Peter braced both hands against the doorframe and held back a moment. It wasn’t just that this was the first time he’d set foot in Henry’s place since that night. Just like the cabin at Yellowstone, stepping into a home when you hadn’t been invited automatically held danger. Peter scanned the darkness, desperate to find comfort in such familiar surroundings. He’d spent so much time at Henry’s during his childhood, he knew the layout well enough to walk through blindfolded. To his right, running the full length of the long window at the side of the cabin, was the dining table. Left of the door, the fireplace and two armchairs, both sunken from those long winter days snowed-in playing Scrabble. But here in the darkness and without invitation, the cabin and its contents seemed eerie and unfamiliar. The armchair’s broad back with loose stitching in the arms that once hid the Q tile for Peter when he didn’t know how to make a word from it, was now an ominous black mass in the room, like it’d transformed into something unwelcoming the moment it was left alone.

“It’s like this place never knew me,” he said.

“All places become ghosts once we leave ’em,” said the sheriff. “Don’t pay it no heed.”

“I guess.”

“Not just places neither.”

Peter’s white breath broke across the darkness and his thoughts returned to Cooper. He crossed the room, lighting the candle above the fireplace with the box of matches Henry kept tucked in the log basket, and listened to the wind whistle through the boards covering the window he’d broken to make their escape that night.

“I suppose we start looking, then,” said the sheriff, his face shifting in and out of light and shadow as the candle’s flame flickered.

“I guess. But I’ve spent so much time here over the years, it’s hard to believe that something like a bomb could’ve been hiding all this time.”

“But Henry was hidden from you that whole time and you were looking right at him.”

Peter turned away, feeling the sting of that truth in his belly, and made his way towards the bedroom. “I still can’t see how anything like that can be hidden, though. It’s not as if we’re going to turn a painting over and find one there, is it?”

“Not all of it, son, no.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might be made of many separate parts hidden throughout the cabin, Peter. There might even be something written down giving instructions on how to assemble it, hidden in another part of the lake entirely.”

Peter turned back and the sheriff’s gaze held his, all dark in the half-light. “But Rider didn’t have enough time to go through that much.”

“Then just enough time to tell Cooper where to start.”

“I guess.”