down the hall to her room, Ina glanced over her shoulder at the partially open bedroom door. Mark and Jenna still had the light on. She half expected, half hoped Mark would come to the door and see her.
He was the reason she’d packed the burgundy nightgown ensemble. Ina wanted to look sexy for her sister’s husband.
But Mark wasn’t looking at her in the hallway. He was where he belonged, in bed with her sister.
Ina retreated into her damp, drafty little bedroom and, once again, wished she’d packed her flannel pj’s. With a sigh, she bent down and switched off the space heater. She turned down her bedcovers. She was about to take off her robe, but hesitated. She heard a noise outside, and suddenly stopped moving.
She listened to what sounded like footsteps. A hand over her heart, she crept to one of the dormer windows and looked down. Ina gasped.
Just below her, a dark figure darted between some bushes.
Reeling back from the window, she turned and raced down the hall. “Mark!” she called, but the word barely came out. She couldn’t get a breath. Ina burst into their bedroom. “There’s someone outside!” she whispered.
Mark and Jenna were sitting up in bed. “Are you sure?” he asked, putting his book aside.
She nodded urgently. “I saw someone—something—in the bushes right below my window.”
“Someone or something?” he asked.
Flustered, Ina gave a helpless shrug. “I—I’m not sure—”
“It was probably just a bear,” Jenna said, a copy of Vanity Fair in her hands. She was wearing her glasses and one of Mark’s T-shirts. “They come around all the time looking for food scraps in the garbage. They’re harmless.”
Ina hated the way her sister was talking to her as if she were a scared little girl. “Well, whatever it is,” she replied, still shaking, “this thing is right below my window, and it scared the shit out of me. What, do you expect me to go back in there and just fall asleep now? It looked like a person, Jenna.”
“I better check it out,” Mark grumbled, getting to his feet. “Could be our uninvited houseguest is back.”
Biting her lip, Ina watched him throw a robe over his T-shirt and boxer shorts. Mark was balding and a bit out of shape, but he still had a certain masculine sexiness. He slipped his bare feet into a pair of slippers. The uninvited houseguest was another reason she didn’t like this damn cabin.
When they’d arrived there earlier tonight, Mark and Jenna had noticed several things out of place. Someone had tracked mud onto the kitchen and living room floors. A few empty beer bottles, some cigarette butts, and a crumpled-up potato chip bag littered the pathway from the front porch to the lake. The intruder had even built a fire in the fireplace. Jenna wondered out loud if their daughter, Amelia, had stayed there on the sly with her boyfriend. But Mark, trusting soul that he was, insisted Amelia hadn’t touched a drop in weeks, and neither had Shane. Both were nonsmokers, too. So the empty beer bottles and cigarette butts couldn’t have been theirs.
Rolling her eyes, Jenna said he shouldn’t believe everything Amelia told him. Their daughter had a good heart, but she wasn’t exactly reliable—or honest. That was why Amelia was seeing a therapist once a week, to the tune of eighty bucks a pop.
Ina had tagged behind Jenna and Mark. They’d continued to bicker while searching the house for further signs of this uninvited guest. “Well, whoever was here, they’re long gone,” Mark had said, at last. He’d assured Ina that the culprit probably wouldn’t be back. “If it’ll make you feel any better, I keep a hunting rifle in the bedroom closet. We’ll be okay.”
Now, Ina watched him reach into the closet for that rifle. Cocking the handle, he checked the chamber to make sure it was loaded.
“Better bag this prowler on the first shot, Mark,” Jenna said, still sitting up in bed. She tossed her sister a droll look, then went back to her Vanity Fair. “The great white hunter only keeps one bullet in that stupid gun. The rest are in the kitchen drawer downstairs. He hasn’t fired that thing since—”
“Oh, would you just give it a rest?” Mark hissed. “Can’t you see she’s scared?”
“All I see is a lot of drama,” Jenna remarked, eyes on her magazine.
Mark ignored her, then brushed past Ina and started down the hall.
Frowning at her older sister, Ina lingered in the bedroom doorway for a moment. Finally, she retreated down the corridor and caught up with Mark on the stairs.
Like a soldier going into a sniper zone, Mark held the rifle in front of him, barrel end up. He paused near the bottom step. Ina hovered behind him. She was trembling. She looked at the front door and then the darkened living room. Logs still smouldered in the fireplace, their red embers glowing. The cushy old rocking chair beside the hearth was perfectly still. Ina didn’t see any sign of a break-in. Nothing was disturbed.
Mark crept to the front door and twisted the handle. “Locked,” he said.
Ina put her hand on his shoulder and sighed with relief.
He squinted at her. “Did you really see something outside?”
Ina scowled at him. “Of course. Why would I make that up?”
“All right, all right, take it easy,” he murmured.
Heading toward the kitchen, Mark stopped to switch on a lamp. Ina stayed on his heels. He checked the kitchen door. “We’re okay here, too,” he announced. Then he unlocked the door and opened it. “Stay put. I’ll look outside.”
“No, don’t leave me here alone!” she whispered.
“Relax. I’ll be two minutes at the most. Lock up after me if you’re so nervous.” He ducked outside.
Shivering, Ina stayed at the threshold for a moment, then she closed and locked the door. What was she supposed to do if he didn’t come back? She imagined hearing that gun go off, and then nothing. She couldn’t call the police; she couldn’t call anyone, because they had no phone service in this goddamn place.
Ina gazed out the kitchen window. She didn’t see Mark, and didn’t hear anything outside. The refrigerator hummed. It was an old thing from the sixties. The avocado color matched the stove. Gingerbread trim adorned the pantry shelves. The framed “Food Is Cooked With Butter and Love” sign—along with the worn, yellow dinette set—had been in Ina and Jenna’s kitchen when they were growing up. But these familiar things gave her no comfort right now.
And it wasn’t much help knowing Jenna was upstairs—if she should need her. What could Jenna do?
Her sister was being a real pill tonight. Maybe Jenna knew what had happened between Mark and her. Had Mark said something? This was their first weekend together since she and Mark had “slipped.” That was how Mark described it, like they’d had an accident, a little catastrophe. “It was a mistake. It never should have happened. It never would have happened if we weren’t going through this awful time right now. We just—slipped, Ina.”
It had been a rough summer. Mark and Jenna’s 17-year-old son, Collin, had drowned in May, and his
