clothes, without turning lights off, without stopping to think. I shoved the cover from the detector into my pocket, and we rushed outside.
The night felt different now. Darker. The trees around the house seemed to press in closer, and the silence no longer felt peaceful. As we left, I looked back once and thought I saw movement inside, a shift in the shadows, though I never looked long enough to be sure. We got into the car and drove off as fast as we could.
Neither of us
said much until we reached the main road. Only then did Mara ask the question that had already taken hold of both of us: had someone been watching us?
We kept driving until we found a diner in another town and stopped there under the buzzing light of its old sign. Inside, I opened my laptop and logged into Airbnb, my
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