Following my nose, I found our housekeeper humming a familiar melody as she drizzled icing over rows of cookies on a cooling rack.
“That smells like delicious contraband, Marjorie.”
I grabbed one of the cookies and took a big bite.Moaning in contentment, I savored the buttery rich sugar on my tongue.
“If your father asks, this is a healthy, well-balanced meal.”
“How do you figure?”
“Oatmeal is high in fiber and good for heart health.There’s enough raisins for several servings of fruit.And cinnamon has been proven to lower blood sugar levels.”She ticked off each point on her flour-dusted fingers.“All very healthy and balanced.”
I nodded sagely at her logic.
“I’m sure Papa will agree.”I popped the last bite into my mouth and grabbed another cookie off the rack.“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Marjorie.You’re a lifesaver.”
Marjorie had worked for our family since before I was born.After my mother’s death, she was the closest thing I had to a maternal figure.She was as much family as if she were my real grandmother.
I walked into my room and grimaced at the mountain of clothes still piled on my bed.On the floor beside it, my half-packed suitcase taunted me.This was going to be my first time living away from home, and part of me wanted to take everything.
Fishing out my bikini, I tossed it back onto the pile.Wouldn’t need it.The beaches in Huntington Harbor were covered in hard pebbles with frigid cold waters.Not a lot of sunbathing in my future.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
I froze, my hand still outstretched toward the clothing pile.
Slowly, I turned and looked out my bedroom window.The lake below.The tall pine trees surrounding it.I scanned the tree line, the shoreline, the shadows between the pines.
Something was watching me.
Not just watching.Hunting.
The feeling was primal.Animal.Like prey sensing a predator hidden in the brush.My heart beat faster, my breathing shallow.Every nerve ending sparked with the urge to run, hide, make myself small.
But run from what?Hide from what?
The day was calm and windless, the surface of the lake smooth as a mirror.Nothing moved in the forests.No birds startled from the trees.No deer emerged from the underbrush.The silence felt intentional.Heavy.Like the woods themselves were holding their breath.
In the distance, mountain peaks wore white snow tops that wouldn’t melt until late summer.The view was the same one I’d looked at my entire life.
So why did it suddenly feel like something was looking back?
I shook my head.The hotel had one-way windows.My room was too high up for anything to be visible from ground level.I was being ridiculous.Paranoid.Too much time spent watching true crime documentaries with Sophie.
I forced myself to turn away from the window.
But the feeling didn’t fade.It clung to my skin like a static charge, like the air before a storm.That prickling awareness that something had changed.That something was coming.
Despite the sinking sensation in my belly, there was no way anybody out there could see into my room.
No way at all.
2
LENA
I woke up with the strangest feeling that I’d been watched all night.
The morning light streaming through my bedroom windows should have been reassuring.The familiar view of the lake, the pine forests, the snow-capped mountains in the distance.Everything exactly as it had always been.
