Alistair.
She didn’t move for a long time. The flicker of fire she’d had in her belly had gone cold. She felt like her body might freeze solid and fuse to the floor, like the blood in the hull of the boat. Her eyes adjusted to the dark and she watched the last sliver of gray sunlight creep across the floorboards.
There was a bed frame in the corner with a lumpy mattress and a pile of old blankets tossed on top. A narrow fireplace on the wall opposite the shed’s front door. Two securely boarded-up windows flanked the fieldstone chimney. A pile of firewood and kindling crouched in a dark corner. More boards battened holes where the walls of the shed had given way over time. Alistair lay her weary eyes on all of it, unsure what she would find, but also somehow certain she’d seen it all befo
