2010
“What animal sound is that, Mommy?” Rainie asks. She’s cuddling with me on the big hammock on our deck, both of us slathered with mosquito repellent. The night is about as black as a night can get and the sound is haunting in the darkness. I feel a tremor run through Rainie’s little body. But I can differentiate the sounds of the forest, now, having searched the internet for them, sharing them with Rainie. The different owls. The deer. The foxes with their multiple calls. None of them spell danger—at least not for us humans.
“That’s one of the owls,” I say. “Do you remember which one?”
“Umm,” she says, “the barber owl!” She thinks she’s being funny.
“You’re close.” I give her a squeeze.
“The barred one?” she tries.
“Bingo!” I say. “I think he’s calling for his friend to come hang out with him.”
“Really?”
“That’s what I imagine.”
It’s so lovely on this wooded lot at night, I tell myself. I’m once again consciously trying to like Shadow Ridge. I’m trying to block the creepiness of the woods from my mind and put aside thoughts of the redbud tree covered with dead squirrels. I had to pay a guy two hundred dollars to clean up that mess. My father offered, but I refused to let him take on that job.
“Isn’t it beautiful here?” I ask Rainie as I rub her back.
“It’s sooo beautiful,” she agrees, cuddling closer to me on the hammock. Above us we can see only trees, the leaves blackened by night, and beyond them a few dots of starlight.
I finally found a fencing company willing to work on my property. Anton, the young blond owner of the company, who looked like he just stepped off his surfboard, walked the proposed fence line with me and he didn’t bat an eye when we got to the brush between the path and the lake. “Oh, we do this kind of thing practically every day,” he said, and I felt like hugging him. The composite fence in the front yard will be a contemporary geometric pattern that will look great with the house. Back in the woods, out of sight from the street, it will be black chain link. They’ll start clearing the brush and digging the holes for the posts tomorrow and I can’t wait.
Rainie is asleep when I notice a distant light through the trees. It doesn’t seem high enough to be a plane, but it must be. The height must be some sort of illusion. I leave Rainie in the hammock and cross the deck to the start of the trail. I take a few steps onto the path to get a little closer to the light. Then I freeze. It must be coming from the tree house! That’s the only possibility. Oh, God. Could it be the redheaded woman? I race back to the deck, lift Rainie from the hammock, and rush into the house, locking the door behind me.
Then I call Samantha Johns.