The rain turns to sleet and then snow, collecting on the windowsills. The dark outside becomes darker.

But I lie perfectly still, listening to their breathing. They don’t know I’m back. That I’ve returned from the woods. I’d hide too, Lin said.

What happened that night, when the storm rattled the walls of the cabin, when my memory blots out?

I push back the blanket and move silently down the narrow ladder, then across the room. None of them stir. I could wake them, tell them I’m back, ask them what happened that night—ask them to fill in the parts I can’t remember. But the gnawing in my throat won’t let me. The sliver of pain thrumming inside my chest tells me I shouldn’t trust them.

Something happened that my mind won’t let me remember.

Something that is more darkness than light.

I can’t stay here, with them. There are only bad memories in this place.

I yank on my boots and open the door just wide enough to slip through. I glance back and see someone stirring, Rhett I think, his head lifted. But I pull the door shut before he can focus through the dark.

Before he can see me sneaking out.

NORA

Night comes swiftly in the mountains.

The sinking sun devoured by the snowy peaks. Eaten whole.

I carry in freshly cut logs from the woodshed and drop them beside the woodstove—enough to keep Suzy and me warm through the night. If they’ll actually light.

“You found all these things in the woods?” Suzy asks, standing at the darkened window, running a finger over the items that fascinate her placed along the windowsill: silver candlesticks and a small, palm-sized figurine in the shape of a boy and girl dancing, the freckle-faced girl’s head inclined like she’s facing an imaginary sky. These found things I know by heart. The stories they tell.

Suzy spent most of the day holding her cell phone in the air, near windows, trying to find a signal—even after I told her she’d never get reception out here. Then she’d walk into the kitchen and pick up the landline, listening for a dial tone. But there was always nothing. Just the flat silence. Finally, she turned off her cell phone again to save the battery.

Now, with evening upon us, she seems defeated, her voice low and disheartened.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “During a full moon.”

She watches the snow eddy against the window. “People at school talk about you,” she says absently, like I’m not really listening. “They say you talk to the trees. And to the dead.” She says it in a way that makes me think she wants to believe it, so she can return to school when this is all over and say: I stayed in the house of Nora Walker and it’s all true.