One of the window boxes that hung outside beneath the sill had been thrown up through the glass and onto the floor with enormous force. Wet topsoil was everywhere, and blustery air charged into the room behind the wooden missile, which had overturned and landed beneath the dining table.

I looked up and thought I saw someone running on the slick lawn at the bottom of the steps that led down from the deck. Maybe it hadn't been the wind that had torn the flower box from its mooring and sailed it inside. Maybe I wasn't imagining the shapes and shadows around me after all.

Why wouldn't someone have knocked on the door if he or she wanted to get inside? I picked up the landline telephone to see whether it was working, but since the portable models were now run on electricity, too, the phone was dead. Back to the front door. I was nervous and edgy, checking to see whether someone had driven in from the road, looking for help. With the house looking so dark and quiet, it was possible that a person approaching it would think no one was at home.

A terrible rattling started again, now from the French doors in my bedroom. I slinked through the narrow hallway, clutching the banister to steady myself. There was a distinct outline of a body against the tall glass pane. Someone was trying desperately to get inside the house.

Should I call out to my unexpected visitor and let him know that I was indeed in residence? No. Not a good idea. I remembered the plume of smoke that must have been pouring out of the chimney. Forget the house's quiet and the darkness, of course an interloper would know I was in here. This was not someone looking for my help. Whoever it was wanted to scare me to death before he showed himself.

The noise stopped. I turned off the flashlight and crouched in the area behind the staircase, not visible from any of the windows. All I could hear was the crackling of the logs shifting in the fireplace as they charred and burned.

Then another blast of broken glass. This time it sounded like it was coming from the living room. I had taped the giant picture window, but not the small panes in the door that opened onto the deck. Had the wind propelled something through the narrow space or was there really someone intent on breaking in? My gut told me it was the latter.

I crawled twelve feet to the front entrance, lifting my arm over my head to feel for the small brass lock and twisting it gently 180 degrees. I paused, and heard what I thought was a jiggling noise that might have been the door handle back in the bedroom. I wanted out.

Hoping that my visitor's attention was fixed on the house's rear side, I pulled at the knob and opened the door wide enough to slip through, still squatting, onto a patch of dirt between the lilac bushes as branches scratched at my cheeks and snagged my hair. The rain was pouring down, and within seconds I was soaked, my moccasins squishing in the cold mud.

I had choices now: I could try to run into the wooded area that ringed my property against the traditional stone walls, or go out the driveway and try to find cover in the yard of either of my neighbors, more than half an acre away at the closest point. Both were summer families whose houses were locked up for the winter months.

But if my burglar had arrived by car, and if there was an accomplice waiting to drive him away, that direction might prove disastrous.

There was only one way to go. The caretaker's cottage was down the steep hill, not even visible from the main house. It would be locked, I knew, but I also knew that there was a crawl space beneath it, rather than a real foundation. It rested on pilings and concrete since early house owners had moved it up from Dutcher Dock. After Adam was killed, I had never gotten around to having it rebuilt, as we had once planned.

I ran to the far end of the main house but couldn't make out anyone from my position behind a stand of hydrangea bushes. Trees were blowing and bending with the wind, and everywhere the shadows danced and took on human form. I was wet and tired and scared. I wanted to click my heels so that the storm would end and I could wind up safely back in Kansas at Auntie Em's farm.

I heard the front door of the house banging furiously behind me. If my tracker could hear it, it would draw him around to see what was making such a racket. Now was my chance to sprint, running downhill, taking care not to fall and slide on the slippery grass. I reached the far side of the small shack and stopped again to catch my breath, fearing that he might hear my heaving gasps.

I lifted my head above the clothesline to see whether I could spot anyone, but I could barely make out the main house's shape through the fog and mist. I would be safe here if he didn't know the property well enough to realize that this little cottage existed.

On my hands and knees I crawled for the hole behind the three steps that bordered the deck railing. I found it and began to slither inside. If someone thought to search down here, I would be hidden completely beneath a sodden blanket of wet leaves. That was a trade-off, then, for bellying down with whatever spiders and snakes and rodents lived in this underground outpost.

I tried not to think about my possible companions and I covered myself as best I could. For more than fifteen minutes, I flattened myself against the ground, listening to my heartbeat, hearing nothing but fierce air currents whooshing over and around my head.

Then suddenly, I heard what sounded like padded footsteps on the thick, wet grass. I was lying on my stomach, my head turned to the side away from the house. I dared not move to look up at my intruder.

I stared straight ahead, frozen in place.

Suddenly the pattering sound stopped. Whoever was coming had put on brakes just a few feet from where I lay.

I smelled the creature before I saw it. Whoever had scared me had also frightened a mother skunk and her brood. She released her rank spray in the direction of the main house before creeping in with them to join me in my lair.

34

I waited for hours before I inched myself backward out of my flooded foxhole. I was soaked throughout, chilled and shivering, unable to control my tremors and too stiff to straighten myself completely.

The house was still dark, as was the sky, and there was no smoke coming from the chimney. I stayed as close as I could to the stone wall, as far away as possible from my home, until I reached a clearing and climbed over to the neighboring pasture.

The rain had stopped now and the wind had calmed to a mild breeze. I walked through open fields in the darkness, heading downhill, knowing that before too long I would reach the protected inlet at Quitsa Cove. Small boats were tied up there, and as soon as Gretchen cleared the southern shore, fishermen would be back out to check the damage, no matter what time of night. I didn't want to chance the roadway in case someone should be waiting for me, but the odds were good that I would find a familiar face here on the pond where I had so often moored my own day-sailer. I wasn't a runner, but I could outswim almost anything without fins.

Trees were down all over my path, and limbs dangled from overhead branches. I made my way slowly and carefully around the obstacles, sliding the last few feet as I came to a stop in front of the rickety wooden dock that stretched twenty feet out into the light chop of the water.

Again I waited, sitting and staring at the trail that came in from State Road, my arms encircling my knees, which were drawn against my chest as I tried to warm up. I knew that even in the dark, the shape of my body on the end of the dock against the watery backdrop would be apparent to anyone who approached. I wanted it that way. I was looking for help, not trying to scare whoever arrived.