“Don’t go washing that windshield yet,” Gary said.
By ten o’clock, I was back in my kitchen, setting a bag of flour on the counter when the roar of a modern engine sounded outside. Beatrice parked her white crossover right behind my sedan, blocking the path to the garage.
She came through the back door carrying a green paper bag of navel oranges and a glossy blue booklet. Her manicured nails made a rapid, rhythmic clicking against the screen of her phone before she slipped it into her coat pocket.
“I brought you some light reading, Clara,” Beatrice said, her voice bright and fast. She slid the booklet across the table, over the worn oilcloth.
The cover showed an elderly couple holding hands on a manicured lawn under the words Pine Valley Living.
“Julian and I think it is time to look at options,” Beatrice said, tapping her French-manicured nails on the table. “Especially with the way things are going around the house.”
“My house is fine, Beatrice,” I said, keeping my hands flat on the counter.
“Is it?” Beatrice asked, gesturing toward the bay window. “You have strange markings all over your car, Clara. It looks like you have been driving through brush, or perhaps you forgot where you parked again.”
“These are not scratches, Beatrice, they are footprints that grip the glass,” I said.
Beatrice let out a quick, high-pitched laugh that did not reach her eyes.
“Footprints on a vertical window?” Beatrice asked, leaning forward. “Clara, dear, that sounds like the kind of story people tell when they are starting to lose their grip on the details.”
She stood up and smoothed her tan coat, her nails tapping against her phone again.
“We just want you to be safe,” Beatrice said, her smile returning. “Think about the pamphlet.”
She left the booklet on the table, and a moment later, her white crossover backed down the driveway, kicking up loose gravel.
I sat at the table for a long time, staring at the glossy blue cover. My own mind felt steady, but her words left a cold weight of doubt in my chest.
At three o’clock, Gary met me in the backyard. The damp autumn air smelled of decaying cedar and wet earth as we pushed through the thick line of high native shrubs near the driveway.
“Nothing here,” Gary said, parting a branch of salal. “No broken twigs. No heavy tracks in the mud.”
“A raccoon would leave deeper prints,” I said, looking down at the soft black soil.
“Much deeper,” Gary agreed. “And a raccoon cannot walk up clean glass without leaving mud smears.”
“Maybe Beatrice is right,” I whispered, my voice barely carrying over the sound of the wind in the firs. “Maybe I am imagining the patterns.”
Gary stopped and looked at me, his face serious.
“You are not losing your mind, Clara,” Gary said. “I saw them too.”
He kicked a rotting log, releasing a small shower of wood lice, but there were no signs of any larger animal nesting near the property line.
“We will check again tomorrow,” Gary said, turning back toward his own cabin.
I spent the evening in the living room with the lights off, watching the shadows stretch across the yard. The uncertainty was worse than the cold.
