Chapter 1

The air in our small house always felt heavy, thick with unspoken things.

Today, it felt sharp, like a shard of glass pressing against my skin.

Grandma Susan was in the backyard, humming an old tune while gathering fallen pinecones for the stove.

A knot tightened in my stomach. It was a familiar feeling, a cold dread that always came before something bad happened.

I called it my "knowing," a chilling certainty that had settled in me after... after the last time.

The last time the woods spat out something hungry, and my world had fractured.

Then I saw it.

Sleek, silent, a shadow detaching itself from the dense treeline at the edge of our property.

A cougar.

Its eyes, yellow and cold, fixed on Grandma's stooped figure.

It moved with a fluid deadliness, low to the ground.

My breath hitched.

"Grandma!"

My voice was a raw croak.

She looked up, her smile fading as she saw my face, then followed my terrified gaze.

The cougar let out a low growl, a sound that vibrated through the thin walls of our house.

Grandma scrambled back, her face pale, tripping over the basket of pinecones.

The cougar took another step, then another.

The screen door of our neighbor, Mr. Henderson, banged open.

"What in God's name?" he yelled, his voice cracking.

Other doors opened. Shouts erupted.

The cougar paused, its head swiveling, momentarily distracted by the noise.

Grandma used that second to lunge for our back door, fumbling with the rusty latch.

She threw herself inside, slamming the wooden door shut just as the cougar hit it with a heavy thud.

The wood groaned.

I was already at the front window, my heart hammering against my ribs.

The cougar was now pacing in our small, dusty yard, its tail twitching. It sniffed the air, then clawed at the door.

Town Mayor Hank, a portly man with a perpetually worried expression, rushed over from his house across the street.

He saw the animal, his face going slack.

"Emily!" he shouted, his voice strained. "Your dad! He's a deputy! Get him! He's got his service weapon!"

I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes.

The memory of the last time, of his casual dismissal, his voice dripping with annoyance as Jessica whined beside him, was too fresh, too painful.

"He won't come, Mayor Hank."

"What are you talking about, child? There's a cougar trying to get into your house! Your grandma..."

"He's with Jessica," I said, my voice flat. "It's the county fair over in Monroe. He won't believe me. He'll say I'm trying to spoil her fun."

The men and women gathered on the street fell silent.

They all knew.

They knew David, my father, worshipped the ground Jessica walked on.

They knew I was the shadow in his life, the constant, unwelcome reminder.

Linda, my mother, believed I was the reason David's first love left him, a story David himself had spun. She thought Jessica was a balm to his old wound, a child he'd taken in out of the goodness of his heart.

The truth was far uglier, buried deep.

Jessica was his. I was Linda's. And the lie had poisoned everything.