“Goodnight, Tin.”
She paused halfway up, looked over her shoulder. “Don’t call me that.”
“I’ll try to remember not to,” I said, and her lips twitched before she disappeared down the hall.
I stayed up another hour, pacing between the windows, listening to the wind claw at the siding. Finally, I turned off the last light and went upstairs.
Her door was closed. I undressed and stood by the window in my room, watching the yard fade to white. The storm had teeth now. It would keep building through the night.
I told myself I was just checking the weather. That was the excuse I always used when I couldn’t sleep.
Around 2:00 a.m., the house was silent. The kind of silence that feels wrong. I had just started to drift when a faint flicker caught my eye. The motion sensor light at the far end of the barn blinked once. Not long enough to be a wind or a stray cat. Just a flash, then darkness again.
I sat up and waited. Nothing.
Another flash, weaker this time, and gone.
I slid out of bed and grabbed my jeans and Henley. The floorboards creaked under my feet, too loud in the quiet house. I stopped at Kristin’s door. I could hear her breathing, slow and steady. She was asleep. I wanted to keep it that way.
Outside, the cold hit like a wall. The snow had piled up against the porch steps, powder blowing sideways across the yard. I stayed in the shadows, moving slowly. The light on the barn didn’t come on again, but the feeling that someone was out there clung to me.
I scanned the yard. Nothing moved. The fence line was just a pale smudge against the darkness. I kept my hand near the pistol tucked in the waistband of my jeans, not because I thought I would need it, but because I always did when something felt wrong.
When I reached the barn, I stood still and listened. The horses were quiet, shifting in their stalls, the occasional snort cutting through the wind. I checked the doors, the latches, the windows. All locked. The snow was unbroken except for my own footprints.
Still, I could not shake it. The same prickling along the back of my neck that had kept me alive more than once before.
I stayed out there for twenty minutes, scanning the dark, until the cold bit through my gloves. Finally, I went back to the house. The porch light flickered when I passed under it. Probably nothing. Probably the storm.
Inside, I locked the door and stood for a long time in the dark hallway, waiting for the feeling to fade. It didn’t.
Upstairs, I checked on her again. The door was still closed; there was no light under it. I leaned my forehead against the wood for a second and let out a breath I’d been holding. She didn’t need to know about the light. Not tonight.
I went back to my room, peeled off the shirt, and sat on the edge of the bed. Outside, the snow continued to fall, steady and relentless. Somewhere in that white noise, I thought I heard something else. A faint hum, like an engine idling far away. It faded before I could be sure.
I told myself I was imagining it, I told myself it was because I was tired.
Sleep came in fits. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the flash of that light.
When morning came, the world was buried under a clean white blanket. The sky was pale, the air sharp. From the window, everything looked untouched. Peaceful, even. If I had not been awake half the night, I would have believed it.
Kristin was already downstairs when I walked into the kitchen. She had made coffee and was standing by the counter in one of my old shirts, her hair still damp from the shower. She smiled faintly when she saw me.
“Morning.”
“Morning.” I poured myself a cup and tried to ignore how easy that looked, how normal.
“Did you get some sleep?” she asked.
“A little.”
She tilted her head, studying me. “You look like hell.”
“Feels accurate.”
“Need to talk about something?”
“Just a bad night,” I said.
