Page 38 of Weight of Guilt

Her limbs went stiff.

Wren forced herself to walk the cabin—every room, every closet, every dark space.

Nothing was missing. Nothing was out of place that she could see. The windows were all latched.

If someone had broken into her cabin, someone would have noticed. Right? Bo would have reacted.

Maybe the lock hadn’t caught earlier. That was probably it.

She wanted to believe that. She almost did.

So what had Bo been sniffing?

Suddenly, her safe place didn’t feel quite as safe.

Wren decided to forgo her bed. Instead, she got a blanket and stretched out on the narrow couch, where she could see the door.

Then she prayed sleep would find her.

Chapter

Nineteen

Wren hadn’t gotten much sleep.

As she lay on the couch, she kept replaying the previous day.

She was definitely on edge, and it wasn’t going to get better any time soon.

For a moment, as she lay there, Wren let herself remember a different version of Sunday mornings.

Her family used to go to church every Sunday. All six of them would cram into the same pew their grandparents had claimed decades before. Her mother would make a big deal about what the sisters wore—she liked for them to coordinate. Her father would talk to everyone and shake their hands as if he were running for office. Her brother would chatter on and on about some new insect he was obsessed with.

On some Sundays, Wren, Nora, and Marlowe sang special music, three careful harmonies stacked one on top of another. While they did that, Christian sat in the front pew and watched his sisters sing as if they’d hung the moon.

That version of her family didn’t exist anymore. It hadn’t, really, for ten years.

Wren had stopped mourning the loss a few years ago when she realized she could only look to the future, not to the past.

But she wasn’t sure if her future included church or not. She and God hadn’t exactly been on speaking terms for a long time, and sometimes she regretted that. Sometimes she missed lifting prayers to Him. Sometimes she still did lift prayers, but they were more of instinct than sincerity.

Finally, Wren forced herself to get up.

She checked the exterior doors out of habit. They were both locked, with deadbolts thrown in place. Relief filled her, though it didn’t fully unclench the tautness in her chest.

She was reaching for the coffee pot when her eyes caught the hook beside the door frame. It was . . . empty.

She stood there a second, her coffee forgotten.

She always kept her spare key there.

But it was gone.

The key wasn’t on the counter. It hadn’t fallen off onto the floor beneath the hook. She checked the junk drawer. The bowl by the door where loose change and receipts collected.

It wasn’t there.

She forced herself to breathe, her mind running through the possibilities.