Fiona waved her finger through the gauzy column of steam rising from the teacup alongside her computer, breaking apart and swirling into separate coils. She considered trying to photograph the image, to capture it, to stop it in time. This was the part of photography that fascinated her: the stoppage of time, owning a particular moment. Forever. Leave composition and color to others, she thought of herself as an archivist.
She dragged a shot of the Berkholders’ vandalized refrigerator to her “best-of ” folder, admiring how it offered something new to the collection.
As she clicked the computer mouse, she heard a synchronous thud against the cottage’s outside wall. At first she allowed herself to believe it was the aspen tree on the southwest corner; the tree grew incredibly close to the wall, often banging against it when the wind blew.
But there’s no wind tonight, she thought.
And though the woods were full of such sounds-unexplainable creaks and cracks-she’d come to discern a difference between the sounds of nature and the sounds of animals in nature. The sound hadn’t resulted from a tree limb falling, or a pine tree splitting; it had sounded more like something slapping the cottage’s clapboard siding.
Bear! She spun in her chair, her elbow bumping the mug and sloshing some tea onto the table. She jumped up. Something-someone?-moved off quickly through the woods, snapping twigs and swooshing branches. She lunged forward, killing the interior lights and switching on the outside floods. The computer monitor cast a glow into the room as she raced to the wall and peered out a window. But too late. If there had been anything out there it was long gone, amid the harsh shadows knitting in the woods.
It can’t be!
A deer or elk antler making contact with the wall-that made sense. But the escape into the woods had sounded like something big and fast, which brought her back to a bear. The bear. Except that Walt had now convinced her that the destruction at the Berkholders’ had not been the work of a bear, but instead an itinerant who’d vandalized the place and had worked hard to make it look like the work of a bear.
It can’t be. Her chest was tight, her throat constricted. Heat flooded through her, immediately followed by a penetrating cold.
A man, out there creeping around her cottage.
Not possible.
She glanced to the front door and then threw herself across the room to the phone, stabbing the intercom button.
“Kira! Pick up! Pick up!”
“Yeah?” Kira said over the main residence’s speakerphone. A television played in the background.
“Lock the doors. Pull the blinds. And leave the phone on while you’re doing it.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just do it! Right now! There’s a… bear,” she said. “I think there was a bear outside my window just now.”
“No way!”
“Kira. Now!”
“Okay, okay.”
She heard the girl moving through the rooms, pulling drapes and dropping blinds. Then footfalls returned toward the phone.
“I don’t see how pulling blinds is going to make any difference to a bear,” Kira said.
“Are the doors locked?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“You sound so… freaked out.”
“Do I? Sorry. It just scared me, was all.”
It can’t be. Not again.
“I think it’s cool. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bear for real.”
“Do not go near the doors or windows.”
“Jeez… Chill.”
“You have the baseball bat?”
“P… le… ase,” Kira said, drawing the word out dramatically.
“I’m coming over. Get the bat and stand by the front door and get ready to unlock it for me.”
“What? Seriously? Why? You don’t need to do that, Fiona. I’m fine. I don’t need a babysitter.”
“I know you don’t,” Fiona said. She paused, looking near the front door for her running shoes. “But I think I do.”