Staying with Tom, Lana and their son for a few days is comfortable in their cabin, but there is something a little bit odd about the three of them. Lana seems to look at Granite a lot in a way that seems almost flirtatious. When I mentioned it to Granite, he didn’t seem to notice it. It was making me a little uncomfortable though. Their son, Pete was also a bit odd. He followed Granite and Tom around a lot while they were working, which was a normal thing for a small by to do. But he seemed more interested in learning from Granite as he watched the men work on the house, then he did from his own dad. It was almost as if Lana and Pete really didn’t fit into their own family.
“Why do you and your parents live up here in the woods?” I ask Pete when he comes to sit down beside me for a few minutes while the guys are up on the roof looking for leaks.
“Oh, it’s kind of a long story, but we’re just better up here in the mountains,” he answers in a rather vague and cryptic way. “Especially my mom.”
“Better?” I ask.
Before he says anything else, he gets up to run off and go play. I try to brush the strange feeling off, but I just can’t. So later that night as we are lying in bed, I mention it to Granite again.
“How much longer are we going to be staying here?” I ask him as his arms are wrapped around me and my head rests against his chest.
“A few more days, why?”
“I want to leave.”
“Is something wrong?” he asks.
I tilt my head up to look at him. “No, I just don’t like the weird vibe that I’m getting. I asked Pete why his family lived up here today and he didn’t really give me an answer.”
“Can’t blame the boy for that,” Granite says. “We’re strangers to him. Why would he give answers to strangers?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I say, not feeling very convinced.
“We’ve been through a lot,” he says. “I think you’re just worrying. It will be fine. Besides, we won’t be here much longer. I just have a few more things to help Tom with and then we’ll be able to borrow his tools and supplies to go get a start on our own home. Having those tools to use is going to make a huge difference for us.”
I don’t say anything else because I know that he is probably right. I’m probably overthinking things and just being too sensitive and paranoid after having been through all that ordeals that we had to deal with. In a few days, we would be back on our own and everything would be fine.
* * *
In the morning,I sit to chat with Lana while she is making tea. The guys are outside working on some sort of handcrafted plumbing thing, and Pete is out there with them.
“How did you sleep last night?” Lana asks as she hands me a cup of fresh herbal tea.
I am looking forward to being able to grow my own herbs and start my own garden. Lana was kind enough to give me a whole handful of various seeds to plant so that when the spring arrives, I should have some herbs and vegetables ready to go.
“Fine,” I answer politely.
She sits down beside me and sips her tea as she looks out the open door at the men working.
“If I was lying next to a body like his, I wouldn’t sleep at all,” she says.
“Excuse me?” I couldn’t believe that I just heard that. Was she joking? Even so, that was a rather rude and obnoxious thing to say, especially to someone that you barely know.
“Oh, sorry,” she giggled as she stood up from the table. “Sometimes my inside voice slips out, you know?”
No, I most certainly didnotknow. I would never dream of saying something like that to another woman’s man. My feelings for these people were getting more and more uneasy. I really did want to leave.
Finally, once Granite has finished all of the work he promised to help with, it is time for us to go. I don’t know how Granite felt about Tom, but it seems like even he realizes that it’s time to be leaving. Just as he has gathered all of the tools in his arms and we are heading out the door, Lana reaches forward and kisses Granite on the mouth. When she lets go of him, he looks too stunned about what has happened and too careful not to drop all the tools in his arms, to know what to say or do. Tom laughs and gives Granite a hefty pat on the back and then we leave without saying anything else.
“What the hell was that about?” I ask as soon as we are out of earshot.
“No idea,” he says as he shakes his head. “But I can see what you mean now; they are strange.”
“Maybe we should search for a place that is even farther away,” I suggest. I still can’t shake the feeling of these people. Something just isn’t sitting right with me.
“Nah, it’s fine,” Granite reassures me. “We’ll be far enough away not to even notice them. But still close enough to borrow Tom’s supplies when we need to.”
When we reach the area that Granite has selected, all of a sudden, I start to feel really sick. When I start to throw up, I begin to worry that there was something in that tea that I drank.
