short and stubby, folding at the knee like two thick Twizzlers.

“I’m listening for Henry tonight,” she says, lifting the monitor in her hand. “He was fussing but he’s back to sleep now. A good self-soother.” I let out a deep breath, relieved that that’s probably what she was reporting to Reed, not that Jess was hacking into his laptop as we speak.

“I get light-headed sometimes,” I explain to her, pleasantly. “Graham says it’s the elevation.”

She nods a few times, clawing her hands on her knees and looking back and forth from me to the tent. Only half her face is lit, an orange glow coming in and out like a fire, and I think back to the reflection in the window. The shadow of a woman looking out at us from the dark living room. And then how that person disappeared right when I needed her.

“My parents used to have horses,” she says. “Three of them. Baboso, Chamba, and... George.” She laughs and looks at me, anticipatory, so I laugh, too. “My nephew named them,” she continues, clearly still charmed by it. She is looking straight ahead, into the woods, like a camp counselor telling a ghost story to kids who’re probably too young to understand how scary it really is.