By the time I trudge my way back down the stairs in my pajamas and bathrobe, the only light left in the living room is artificial, and there are black squares abysses in the walls where the windows used to stand out like giant glass eyes. The whole house smells like chocolate chip cookies and mulled cider, and it’s so ridiculously cold, I’d almost think it was Christmas Eve if I hadn’t already spent the last 4 weeks counting the days until summer vacation.

Christopher George and Mr. George are taking their boots off in the doorway, both of them drenched to the bone, and Christopher George’s blonde hair clings to itself in wet gold spines like he’s going super ‘super Sonic,’ until he rubs his damp sleeve over them in an attempt to sop up some the wetness.

“Welp, we got all the windows boarded, but we didn’t outrun the rain,” Mr. George laughs, taking off his glasses and drying them on his shirt. When he puts them back on he has to blink a few times, letting his eyes readjust to the orangey light of the living room, “It looks cozy in here.”

He smiles, but his lips are white. Therese’s face is whiter still and she barely even nods in response.

“We’ll just shower and be back down in a minute,” Verner tilts his head at her affectionately, his tone sobered, posture subdued. “Why don’t you sit down and rest a minute, eh, butterfly?”

It’s more of a request than a suggestion and Therese nods again but doesn’t budge.

I wonder if I should pretend not to notice how terrified she looks.

For her sake? For my sake.

Judith always tells me I’m a sucker. Not in those words of course. But she knows that I get attached to people too easily. I let liking people, maybe even loving people, mean the same thing as trusting people, and those are dangerous words to confuse.

They aren’t synonyms. Sometimes they shouldn’t even go hand in hand.

Verner has raised one arm slightly to give his wife a sideways hug, but thinks better of it at the last minute, considering how damp he is. She’s already in her house dress, though I’m not sure when she changed. Must’ve been when I was in the shower. Her hair is braided now too, and it looks redder than usual, in the warm glow of the living room lights, but she looks…frozen.

Like she’s in shock almost. And that doesn’t seem like the proper response to a storm, even a storm of this magnitude. Fear maybe, or panic, but not that look of mute misery and grief.

I can see a word of encouragement, or a question make its way to Verner’s lips, but before he can say anything he stops himself, glances over at me, and just shakes his head, turning toward the staircase.

What did I do?

Don’t tell me all this fear and worry is some kind of elaborate ruse. I can’t honestly make myself believe that. It seems too…genuine.

Maybe they are Actaeons, but this storm isn’t any of their doing, I’m sure. 

Maybe there are just some concerns too private for them to talk about in front of me.

After all, they’re not my family, as Judith says.

Fair is fair. Because there are a lot of things I wouldn’t tell them, even if they were the sweetest people on planet Earth.

Like the fact that I know what caused this storm.

Or rather…who.

Christopher George has already made his way silently up the stairs and though he’s probably the only person in the house without any sign of fear in his expression, there’s a gloominess in his posture that echoes the worry showing itself more assertively in every other face.

I wish I could give them some words of encouragement. 

But if what I think is happening is actually happening, things would only get worse if they knew.

Mrs. George turns and makes her way back into the kitchen, so, not knowing what else to do. I follow.

She has an old-fashioned kitchen timer sitting on one of the marble-topped counters and it’s about 80 seconds away from beeping, but as if out of habit she strays to the stove and rests her unbandaged hand on the oven door handle. Her fingers drum up and down on the plastic for about two seconds, then she gives up the fight and slips on her oven mitts to check on her chocolate chip cookies.

“Not done yet,” she smiles at me faintly, closing the oven door with a quick thud. “About two minutes longer.”

Her hand starts to stray toward her braid, but she changes her mind before touching it, and puts her knuckle to her lips instead,

The room is so quiet you could hear a mouse sneeze, as Heloise used to say, but for some reason I don’t want to break the silence, watching Mrs. George’s delicate, ladylike posture as stares at the kitchen tile with as much attentiveness as if she was watching a movie.

It’s impossible.

She looks like she’s hardly older than me. Somewhere in her mid-twenties, like Judith, just outside of college age. She couldn’t possibly be Christopher’s mother. Old enough to be MY mother.

I must have made a noise, or a motion of some kind, because she looks up at me, her thin eyebrows raising slightly, in a silent question.

“Did you say something?”

“No ma’am.”

“No ma’am,” she shakes her head with a nervous laugh, “call me maman or Therese, not ma’am. I don’t like it, it’s too formal.”

Grammy have a seizure if I called an adult by her first name. Well, an adult my mother's age or older anyway, so I just smile and repeat, “Maman.”

‘Not Therese?” she smiles a little playfully, her fingers coiling an uncoiling themselves in a string around her neck, “Is it an ugly name?”

“I’ve never called grown-ups by their first names,” I laugh. “Not real grown-ups. My grandmother’s friends had some adult children and I called them by their names, but other than that…”

I thought I was going somewhere with that statement. Maybe I was, but my voice seems to catch when I notice a subtle shift in her posture and her gaze. She had been leaning on the counter, but with a smooth motion so fluid you’d almost miss it, she stands more upright. She’s attentive, but maybe, a little bit too attentive.

“What’s that necklace?” I change the subject quickly.

“Oh, this?” Therese looks down at the string she hasn’t stopped wrapping and unwrapping around her fingers, “it’s just a gift from my pretty grandmother, from when I was younger.”

She take the necklace from around her neck so I can see the pedant she had tucked into her bodice. It’s nothing but an irregularly shaped piece of amber surrounded by a thin braid of hair, but the hair is so glossy and vivid that it almost looks like polished wood.

“This is my grandmother’s braid she made into a little bracelet for me when I was just a newborn little baby,” Therese explains, her words coming out slowly like she’s thinking carefully about each one. “It’s sort of a tradition in my family to wear your ancestors' hair for good luck. It means ‘I wish you well.’”

She puts the necklace back around her neck with a satisfied smile, hiding it back underneath the fabric of her dress. 

“Some people find it weird, but I wouldn’t part with it, even when it got too small for me to wear, so my mother made it into this little necklace I could keep close to my heart.”

“My grandmother had a friend who gave her a necklace a lot like that,” I blurt before I can think it through.

Therese raises her eyebrows, and she suddenly looks too curious again, though she’s not looking at me, but rather at the tile, with a doubtful, almost worried expression.

“Did she really? The braid and all?”

“Yeah. And she said the same thing about its meaning ‘I wish you well.’ Maybe you came from a similar culture?”

“It’s very possible,” Therese says quickly, but her movements have suddenly become skittish and agitated, her hands shaky and she turns away from me keeping her eyes off of my face.

“Mrs. G…Maman, are you feeling okay?”

“Of course, I’m fine,” she laughs, “I just have to get these cookies out of the oven before they burn. What am I thinking? That little timer is a piece of trash it hasn’t worked right in decades.”

With one deft motion, she plops the cookie sheet down on the stovetop and nudges the oven door closed again with her knee, but she hasn’t stopped trembling at all this whole time.

“They’re just perfect,” she smiles unsteadily, tapping the top of one of the cookies ever so lightly with her unbandaged hand, “the right amount of brownness. Like…caramel…my god.”

When she realizes she’s not going to stop shaking she puts her bandaged hand to the back of her eyes to stop the sudden onslaught of tears, maybe caused by frustration, maybe by memories of her grandmother.

“It’s this cold,” she laughs miserably, gripping her arm left arm with her healthy hand, “It goes straight to my bones and I just start shivering all over.”

She acts like it’s a joke, but I can see that it’s her left hand, and the left arm too, that won’t stop spasming like they have a will of their own and refuse to obey her.