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CHAPTER 2
Skylar
“Luna!”
Panic rushed through my veins as I ran out of the house. I’d accidentally fallen asleep on the couch after driving for two days straight across the country. The last thing I remembered was sitting on the couch to unpack a box marked kitchen. I didn’t know how long I’d been out but when I woke up, Luna was nowhere to be found.
“Luna!”
I ran to the opposite side of the wraparound porch, the hundred-year-old boards creaking beneath my heavy steps as I searched the field for any sign of my little girl.
My hand lifted to block the morning sun assaulting my face. I’d searched the entire house and now I was looking out over a vast expanse of green grass that backed up to a thick bed of trees.
Everything was blurry when I woke up because my glasses must have fallen off when I was sleeping. It took me a second to get my bearings, but the first thing I noticed was the front screen door was open and banging against the side of the house and there was no sign of Luna. I jumped up and began rushing around without my glasses.
I couldn’t make out any sort of detail but my vision wasn’t so bad that I was blind. I could see shapes and colors they were just blurry. I frantically scanned the grass and saw no signs of movement in the meadow that backed up against a large body of water.
A pond?
When we’d arrived before sunrise in the early hours of the morning, I hadn’t seen the body of water behind my house. Luna had taken swim lessons last summer, but she hadn’t graduated past guppy because she was only four. She wouldn’t be five for three more weeks and you had to be five to graduate from guppy.
“Luna!” I screamed louder as I started to rush toward the water.
“Over here!” A deep male voice bellowed over the rustle of the branches and the birds chirping. “She’s here!”
It was coming from the opposite direction. Turning on a dime, I raced down the porch steps and sprinted across the grassy field toward a large farmhouse that I had seen when we’d arrived.
By the time I made it halfway across the field, I heard my little girl’s voice. I couldn’t make out what she was saying but she sounded happy. Not scared or hurt or upset. A wave of relief crashed over me.
I rounded the corner to the front of the farmhouse and took the porch steps two at a time. When I got to the top I saw my blurry baby girl standing beside a massive fuzzy figure. I couldn’t tell what the man’s face looked like but his hair appeared to be a brownish color. If I didn’t know he was human, I would have thought it was a bear standing beside my daughter.
My heart was pounding so hard I was sure it was going to crash out of my chest like the Kool-Aid man as I crouched down and pulled Luna into my arms. My mind raced with all the possibilities of what could have happened to her.
I’d only meant to close my eyes for a second, but after driving forty-eight hours straight, I hadn’t been able to stay awake. I had no sense of how long I’d been asleep, I was just so happy to be holding my baby in my arms again.
“Luna what are you doing?!” I asked breathlessly as my brain slowly processed that she was safe. “You know the rule about opening the doors and going outside.”
There was a strict no-opening-the-door policy in our house. One that she’d never broken before.
“I didn’t. The door was open.”
Shit. The screen that was flapping in the wind when I woke up. It must have a broken latch and opened when I fell asleep.
We’d never lived in the country before. Luna knew not to leave our condo in the city. But on the long drive, I’d told her in the country she’d be able to play outside. It had been a pathetic attempt to soften the blow of the abrupt upheaval to her life. I had completely forgotten to add that she could only play outside if I was with her.
I needed to have a serious talk with her and explain to her the rules of living in the country. One of which was not to show up on stranger’s doorsteps.
The past seventy-two hours had been a whirlwind and I had emotional whiplash from it. My life had been flipped, turned upside down, and not in the fun Fresh Prince of Bel-Air way. I’d been holding it together, up until now, but just barely. And this episode had pushed me to my limit.
When I started to feel myself begin to tear up, I sniffed away the emotion. This was not the time or place to have the nervous breakdown I deserved but I feared that I wouldn’t be able to hold it at bay much longer. I needed to thank the Bear-Man, get back to the house, put a movie on for Luna, instruct her not to leave the couch, and then go to the bathroom and have a good cry.
Looking up at the blurry figure, I squinted still not able to clearly see any of the features of the mammoth male specimen before me. All I could make out was an outline. And his outline was ginormous.
I stood up, still holding Luna in my arms and cleared my throat. “I’m so sorry that she bothered you.”
“She was no bother.”
Hearing the deep voice in such close proximity was a much different experience than hearing it from a hundred yards away. It gave me an entirely new appreciation for the phrase up close and personal. This felt personal and potent. So much so that a shiver ran down my spine.
