Laura put her hands in her lap. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Was she sick long?”
“For years.” Because again, honesty was much easier.
Laura tucked her arms around herself. “That’s too bad.”
Natalie’s demeanor changed. “It’s terrible how some people suffer.”
Laura’s eyes were glistening with tears, and it seemed likely that this family understood what it was like to have a sick relative in pain.
Greer picked up on it too. “So, what brings you to the woods?”
“We live in the woods,” Natalie explained. “Well, now—“
“We don’t live in the woods; we’re camping here for the summer.” Nate roughed up his daughter’s hair in what he hoped would appear playful, but from the look on his face, it was more to get her to stop talking. Laura said nothing, just sat looking down at her food, pulling on each one of her fingers.
“Well, we’ve been here since February.” Natalie didn’t get the ‘don’t tell the company’ hint.
Laura’s body shook, and her eyes were brimming with tears. Whatever reason the family had for moving to the woods, it was personal and hard.
“It’s beautiful,” I added to break up the tension. “I wouldn’t mind living up here.”
Greer, who must have read the same pain as I did, played along with me. “See, I knew you would like it.”
Greer smiled at me and put his arm around me, and boy, he was good because if I didn’t know better, I’d say that from the way he looked at me, he had deep feelings for me. Lies, of course; we didn’t know each other and had barely spoken to one another, but it took my breath away regardless.
“Oh, yuck,” Natalie announced.
Dinner conversation turned into a basic blend of common polite topics like the summer heat and the price of food. When we were done, Nate took the conversation lead and focused on keeping things on a happy note, smiling and joking and telling stories the whole time about his travels and camping across the country. It was so… normal. So normally normal.
After a few hours of laughing at Nate’s stories, we were ready to leave.
“Can you help carry the dishes inside?” Laura asked.
Without thinking, just like I was back in my normal life and helping mom in the kitchen, I picked up a pile and followed her inside the tiny house and directly into what served as their living room, kitchen, dining room. The central room had two sets of ladders, both leading to small wooden doors. ‘Welcome to the Red Casa’was painted on the wall.
I put the dishes in the sink, and Laura ran hot water over them.
“Your place is very nice.”
Laura handed me a towel. “Why, thank you. You dry?”
I nodded, knowing I needed to get out of there sooner rather than later. She handed me a dish.
“You know you two are more than welcome to stay the night.”
“My parents will be so worried. We better not,” I said, and I placed the dish on the counter.
“So your parents are at camp?” She handed me another dish.
“Yeah. They wanted to get to know Christopher so…”
“You should still stay the night. You can see them in the morning.”
“No, we can’t.” As I said it, Greer and Nate came in the door.
“We need to get going,” Greer said.
“Sam said she wanted to stay the night.”
“No,” I said, “we really—“
“Good,” Nate interrupted me. “Christopher agrees. Right, buddy?”
Greer certainly did not. “No, her parents will worry.”
“Well, they can stay too. With our security system, it is far safer in here than out in the woods. Nat-Cat and I can go collect them,” Nate suggested.
“No,” I said, knowing perfectly well that they weren’t at camp. “They’ll be fine.”
“Good. Then the bathroom is through the curtain; our bedroom is up this ladder if you need anything.” Nate continued talking about the house and rules while she and Nate folded the couch down to a bed. I didn’t pay attention to him. Up the opposite ladder, the little door opened, and the missing Donna peered through it with the oddest facial expression. She was shaking her head and making a shooing motion with her hands. Multiple times, she pointed to the door like she was telling me to leave.
I decided we would as soon as the Diddles went to bed.
Eventually, Nate followed my eyes, “Donna, you all right up there?”
“Yeah, Dad. Good night.” She backed away from the door, and Natalie followed her up.
Nate locked the door.
“We’ll see you in the morning,” Laura said. “Nate will make breakfast. Night.”
As soon as they were up the stairs, Greer turned to me.
“What the hell! You’d think after the bird attack, you’d have more sense about the dangers.” Greer was very close to me, and he spoke barely above the sound of an inhale. “My God, you are too trusting. Even with the Libratiers protecting you, it’s a wonder you made it alive all those years. I can’t believe you came to this camp and said yes to sleeping here. What did you plan to do? Hitch a ride back to the Merrics with them?”
Trusting? I trusted no one. “Are you done? I did none of those things. Nate found me in the woods.”
“What were you even doing in the woods? Why’d you leave camp?”
I wasn’t about to say chasing shadows, so I went back to my story. “He found me in the woods, and I didn’t know what to do. He had a knife, and I didn’t want to make him suspicious.
“I didn’t want to spend the night. Laura twisted my words. I did not say yes, and I did not intentionally come here. It’s fine with me if we go,” I said and went towards the door.
Greer grabbed my arm. “We can’t. The house is on a security timer. We try to leave, and the living room fills with a sleeping gas that will knock us out. Did you not pay attention to anything Laura was saying?”
“That would knock them out too,” I replied.
“You know nothing
