There, at the table, Elena explained. She had gotten home from work and gone to shower. Under the rush of the water, she’d heard, from outside, a thump. Then another. It sounded like something hitting against the front wall, Elena said. Like a branch falling. Something solid.

As Elena stepped out, in her towel, she kept listening, and it happened again, that sound of contact. She went into the living room and saw, through the front window, the enormous furred body of an animal. A brown bear moving against the house.

Sam was full of dread. “Moving how?”

“He had his back against the corner”—Elena straightened in her seat, pulled her shoulders back—“And was rubbing against it. He would go like—” She wiggled side to side, shaking her head in the air, imitating. “Back and forth, up and down. Making a rhythm.”

“What the hell,” Sam said. She couldn’t think of anything else cogent. Elena’s miming put Sam in mind of a million competing foolish images: a cartoon creature in a Disney movie scratching itself on a tree, a snake moving across sand, a dog humping a leg, two pieces of wood rubbed together to make fire.

“It was wild,” Elena said. “I was at the window and he was right there, maybe—ten feet away? Just on the other side of the glass.”

Sam didn’t understand how her sister had moved toward the window. She wanted to go look at the living room, to retrace Elena’s steps into that corner in order to make the walk seem somehow reasonable, but she was scared to move that way, scared even to stand. The bear had been at the house less than an hour before. It might still be on their property, watching. “You were right at the window?” she asked.

Elena nodded with—was that delight?

Elena’s elation was more than confusing. It was distressing. It made Sam doubt her sister’s judgment, which she never had before. This glow on Elena’s face. This smile. Sam said, “Why?”

The muscles around Elena’s eyes contracted. A wince or a squint. “Why?”

“Weren’t you terrified?”

“Oh my god. Of course I was,” Elena said. And the relief—Sam was rocked by it—of course Elena was terrified. Elena knew how dangerous this was, an animal pressed to the side of their home. Elena was amazed by its novelty, yes, but she wasn’t kept by that amazement from the truth.

Sam’s palms were slick from minute-old sweat. She wiped them against her thighs. This was supposed to be her day off, but instead she’d been worn down for hours by routines, old pains, and then surprises and new adrenaline, and she was exhausted by it all, her body was collapsing. Her brain wasn’t working anymore. “I don’t understand why it keeps coming here.”

“He’s only come a couple times.”

“That’s a lot. Is it not a lot?” Sam didn’t mention the shit outside, the scratches.

“No,” Elena said, “it is. You’re right.” She paused. “I don’t know.”

“If we had…a bird feeder or something out there for it to eat, I’d understand, but…”

“I mean, we don’t know what attracts him,” Elena said. “We’re not bear experts.”

“Did you talk to that woman today?”

Elena frowned at her. “What woman?”

“The bear expert.” Elena looked blank, and Sam said, “She called maybe around three? And was going to call you?”

“Who is this?”

“Sorry,” Sam said. She wasn’t yet thinking straight. A pane of glass separating them from the creature was not enough. Its presence outside made being in this house, which Sam knew so well as a plain, steady thing, seem unpredictable. She shut her eyes, took a breath, started over: “One of the state wildlife people called. She was asking questions about the bear and she wanted to set up a time to stop by. I told her to talk to you.”

Elena was scrolling on her phone. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I see.”

“You didn’t talk to her?”

“I was at work.”

“I know,” Sam said. “Sorry. Just freaking out.”

Elena put the phone down. Reached to take one of Sam’s hands, pull it over the table, cup it. “Don’t. We’re okay.”

“But why is it coming here?”

Elena’s fingers were cool and dry and strong. Her eyebrows, dark blond lines, were knit, and Sam could see at once the girl she’d been, the kid who’d led them through the forest, and the older woman she would grow to be. Elena repeated, “We’re okay.”

They sat like that. The house settled around them. Water through pipes, wind against walls, the little shifts of a building standing though it was not built to last. Elena held Sam. They listened.

“You’re worried about Mom,” Elena said.

“I guess.”

“You are.” Elena squeezed. “I get it.”

The television in the back of the house had shut off sometime during their conversation. Their mother must be sleeping by now. Sam said, “We’ve been waiting so long for things to get better.”

“I know.”

“And they keep getting worse and worse.”

“We’re going to get through this,” Elena said. “We always do.” Her voice was firm. She released Sam’s hand. “Want tea?”

When Sam nodded, Elena went to the cupboard to get out the bags of powdery chamomile. She filled two mugs with tap water and put them in the microwave. Her back was to the table. From behind, in her after-work clothes and her high bun, she looked like she was eighteen again, standing at their kitchen counter to wait for the beep that meant dinner was ready. In moments like this, Sam could almost let the last eleven years go.

“Thanks,” Sam said when Elena brought over her steaming mug.

Elena returned to the microwave to fetch her own. Over her shoulder, she said, “Some things are getting better already.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She came back to the table with two spoons and a container of honey.

Sam wasn’t sure. “Like what?”

Elena shrugged. Gestured toward the living room, the corner of the house rubbed by a bear, the night outside. The world. And Sam imagined, then, what might be coming: a raise for Elena at the club; a reliable schedule for Sam made up of only afternoon shifts; a prospective buyer reaching out about the property. There were, she supposed, always chances for hope. She took her mug by its handle and smiled at her sister.

Elena smiled back. “I promise,” she said. “You’ll see.”

They sipped their teas. The drink was too hot in Sam’s mouth, but she drew it in anyway, let it go down. Her fingertips burned on the sides of the mug. Her sister, across the table, was still smiling, a little. Lips closed in a curve over her overlapping canine. The corners of her eyes were crinkled. She was happy.

When they were girls, after school let out, Sam and Elena used to wander the single mile down to Jackson Beach. They’d climb over log after log, each as high as their shins and as white as a bone, to the line where the shore met the water. In that place, they’d find tide pools. Bright green anemones, miniature crabs, sucker fish hidden under stones.

They had never had enough money, Sam knew, and had never really had any friends, and eventually, under the pressure of their mother’s boyfriend, had been treated badly, used, but the two of them always found their own reasons to go on. They had the versions of paradise they made. Places that were tiny, salt-smelling, barely visible to anyone else. Places that were, and would be, their own.

Elena turned the honey over. “Do you think bears actually like this?”

“Let’s not find out.”

The container rotated in Elena’s fingers. The honey shifted, molten gold. Elena’s face, regarding it, was lit soft yellow. The kitchen lights shone white overhead.

“Are you going to call that woman back?” Sam asked.

“Who?”

“The expert,” Sam said. “From the state.”

Elena put the honey down. “Let’s see.”

“She wanted to come by tomorrow.”

“I’m working tomorrow.”

“I know,” Sam said. “But after my shift. I could meet her.”

Elena stood to rinse her tea out in the sink. “I don’t know what there is to meet about, anyway.”

The grizzly bear pressing itself to our house, Sam wanted to scream—the threat of mauling. Instead she got up and handed Elena her empty mug. “Maybe give her a call,” Sam said.

From her bedroom, after, Sam could hear the clanging of dishes, the nighttime noise of Elena washing up. Her phone showed three texts from Ben. Silly jokes and jabs. She didn’t feel like reading them. Instead she lay on her back and tapped through a survey. It asked her how often she wore perfume: never, not often, sometimes, often, always. She picked always. It broke up the monotony to pretend she was living a different life. Then she navigated over to the website for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and scanned their employee directory. There she was: Madeline Pettit. An email address.

Sam did trust Elena. Completely—with everything from their finances to their future. She was only looking this up because she knew her sister, her history, her quirks, and so knew that Elena would never contact the state for help, and knew, beyond that, that at this moment they ought to.

So Sam sent an email. Hi Madeline, my name is Sam Arthur. You called asking about coming to our house on Portland Fair Road on San Juan. I’ll be home at 1pm tomorrow and can meet you then. Elena wouldn’t be home until six. That would give them the time to wrap everything up. Looking forward, Sam tapped out on the screen, and Thanks.