God, how hard they fell! They loved the same movies, the same sports, the same books. Their lovemaking had been out of this world. Hillary still got a tiny little shiver just thinking about those days. She’d had a little loft apartment above a coffee shop, and on weekends, they’d lie in her bed all day, making love, taking little breaks to run downstairs for coffee and pastries. It had been a perfect existence, a perfect love.
After a couple of years of dating, they’d married, and the twins had come along eighteen months after that. They’d been delighted with their babies, and so much in love, and Hillary had believed, truly believed, that it would always be like that. And it was. For years. Until Matthew lost his job.
“I am going to build a small fire where we have the sleeping bags and see if this main chimney is working,” Matthew announced, drawing Hillary back to the present. “I saw some wood down by the shed. I’ll be back in a few.”
Hillary decided it was getting a little chilly, and took a candle upstairs to close some of the windows. They had chosen the room at the end of the upstairs hall to use as a bedroom. It had windows on two walls and a fireplace with a carved stone mantle, which, Hillary had grudgingly admitted, was pretty cool.
As she moved down the hallway, a cold draft caught her flame and extinguished it. “Damn,” she muttered. There was still enough twilight filtering in that she could make her way. The light in the room at the end of the hall was better, and Hillary relit her candle before putting it aside. She closed the windows on the east side, then those on the west side. When she turned back to the room, something caught her eye, and Hillary’s heart plummeted to her toes with fright. Someone, a woman, a face, was staring at her through the window. Her hair was wet and hung well past her shoulders.
Hillary’s heart was beating wildly; she whirled around, thinking it was a reflection, that there was a woman standing behind her, not at the window, but there was no one there. And when she jerked around again to the window, the woman, the face, was gone. Hillary rushed to the window and opened it, leaning onto the sill to look out. There was nothing there. There couldn’t possibly be anything or anyone there, for it was straight drop to the ground, and there was nothing on which the woman could have been standing.
Impossible! She slammed the window shut and fell back from it. She tried to make sense of it—it had to have been a shadow, some trick of light. Yet she had seen a face as clearly as if the woman had walked up to her and shook her hand.
“Hillary?”
The sound of Matthew’s voice below was a welcome relief. “Up here!” she shouted, and hugged herself tightly, trying to rid herself of that awful strange feeling.
“Why are you in the dark?” Matthew asked a few moments later as he walked into the room with an armful of wood.
She hadn’t even noticed the candle had gone out again. “A draft, I guess.” She was shaking, she realized.
Matthew noticed it, too. “Cold? Well, I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said. “The heat is on, which means…hot water.”
“Great,” she said, and risked another look at the window. Nothing. Her imagination, that was the culprit.
As for the bath, it took some doing, with the pipes groaning and shuddering, but after a couple of blasts of junk, hot water flowed out of the pipes and into an ancient claw-footed tub.
Matthew lit the bathroom with a dozen candles.
“This is great!” Hillary exclaimed, truly delighted. She looked at her husband and felt a sudden rush of longing. “The tub looks big enough for two…want to join me?”
“Ah…you go ahead. I need to make sure we’re locked up.” He smiled a little absently and went out. Deflated, Hillary undressed and sank into the warmth of the bath. In fact, she didn’t come out until Matthew assured her he’d made a suitable pallet on which they could sleep.
The jet lag had caught up to both of them. Hillary found the bag surprisingly bearable, and as she drifted into welcome sleep, she thought she heard the faint sound of a woman crying. But the need for sleep was too great and pushed her under before she could think much more about it.
***
Hillary awoke from a dreamless, deep sleep the next morning to find Matthew’s bag empty. She sat up and looked around. Bright sunlight was streaming into the room, and in the morning light, the house looked entirely different. Warm. Almost inviting. She did not feel that weird, unsettled feeling she’d felt all day yesterday. She wandered downstairs and found Matthew sitting on the back steps, eating cold cereal.
“What time is it?” she asked sleepily.
“Ten,” Matthew said, and smiled up at her. “You were really sawing the Z’s, so I didn’t wake you. Cereal?”
“Please,” she said, and sat next to him. “This could be gorgeous,” she said, looking out at the vista before them. The grounds swept down to a narrow river. Mature trees rose up on either side of the grounds, enclosing the property.
“There’s an orchard of some sort down that road,” Matthew said, pointing to a two-track road that ran along the river. “I went for a run this morning and found it. I think they are apple trees.”