Emily couldn’t sleep. So she wandered. Nighttime was the worst, when nobody else was awake, when the darkness was smothering. Even here, even at the lodge.
She crept from hallway to hallway, along this path that used to be familiar but wasn’t any more.
The lodge used to be a swinging place. They used to have wild parties every night, everyone said. But now it was silent, completely still and unmoving.
Life changed so fast.
This place had been wild, and now it was safe. This had been her home, and then it wasn’t. She had a life plan, then she didn’t. She had a clue, a hint of a direction. Really, she had some diagrams that she couldn’t connect together. That was it.
She sat down on a step. The week before, her mother had told her she’d never wanted kids. She’d wanted to focus on her ca
