Page 6 of Salvation
They went around checking every window and every door, and Anna was thorough in every respect but replacing the lock on the bear’s cage. Then she grabbed her jacket and watched him from the light switch at the far side of the room.
The bear sat studying her then dipped his chin in something startlingly close to a nod.
Her hand shook as she turned off the lights, and when she stepped outside and locked the front door, she shook her head at herself. She wasn’t the accomplice to some secret crime. She was slowly losing her mind.
And she was kidding herself. She wasn’t going to solve the mystery of her cousin’s disappearance, and she wasn’t going to save a wild bear. She was going to pack up the few things she’d brought and head back to Virginia the very next day. She’d get real, stop wishing, and accept the truth. Her cousin was dead. The bear would be taken care of by the authorities. And that was that.
She tried forcing the truth into her mind by repeating those words all the way back to the house she was staying in, all through dinner, and late into the night. She tapped the bedsheets for an uneasy hour, telling herself it was time to admit defeat. Waking at the crack of dawn, she faced her bleary-eyed reflection in the mirror. The restless hours of sleep had exhausted rather than refreshed her, but she knew what she had to do.
Get real, Anna. It’s time to get real. Go home. Mourn Sarah. Forget about that stupid bear.
And then her phone rang.
And rang and rang. Urgently, as if it knew what the message was.
“Anna?” Cynthia was breathless by the time she answered. “We need you right away.”
Her heart raced into a sprint.
“What happened?”
“The bear is gone. Did you notice anything before you left yesterday?”
She answered quickly and lied so effortlessly, she shocked herself. “No.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a thing.”
Chapter Two
Anna did go back to the East Coast, though it took her a few days longer than she thought. When she got to Virginia, she did exactly what she’d promised herself: she got real, mourned the death of her cousin, and forgot about that poor, injured bear.
Well, okay. Two out three wasn’t bad.
She did get real. She went straight back to showing and selling homes. She did mourn her cousin, shedding tears just about every day and every night — and every time in between when some little memory would pop out of nowhere and make a mess of her emotions again.
But she didn’t forget about the bear. She didn’t want to forget about him. And how could she, given the mysterious circumstances of his disappearance?
She’d seen it with her own eyes the morning she’d rushed to the wildlife center after Cynthia’s call. The cage stood wide open. The back door was open, too. No signs of damage, no claw marks.
“I don’t understand it.” Cynthia had fretted, pacing back and forth. “The lock is just lying there. The bars of the cage are untouched. But the bolt was just slid open like the bolt on the back door. The front door was locked from the outside. How could a bear possibly get out?”
Anna had looked around, gaping.
“The doors were locked when I left last night. I know they were,” she’d stammered. Okay, the padlock to the bear cage hadn’t been, but she left that part out. And anyway, Cynthia was right. No way could a bear slide the bolt to the cage.
“I can’t understand it. What happened?”
Anna had no clue. She still had no clue, months later. She’d even called Cynthia a few times, asking whether the bear had been seen, but the answer was the same every time.
“Not a sign of him. It’s the craziest thing,” Cynthia said.
Anna mulled it over every morning and every night. Would she ever discover the truth?
The paperwork for her aunt and uncle’s property in Montana came through, and though it made her sick, she signed off on the deed transfer, accepting the property as next of kin. Although she’d tried to accept her cousin’s death, signing the property deed made all the doubts come back, along with the niggling feeling in her heart. What if Sarah wasn’t dead? The evidence hadn’t been conclusive, after all. And the feeling of Sarah being out there somewhere never quite went away. Some nights, Anna reached for the phone, sure it was about to ring with a call from Sarah. A few times, it had felt so real, so strong. First came the times when she was sure Sarah would call and cry for help — as though she’d survived the fire but was on the run from some evil force. Then came a time when Anna was sure Sarah would call and beg for her advice. Heart-to-heart advice, the way Sarah had once done when her boyfriend, Soren, had broken up with her. More recently, Anna reached for the phone with a smile when she sensed that her cousin had good news to share.
Which was crazy. She was just imagining things, right?
