Winter Moon

inside the wall. As she turned toward the stairs, she stepped in something. She lifted her left foot and studied the floor. A clod of dry earth about as large as.a plum had partially crumbled under her bare heel. Climbing to the second floor, she noticed dry crumbs of earth scattered on a few of the treads, which she'd failed to notice in her swift descent. The dirt hadn't been there when she finished cleaning the stairwell on Wednesday. She wanted to believe it was proof the intruder existed.
        More likely, Toby had tracked a little mud in from the backyard. He was usually a considerate kid, and he was neat by nature, but he was, after all, only eight years old.
        Heather returned to Toby's room, locked the door, and snapped off the stairwell light. Her son was sound asleep. Feeling no less foolish than confused, she went down the front stairs, directly to the kitchen.
        If the repulsive smell was a sign of the intruder's recent presence, and if the slightest trace of that stink hung in the kitchen, it would mean he had a key with which he'd entered from the back stairs. In that case she intended to wake Jack and insist they search the house top to bottom-with loaded guns.
        The kitchen smelled fresh and clean. No crumbles of dry soil on the floor, either. She was almost disappointed. She was loath to think that she'd imagined everything, but the facts justified no other interpretation. Imagination or not, she couldn't rid herself of the feeling that she was under observation. She closed the blinds over the kitchen windows. Get a grip, Heather thought. You're fifteen years away from the change of life, lady, no excuse for these weird mood swings. She had intended to spend the rest of the night reading, but she was too agitated to concentrate on a book. She needed to keep busy. While she brewed a pot of coffee, she inventoried the contents of the freezer compartment in the side-by-side refrigerator.
        There were half a dozen frozen dinners, a package of frankfurters, two boxes of Green Giant white corn, one box of green beans, two of carrots, and a package of Oregon blueberries, none of which Eduardo Fernandez had opened and all of which they could use. On a lower shelf, under a box of Eggo waffles and a pound of bacon, she found a Ziploc bag that appeared to contain a legal-size tablet of yellow paper. The plastic was opaque with frost, but she could vaguely see that lines of handwriting filled the first page. She popped the pressure seal on the bag-but then hesitated.
        Storing the tablet in such a peculiar place was tantamount to hiding it.
        Fernandez must have considered the contents to be important and extremely personal, and Heather was reluctant to invade his privacy.
        Though dead and gone, he was the benefactor who had radically changed their lives, he deserved her respect and discretion. She read the first few words on the top page-My name is Eduardo Fernandez- and thumbed through the tablet, confirming it had been written by Fernandez and was a lengthy document. More than two thirds of the long yellow pages were filled with neat handwriting. Stifling her curiosity, Heather put the tablet on top of the refrigerator, intending to give it to Paul Youngblood the next time she saw him. The attorney was the.closest thing to a friend that Fernandez had known and, in his professional capacity, was privy to all the old man's affairs. If the contents of the tablet were important and private, only Paul had any right to read them.
        Finished with the inventory of frozen foods, she poured a cup of fresh coffee, sat at the kitchen table, and began to make a list of needed groceries and household supplies. Come morning, they would drive to the supermarket in Eagle's Roost and stock not only the refrigerator but the half-empty shelves of the pantry. She wanted to be well prepared if they were cut off by deep snow for any length of time during the winter.
        She paused in her listmaking to scribble a note, reminding Jack to schedule an appointment next week with Parker's Garage for the installation of a plow on the front of the Explorer. Initially, as she sipped her coffee and composed her list, she was alert for any peculiar sound. However, the task before her was so mundane that it was calming, after a while, she could not sustain a sense of the uncanny.
        In his sleep, Toby moaned softly. He said, "Go away… go… go away …"
        After