“I’ve got you,” she whispered—not because she was sure it was true, but because saying it out loud made the idea feel heavier, more real, like a promise that could anchor both of them against the storm trying to erase them. “You can’t stay here. It’s too cold. You’ll disappear.”
She did not know why that thought terrified her more than anything else.
Twenty minutes earlier, she had been warm inside, eating cereal at the kitchen counter while her grandfather napped in his chair, the house humming softly with familiar sounds. Then she noticed the gate swinging open in the wind, snow blowing sideways across the yard like smoke—and something darker beyond it. Something wrong. Something that did not belong.
Emily had always been the kind of child who noticed things adults missed.
She dragged him inch by inch, counting under her breath the way her mother once taught her to count waves when panic tried to take over, whispering numbers into the storm, letting them carry her forward when logic offered no help at all.
One foot. Two. Three.