She lay blinking on the bed, listening to the cicadas singing, crickets chirping, and, from the deep woods, the sound of an owl hooting. But the sound that woke her up hadn’t come through her open window—it came from the creaking floorboards in the hallway outside her room. Sadie swung her legs over the side of the bed. Nana used to putter around the house in the middle of the night, and Mrs. Clancy had proved no different. Once Sadie had caught Mrs. Clancy rattling the locked handle of the lodge’s sliding back doors. Since then Sadie had been alert to late-night noises. Sadie knew well that all it would take was one little distraction, one little mistake, for there to be a real disaster. After all, had Sadie not been in such a dumb hurry to get to school one morning, she wouldn’t be here in Pine Lake right now, doing crazy-ass things like begging a stranger to take her in.She poked her head outside her door but the hall was empty except for the spill of moonlight pouring in from the far window.
