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Bear disappeared down the path to Paulina’s, while Lila scrambled out of the truck. Paulina was such a committed hermit that she refused to put in a driveway. She used a wheelbarrow to carry groceries and supplies down the long winding path to her home, which was also her art studio.

Lila had thought about gently suggesting that Paulina, who was now in her mid-sixties, should go easier on her body and consider a driveway. But Paulina knew her own mind, like most of the rugged and self-sufficient folks out here.

Lila ran down the mossy path after Bear. This area had a rainforest feel; lush ferns and vivid mushrooms popping through rotting logs. Paulina’s paintings often incorporated whimsical elements that seemed unlikely, until you saw them with your own eyes. Like that bright crimson mushroom with the white polka dots. Or the other mushroom that looked like a crinkly penis head.

No Annoying People Allowed , proclaimed a sign tacked to a birch tree at the edge of the clearing where Paulina’s house sat. It wasn’t so much a “house” as a stream-of-consciousness architectural ramble. It rose three stories into the forest canopy, with a ladder clinging to the outside wall. The place had been built one room at a time, depending on when Paulina had the money and if there was a carpenter available to help. As time went on, Paulina herself had learned construction, and the last story—a deck with a railing—had been her own handiwork.

Or so she’d told Lila when she came in for her twice-monthly glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. Bear kept it in stock especially for her.

“Paulina?” Lila heard Bear’s deep voice reverberate through the house. “Paulina, are you here? It’s Bear and Lila.”

Lila stopped abruptly outside the house. Even though she’d been here before, this time she couldn’t go inside. She just couldn’t, the same way that she hadn’t been able to leave the overlook at Snow River. An unexplainable force wouldn’t allow it.

She glanced around the clearing. Pillows of moss cushioned the forest floor. A squirrel scolded her from a nearby spruce tree. The tree’s branches reached gracefully for the open air, like a dancer’s wide skirt. Pieces of Paulina’s sculpture sat here and there, some of them rusty from exposure. A hammered metal wind chime swayed in the wind, which was gentle down here, though still fierce higher in the canopy.

Hiding. And biding.

The words flashed into Lila’s thoughts. Paulina was hiding here from something. What about “biding”? Biding her time? Abiding? Lila searched for more meaning, but the “blip” was gone.

Her heart was racing. She needed to calm down, so she went inside herself, to an image of a private pool surrounded by sheer rock, a haven she’d created for herself long ago. The deep water with its gentle ripples soothed her.

“Lila, can you give me a hand?”

Bear’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts. But her moment of meditation had worked. This time when she tried to step inside, nothing stood in her way. She walked into the house, which had the handcrafted feel of a hobbit’s home. A stone hearth and a wood pile took up one entire wall. Whatever fire had been keeping the place warm had gone out some time ago; the place was chilly, barely above freezing.

Paulina lay on the floor, with Bear crouched next to her. He was checking her pulse with a finger on her neck. A blanket covered her. Either she’d collapsed while wrapped in it, or Bear had draped it over her.

“She’s alive,” he murmured. “But unconscious. Can you get the fire going while I get her into bed?”

“Of course.” Lila knelt and collected bits of cardboard from a box set next to the hearth. An old tin can held boxes of matches. Before she’d come to Firelight Ridge, her experience with starting fires had been limited to campfires on Girl Scouts trips.

When she’d arrived here in chilly April, her friend Daniel had taught her how to start a fire in a woodstove; she assumed the same principles would apply here. Warm up the chimney first, so the cold air wouldn’t snuff out the fire before it got going. Set two cut logs next to each other, with space between so an updraft would develop. Place small bits of kindling between, and lay a few across the logs. Give your flame a gentle push with an extra breath or two. Once the fire was crackling, meaning it had reached the wood, feed it more wood.

It made her sad to think of Daniel, the plow truck driver and smoothie maker who had died in an avalanche about a month after she’d arrived in Firelight Ridge. It was a reminder that people really did live on the edge out here. You did your best to survive and prepare, but life could turn in a split-second.

When the fire was crackling in a way that Lila found deeply satisfying—she’d done that!—she got up and joined Bear. He sat on the edge of Paulina’s bed, which was a platform built out from a wall. He’d pulled the covers over her, so all Lila could see was her pasty face and faded red hair.

Paulina was vain about her hair, refusing to let it turn gray. “I’m a redhead in my heart, and I’ll stay a redhead until I die,” she’d told Lila once. Lila had been helping her apply her favorite henna hair dye after Paulina had sprained a muscle.

Oh Paulina. So strange to see her drained of her usual prickly yet ethereal energy.

“What happened to her?” Lila asked softly. “Do you think someone was here?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t see anything out of place. Maybe a stroke? Her heart rate seems fine. Pulse is weak but steady. Airways aren’t constricted. EMT training,” he added, when Lila gave him a curious glance.

She didn’t doubt it. Bear knew how to handle most situations.

But maybe not this one. He was scratching at the back of his neck, looking mystified. “I’m not sure if it’s better to bring her into town where someone can take a look at her, or stay with her until she wakes up.”

“You could go into town and I can stay here with her. Find Ani, she can help.” There were other medically informed people in Firelight Ridge, but Lila trusted Ani the most.

Bear frowned. “I don’t know. If I’m wrong and someone was here, they could come back. Maybe you should go and I’ll stay here.”

“You’ll be much faster.” She’d borrowed Bear’s truck before, but she wasn’t used to the icy road conditions the way he was. “I’ll be fine. I got the fire going, didn’t I?”

Reluctantly, Bear nodded. “All right, but I’m going to leave my hunting rifle with you. I’ll go grab it from the truck.”

A shudder ran through her. Guns terrified her, and had ever since the track meet shooting that she’d warned her friends about. The images that had poured through her head…terrifying.

He must have sensed her fear. “Don’t worry, I won’t load it. It’s just for show. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to know you can defend yourself.”

“But I can’t defend myself. They could walk right up and grab it from me and turn it on me.”

“Which is one reason it won’t be loaded,” he said dryly.

Fair.

He left it propped by the doorway, then a few moments later she heard the rumble of his F-250 leaving the property. Lila pulled up an upholstered footstool next to Paulina’s bed.

The quiet felt immense, but not empty. Maybe to someone else it would, but to Lila, it vibrated with the accumulated energy of a highly creative person who had spent the last forty years here making art. Once Paulina had found her niche here in the Alaskan wilderness, she’d clung to it with all her heart and soul. She’d told Lila that her family—sisters, a brother, an ex-fiancé—had begged her to come back to California, but she’d refused.

A log collapsed in the hearth, making Lila jump. She stepped across the bare plywood floor, on which Paulina had painted swoops and swirls of moss green and buttercup yellow, all faded now.

Lila crouched and used a poker to maneuver the log back into the heart of the fire. While she was at it, she added two more, until the fire was really roaring. It would take a while to heat up this space, with its high ceilings and many windows. Paulina had chosen aesthetics over heat efficiency, that was obvious.

How did Paulina pay for things like windows and stone hearths? She sold her art, but very reluctantly, and only on a small scale. Very occasionally, she held an exhibit at the Caribou Grill, which had the most wall space in town. But Lila couldn’t imagine that she made a living that way, let alone enough to buy her painting supplies. Maybe she had a family trust fund.

Something about Paulina didn’t quite add up, but Lila couldn’t put her finger on it. All this explosion of talent and brilliance, confined to a tree house in the middle of the wilderness—it made Lila sad.

And it made her wonder…did she do something similar with her own “gift”? Did she lock it away where few could see it?

It’s completely different , she told herself. Art could transport people, but a weird and overactive sense of intuition just freaked people out.

A sound from behind her made her spin around, poker held high. A groan. From Paulina? Someone else?

Holding onto the poker—she felt more comfortable with that weapon than with a hunting rifle anyway—she quickly scanned for intruders. None to be seen. But all the hairs on her arms were standing on end. Something in the room had changed.

Another groan. This one came from the direction of the bed.

Lila rushed over to the bed. Paulina’s eyes were barely open, a flutter of eyelashes against her wrinkled cheeks. When she saw Lila, she let out a shriek and flinched away. “Noooo,” she moaned. “Don’t hurt me.”

Horrified, Lila realized she was still holding the poker. Great, Bear had left her alone with Paulina and she’d managed to scare the pants off her. “Paulina, I’m so sorry, I was working on the fire, that’s why I have the poker. I’m putting it back now. Are you okay? How do you feel?”

She hurried over to the hearth to stow the poker, then dashed back to Paulina’s bedside, where she found Paulina blinking back tears.

“Oh Paulina, I’m so sorry I scared you. It’s Lila, you know me. I’m your friend. I would never hurt you.”

“My friends died,” the woman whispered.

Those words sent a chill trickling through Lila. Buster had said that Paulina was friends with Gwennie. But Paulina had said “friends.” Did she know Allison Casey too?

“Who died, Paulina? Who do you mean?”

She didn’t answer.

“Are you talking about Gwennie?”

That question seemed to snap her out of her trance. Her eyebrows drew together and fear flooded her eyes. “Don’t talk about her. We’re not supposed to.”

Strange phrasing. “Why not? Why can’t we talk about her?”

The artist turned her face the other direction. Lila kicked herself. Was she pushing too hard? Taking advantage of an elderly woman as she regained consciousness? How long had she been on the floor? She must be terribly dehydrated. “Paulina, can you tell me how you’re feeling? Would you like some water or some tea?”

“Water,” came her whisper.

She went to the sink, which had a foot pedal that worked a pump that brought water into a Berkey filter. A set of hand-blown glasses, glowing like jewels, filled a shelf next to the window. Maybe the color would help Paulina wake up. Lila chose an especially vivid purple and fuchsia glass and splashed water into it.

“My favorite, how did you know?” Paulina murmured as Lila helped her take a sip. Just a sip, then another, since she had a vague memory of guzzling water being dangerous if you were dehydrated.

“I just…knew.”

“You know things, don’t you? Things you shouldn’t know.”

That comment was so close to the truth that it gave Lila another shiver. “If you’re talking about your friend Gwen, Buster Conner told me about her.”

“Oh.”

“He didn’t say we’re not supposed to talk about her, though.”

Paulina looked away, her gaze scanning her home before returning to Lila. “What are you doing here?”

“Bear found you on the floor. You were unconscious, and we don’t know how long you were there. Do you remember what happened? ”

At the sound of Bear’s name, she brightened. “Where’s Bear?”

“He’s fetching a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor.”

“You might. You could be dehydrated at the very least. You might have had a stroke. Something caused you to fall to the floor. You might have broken a bone or gotten a fracture. Bear is fetching my friend Ani. She’s the nicest doctor in the world.”

Paulina’s gaze wandered past Lila, toward the door behind her. “Your friend. I’m glad you have a friend.”

“So am I. There’s four of us, actually. We’ve been friends for many years, some of us since we were kids.”

Paulina’s jaw moved, some deep emotion hitting at a vulnerable moment.

“Maybe you can tell me about Gwennie sometime,” Lila said softly.

“I’m the only one left here. I just have to bide my time.”

Bide. Biding.

Her eyelids were falling, sleep closing in. Just in time, Lila lifted the glass from Paulina’s hand. As she did so, she noticed a name scratched on the bottom, in fine handwriting. Lifting it toward the light from the window, she peered up at it. Instead of the “Paulina” she’d expected to see, another name was written in ghostly fine cursive, ending with the line shaping a heart.

Gwen.

So her name was still very present in Paulina’s house, even if she wasn’t “supposed” to talk about her. Lila rinsed the glass and set it back on the shelf, then, out of curiosity, checked the base of the other three hand-blown glasses. Each had a different name written on it. Paulina. Gwen. Allison. The last one—Nancy.