Even before they got here, Dad didn’t seem to be himself. On the way to the mountains, when they stopped to buy gas, Genie asked if she could ride up front with Dad, and he had said yes. He ignored the boys’ protests. He told them they could come into the convenience mart with him while Genie watched the SUV.
When he came back, she discovered he had bought each of them a bag of chips. They never ate junk food- Mom did not allow it. The boys had delighted in this new experience, but Genie decided to save her chips for later.
Genie had a feeling that something was going wrong, really wrong, and she didn’t think it had to do with Carrie. There was some other trouble, and no one was telling the kids about it. She hated when that happened.
When they got here, Dad made everyone wait in the SUV, even though the boys had to go to the bathroom really bad. It was just past noon, but he took a flashlight with him, putting it in his jacket pocket. He went to the door, which used a keypad instead of a key, but didn’t go inside. He then went around to the back of the cabin. When he returned, his clothes were dirty.
The cabin was the only one at the end of a long road. There were trees and boulders all around it at the front. Dad pulled the SUV into a garage, and once the boys had gone to the bathroom, for a time they were busy moving things from the car into the cabin.
Dad called it a cabin, but it was big enough to be called a house. There was a steep slope at the back. A small deck was built out over this, with a telescope on it, and if you held it just right, you could see the glint of a few other windows and roofs, and a stretch of the main road. It was pretty here, but Genie felt too worried to enjoy the view.
Before Cleo showed up, Genie had snooped through the cabin, and in the desk, which had a strange panel of LED lights next to it, she found some things she thought she might be able to use-envelopes and stamps. She took one stamp and an envelope. She had brought paper and pens and a few art supplies, and she planned to use them to mail a letter. She’d noticed that there was a mailbox at the end of the long dirt road that led back to this cabin.
The biggest temptation in the house was a television set. It was hooked up to a satellite dish. But Dad unplugged it as soon as they came in.
While she was snooping, Genie also saw three guns. Dad didn’t keep guns at home, but Grandfather had taught all the children rules about them: If you see a gun, don’t touch it, get an adult. So she hadn’t touched them, and told Dad about the one in the closet and the one in the kitchen, because she was afraid the boys might find them. She had to do a lot of hinting to get him to discover the one in the desk and even pretended that she was looking in it for the first time, because if she had just said, “I was snooping around and found one there,” she’d have been in trouble.
He sighed when she showed him the first gun. “Leave it to Cleo not to even have the safety on.” She watched how he removed the thing that held the ammunition-he said it was a magazine-in each of the guns. He answered her question about the safety and showed her about keeping guns pointed down and away from anyone. “You might think this gun is safe now, but it isn’t-you must always treat every gun as if it is loaded, and never pull the trigger to find out if it has a bullet in it. Watch.” He showed her that a round was already chambered, and ejected that one. He did this with each gun, and searched the closet and found several boxes of ammunition.
He locked all the ammunition, including the magazines, away in the rear cargo hold of the SUV. She told him he should probably make sure there weren’t others, and even said, “In the bedrooms or something,” but he didn’t look. Mostly, he just sat around looking sad.
There was a lot of food in the pantry, so that was good, and Dad had brought a lot of food in the ice chest, so they wouldn’t have to worry about that. In payment for the stamp and the envelope she had taken, she left the bag of chips in the pantry.
She found Dad’s notebook in his jacket and read through the most recent page. Her eyes widened at the word booby trap, and she read those instructions carefully. She had a good memory, so she didn’t need to take the page out of the notebook. She replaced it in the jacket pocket.
There was a strange bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall that had a lot of mirrors on the walls and ceiling. It was the biggest of the bedrooms. The bathroom was big, too-it had a fancy shower in it. A look around the bathroom, even under the toilet-tank lid, did not reveal any hidden weapons.
Genie went back out into the mirrored bedroom. She saw the big bed and recalled how her mom hid things between the mattress and the box spring of her bed at home. She tried one side, then the other. On the second side, her hand touched something metal, and she drew out a fourth gun. She removed the magazine by pushing the button she’d seen her dad push on the other guns, which were identical to this one, and pocketed the ammunition. She ejected the chambered round as well.
Near the bed was another panel with some LED lights on it, identical to the one next to the desk downstairs. The green ones were lit now, but there was a row of red ones, too. She thought it might be the alarm system for the house.
She searched the nightstands on either side of the bed, then looked through the closet and the dresser drawers. Mostly it was the usual sort of thing grown-ups kept in such places, although Cleo’s clothing wasn’t much like Mom’s. In one of the nightstands she only found condoms-the same brand Dad kept hidden in his desk at home-and a local phone book.
Genie spent a few minutes making strange faces in the mirrors and looking at reflections of reflections. But after a few minutes, she decided the room was creepy. Later she was relieved when Dad didn’t put his things in there.
When they first arrived, they had played outside in the snow. That had been fun. After the long drive the boys needed to expend some energy. They built a snowman, and Genie used Carrie’s camera to take a picture of Troy and Aaron standing next to it. She would get it developed and send it to Carrie. She had tried to stop worrying about Carrie, but she couldn’t. Maybe Mom had found out and was punishing her. She didn’t like to think about that.
After Cleo came to the cabin-Genie still wasn’t sure how she got there, since she hadn’t arrived in a car-they all had to stay inside. Cleo said some people who wanted to steal them away from Dad might be looking for them. They had heard about people wanting to steal them before, but somehow, when she said it, it made them all believe it could happen at any minute.
Genie could see that all of this was upsetting the boys and that if the boys were upset, Cleo got mad. Mom could be the same way, so Genie found herself in the accustomed role of taking care of her brothers, finding ways to entertain them. Now the task of making sure they brushed their teeth and got into bed fell to her. She tried not to think about the fact that she and Carrie always did this together.
Fortunately, between the stresses of the day and the time they had spent playing in the snow, the boys were tired now, and she didn’t have any arguments from them as she tucked them in.
She made up a story for them, about a girl who was a princess looking for her father the king, and although they at first objected to a story about a girl, when she was done they asked her to tell it again. They fell asleep before she got very far the second time around.
She went to the room where Dad had told her she would sleep. Keeping the lights off, she carefully approached the window. Earlier, she had raised the blind, so she had to be careful not to be seen.
Beneath the window, out in the moonlight, she saw Dad and Cleo. They were hugging. It gave her a kind of sick feeling, so she quickly stepped back and lowered the blind. Was Cleo going to be their new mom or something? That didn’t seem possible.
She turned a bedside lamp on and sat at the side of the bed. It was a big bed. She was glad she had brought the big soft doll. It made the bed seem less empty.
She felt lonely without Carrie and spent a little time looking through the few things she had brought along for her sister, thinking they were going to spend the day at Grandfather’s house. She had packed them both to fool Dad and in case things went wrong and Carrie ended up joining them. She picked up Carrie’s camera and thought back to the alternate plan they had made to take pictures of Carrie at Grandfather’s house and mail them to Ms. Kelly. Was that just this morning? This had been such a long and crazy day.
She changed into her pajamas. She had realized several hours ago that the duffels were full of new clothes and pajamas and underwear, all in the right sizes. There was even one for Carrie. Any other time, she would have been excited about new clothes, but she couldn’t help wishing she had her own comfy pj’s on instead of these new
