Safe sleeping space
Water
Light
Food
Bedding
There.
That already felt better.
Lists made things manageable. Lists gave shape to panic. Lists turned too much into the next thing and the thing after that. She had learned that early, watching her mother throw belongings into suitcases whenever they had to leave somewhere in a hurry. If you could list what mattered, you would leave less behind when you moved on.
And moving was always the point. Look for the next thing. Never stagnate.
The upstairs, Spencer had said, was better than it had any right to be.
So she would start there.
She trudged back to the car and popped the trunk. In the time it had taken her to have that small breakdown, night had started to draw in. The sky had shifted from sunset gold to that deep blue just before true darkness, and the air had turned sharp against her exposed skin, that particular mountain chill that sneaks up on you even after a warm day.
She gathered what she needed first: her overnight bag, a flashlight, a camping stove, the cooler she had packed for the drive, and the carrier bag with bottled water, fruit, crackers, and the emergency supplies she kept in her car more out of habit than planning.
It took three trips.
By the third, the light had thinned to almost nothing, and the woods around Pine Cottage seemed to press closer. Not threatening exactly. Just there. Full of things she could not see. The silence was never really silent, she realized. It held layers. Wind moving high in the pines. Something rustling in the undergrowth. The far-off call of a bird she could not name.
She locked the car on instinct and stood for a second with her bag hanging from one shoulder and the cooler knocking against her leg.
Then she laughed once under her breath, shaky and tired.
What was she even doing?
“Surviving one night,” she muttered, and hauled everything inside.
She climbed the stairs carefully, testing each step exactly as Spencer had. The wood felt solid beneath her feet, the banister smooth under her palm despite the dust. At the top, she paused and let the beam of her flashlight sweep across the landing.
Two bedrooms. Bathroom. Faded wallpaper. Shadows in the corners. Stillness.
The larger bedroom had been Hilda’s, she was fairly sure.
The door creaked when she pushed it open. The iron bedframe stood against the wall, neatly made up beneath a yellowed dust sheet. A narrow wardrobe stood sentinel in one corner. A heavy wooden chest sat at the foot of the bed. Dust lay over everything in a patient, even layer.
“This’ll do,” Meryl murmured.
She set the flashlight on the windowsill, angling it up toward the ceiling so the room filled with a softer pool of light, and then she set about making the space usable.
She pulled the dust sheet back first, half expecting a musty smell to rise from the mattress. But there was nothing except the dry scent of old linen. The blanket underneath was faded, and the sheet had gone a little yellow with age, but they looked clean enough. Or clean-ish, at least. Better than she had expected.
Then she kneeled at the chest at the foot of the bed and lifted the lid.
Inside were old blankets, folded sheets, and a quilt.
Meryl lifted the quilt out carefully and shook it open. The quilt itself was intact, faded blue and green squares stitched together in neat, even lines. Not fancy, but beautiful in a practical kind of way. Made to last.
As she spread it over the bed, her fingers caught on something sewn into one corner. A small tag. Hand-stitched initials.
