Their house simmered. When she got back, Sam ate the leftovers in the fridge, and then Elena, after work, berated her about the dirty dishes. Their mother that evening was agitated, calling out about discomfort. She made noises for them from down the hall. Elena gripped the sides of the sink and said to Sam, “Can you take care of it?” The for once? wasn’t said but was implied. Elena wanted to be left alone in the kitchen to fantasize about her bear lover. Sam slammed her chair against the edge of the table when she stood. Once she got to the bedroom, she found her mother had pushed her blanket back and was complaining about dizziness. Her mother said her chest hurt. She wanted to call the doctor. Sam had to promise her they would. It took Sam a long time to settle her mother, smooth the bedding over her swollen legs and abdomen, find a good television show, turn up the oxygen, and assure her that everything would be all right.

By the time Sam got back to the kitchen, the lights were out. Elena wasn’t in the living room. Sam turned uselessly around the house looking for her sister before being forced to give her a call. Elena picked up after one ring: “I’m taking a walk.”

Sam’s jaw tightened. “Where?”

“Outside.”

“Are you…” Sam didn’t know how to put it. The bear, the bear. “Do you expect to see something out there? Or…”

Elena laughed, a short blast of breath. “Sammy. Chill out. I’m walking, that’s all. I’ll be back soon.”

Sam hung up. Thought of calling back—should she ask to join? Sam would love to tell Elena about Ben. And if the bear came, Sam could protect her…She remembered, then, that she had nothing to protect her sister with. She was sprayless, empty-handed. Sam hated being in this house but had no options outside it. She wiped the kitchen counters and went to her room to lie down.

Elena must’ve returned after Sam fell asleep. Sam, who had to leave for work the next morning while it was still dark, looked behind the curtain in the living room before she went. Her sister lay at peace. During Sam’s shift, Elena texted a few times: their mother was still worked up; Elena had left a message for the doctor; their mother had vomited; her breathing didn’t sound good. Sam tucked her phone under the register. It went silent between islands, then buzzed when they were coming into port.

Sam’s shoulders hurt. Her muscles were sore from tension. Rich ladies who had this kind of ache, she knew, got hour-long massages, but Sam only climbed into her car after her shift ended and drove home.

She let herself into a quiet house. Checking the bedroom, she saw her mother was sleeping. Sam perched on the side of the bed, careful not to rock her, and watched. The skin under her mother’s eyes was dark. A bruise. Her face was thin. She was the bedrock of Sam’s small world.

When Sam and Elena were children, their mother used to take them on temperate evenings to play by the fairgrounds. She sat at a picnic table while they occupied themselves on the swings. She wore sunglasses. She could’ve been their big sister. If they asked, she’d push them, her hands firm and flat against their backs. She made them more powerful every time she touched them. They soared up, away from the wood chips on the ground, toward the wide sky and the lowering circle of the sun.

The room smelled stale and sour. They should leave the door open to let it air out.

Their doorbell rang. Sam started, making the mattress move, so her mother was jostled but did not, thank God, wake up. Sam stood and hurried to the front. Someone was knocking.

She opened the door to, of all people, Madeline Pettit, in her work clothes and without a single flyaway hair. “Sam,” Madeline said. “Glad I caught you. I called today but didn’t hear back.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “Today was busy—I—” There was no explanation. She hadn’t anticipated ever seeing Madeline in person again. Madeline’s arrival didn’t mean Sam was breaking her promise to Elena, did it? “Did we make plans or—?”

“No. I had to be in San Juan to meet with a few folks and thought it might be a good opportunity to bring you this.” Madeline swung her bag forward, pulled out a plastic-wrapped canister, and presented it to Sam. A red cap. Bear spray.

“Oh,” Sam said again. Out on the road, a car passed. Dumb, Sam added, “They’re expensive.”

Madeline’s cool expression didn’t shift. “We have them at the office. After we emailed, I figured I would bring one your way.”

Sam took the canister in both hands. Its plastic was slick under her fingers. Having spent the last day heated with anger, she couldn’t quite arrange herself into someone who could make sense of this gift—she still felt warm and frustrated, but those feelings had no clear direction now. “Thanks.”

Madeline shrugged. “The spray can be comforting simply to carry. While the bear doesn’t pose a threat, I can understand why you and your neighbors might have concerns about his presence. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but he was spotted over the weekend on the northwest coast. It’s possible that he’s swum on by now.”

“Right,” Sam said. “No, I didn’t know that. Great.” She and Elena had walked up to it in the woods on Friday—could it be gone that easily? She stared at the can so Madeline couldn’t read her face. “Thanks again.”

“Not a problem. Have you or your sister had any more sightings?”

Sam didn’t hesitate. “No.”

“Good,” Madeline said. There was nothing more to say, but Madeline kept standing there. After a long moment, she spoke again: “I’ve been thinking about your message. The idea of the bear approaching you. That would be very unusual. An escalation in nuisance behavior, which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.”

The swirl in Sam’s body continued. “Uh-huh.”

“It could happen, though, if someone has been luring him, either unintentionally or not. Bears used to humans lose their usual wariness. Have you heard of anyone doing such a thing?”

Sam shook her head. “No.” She couldn’t look up.

Madeline paused. Sam could hear, in that silence, a wish that Sam would rush into talk. Confess. She wasn’t going to. Finally, Madeline said, “Glad to hear it. Doing so can not only be dangerous for the animal, but also result in legal consequences for the people involved.”

The plastic wrapping the canister was marked with a dotted line, showing where to peel it open. Madeline’s boots stood firm on the front walk. Her laces were crusted with dried mud. Inside Sam, the truth—the animal, her sister, their meeting, the risk—hummed. “Cool,” Sam said. “Okay, well, thank you again, Madeline, we appreciate it. Have a good day.” She backed up and shut the door.

For the next four hours, Sam sat on the sofa in the living room, completed quizzes, and sweated. What did Madeline suspect? What had she heard? Elena’s walk to and from work took her along the edges of dozens of private properties. Had someone seen Elena on the trail dropping breadcrumbs and calling for the bear to come near?

Madeline had made her words sound like a threat. “Legal consequences.” But she had coupled those words with a gift…Sam couldn’t sort it out. She reached the end of one survey and began another. She was getting close again to the website’s threshold for cashing out. Her mother made a sound from the back room, and Sam went to check.

At last the time crept toward six o’clock, when Elena would be near. Sam couldn’t wait any longer. She put her sneakers on, tucked the can of bear spray into her back pocket, and headed out the door. The sun was getting lower in the sky but the road was still warm from the day’s heat. Sam stared down the pavement, praying for Elena to appear.

And then: there she was. Elena coming dreamily around the corner. Her polo, neat on her shoulders, exposed her long, thin arms. Her bag hung over one side. Raising a hand, Sam called, “El!” Her sister came to attention and waved.

Sam hurried to meet her. She was already past the Larsens’ property. She wanted to tell Elena about Madeline’s visit, the free can, the warning given. That their mother was having another bad day. How much oxygen she’d needed to use. Together, they’d walk to the house, where Elena would make them pasta for dinner. Birds called from the treetops along the road. Elena drifted to the pavement’s edge, and Sam saw, in the space her sister had vacated, a gliding movement in the woods.

Sam froze. Elena kept walking. Whatever was behind her stopped—had Sam…?—she stared. No. No, there it was, moving again. Alive.

Only a couple hundred feet behind Elena, and coming steadily forward. Flashes of brown behind lines of bark. Sam should not shout, it could be too dangerous, but she had to warn her sister. She held up both hands, fingers spread, to give warning. She pointed. Jabbed into the air. They might be too far from each other for Elena to read Sam’s lips, but Sam mouthed the word anyway. Breathed it: Bear.

Elena nodded. She didn’t change her pace.

Sam’s adrenaline was spiking. The muscles in her thighs seized. Out in the forest on Friday, when she and Elena met it, Sam had only barely been kept in place by shock and her sister’s surety and the overwhelming dread of being attacked if she faced away, but now, here, knowing what she needed to do was actually march toward it, she was paralyzed. She couldn’t. For a moment, in the woods, there was nothing, and then—there it was again. Its body appeared and vanished. It was walking the fine line between their human existence and monstrosity. She didn’t know how quickly it could move.

She had to help Elena. She had to. She tried to talk but her vocal cords were locked. Finally, she got some sound out—shouted. “Hurry.”

Elena was getting close. Amusement played over her face. “It’s all right,” she called to Sam.

Elena was calling backwards, too, Sam knew. Using this easygoing voice to calm them all.

The bear’s full body wasn’t yet visible, but Sam knew it anyway, knew it too well. How massive it was. Its claws and teeth—its appetites.

Elena continued her easy talk. “Our friend followed me home. I gave him some leftover roast beef from the club and he couldn’t get enough, I guess.” As near as she was, Sam could see the shine in Elena’s eyes, a glow like a girl bewitched. Elena had walked two miles home with this predator at her back, and she was speaking as though behind her was nothing more vicious than a pine squirrel. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t right. Sam had pushed away Madeline’s questions in favor of Elena’s good judgment…

And then, mercifully, Sam remembered: the spray. The idea of it allowed her body to loosen. She pulled it from her back pocket, a cold can, and fumbled with the top. They had seconds, maybe, only, if the bear started to run. Elena was saying something else—what—but Sam wasn’t listening. She worked against the clip-on top. She couldn’t figure it out. The trigger pulled.

The hiss. The cloud. A burst under her finger, a line in the sky.