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“A man?What man? Was it Joey’s dad?” Sheila studied her young daughter intently, but Emily didn’t seem to notice. She was too engrossed in fixing a bowl of her favorite snack.
“If it was Joey’s dad, I would have told you. . . . It was just some guy.”
Sheila could feel her face drain of color. “What guy?”
“Don’t know his name.” Emily replied with all the matter-of-factness of a confident eight-year-old.
Sheila attempted to sound calm, but the thought of a stranger talking to her young daughter made her quiver inside. “Surely it was someone you know . . . maybe someone you met in town. . . .”
Emily shook her dark, wet curls. “Nope.” She began to attack the bowl of popcorn without another thought to the stranger.
Sheila didn’t want to frighten her daughter. Emily had grown up in a small, Northwest town where there were few strangers and nearly everyone knew each other on a first-name basis. “What did the man want to talk about?” she asked, pretending interest in the dishes.
“Oh, you know, all about the fire . . . the same old thing.”
Sheila felt herself relax. “Oh, so a deputy from the sheriff’s department came by.... He should have stopped at the house first.”
“Wasn’t a policeman or a deputy.”
Once again Sheila’s nerves tightened. She turned from the sink and sat in a chair opposite Emily’s. “The man was a complete stranger, right?”
“Um-hum.”
“Not a policeman?”
“I told you that already!”
“But maybe he was a detective? They don’t always wear uniforms.”
Emily sighed, and with a concern greater than her few years, looked at her mother. “Is something wrong?”
“Probably not . . . I just don’t like the idea of you talking to strangers. From now on you stick a little closer to the house.”
“I don’t think he would hurt me . . . if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I like to go down to the duck pond.”
“I know you do, sweetheart,” Sheila said with more confidence than she actually felt, “but from now on I want to go with you.”
“You’re afraid of something, aren’t you?” Emily charged, her innocent green eyes searching her mother’s worried face.
“Not really,” Sheila lied. It wouldn’t help matters to scare Emily, but the child had to learn to be more cautious. “But sometimes . . . it’s better not to talk to strangers. You know that, don’t you? From now on, if you see anyone you don’t know hanging around, you come and tell me, before you talk to them, okay? No one should be on the property while the winery’s shut down, so if someone comes, I want to know it immediately. Fair enough?”
“I guess so.”
“Then you do understand why I don’t want you to wander off too far from the house when you’re alone?”
Emily nodded gravely. Sheila’s message had gotten through.
“Good!” Sheila said, attempting to display a lighthearted enthusiasm she didn’t feel. “We’ll go feed the ducks together tomorrow. It will be lots of fun.” Somehow she managed a confident smile for her daughter.
Emily continued to nibble at the popcorn while leafing through a math textbook. Sheila got up to clear the dinner dishes and turned on the radio to cover the sudden silence. Nightfall was imminent, and the lengthening shadows made Sheila nervous. She had always loved warm summer nights in the foothills of the Cascades, but tonight was different. She felt alone and vulnerable. The nearest house was over a mile away, and for the first time in her life the remote location of the winery put her on edge. A stranger had been lurking on the property, talking to her child. Why? Who was the man and what did he want from Emily? Information on the fire? Unlikely. Sheila let her gaze wander out the window and she squinted into the dusky twilight. She attempted to tell herself that the man was probably just an interested tourist who wondered why the daily tours of the winery had been suspended. But if that were so, certainly he would have come up to the main building. The entire incident put Sheila’s nerves on edge.
That night, before going to her room, Sheila checked the bolts on all of the doors and windows of the house. When she finally got to bed, even though her tired body ached for sleep, it didn’t come. Instead she found herself staring at the luminous dial of the clock radio and listening to the soft sounds of the early summer night. Everything sounded the same. Why then was she so nervous and tense?
* * *
