Cybernetic Secretary

The sign on the restaurant door hadn’t been there yesterday.

Chrysanthemum slowed beneath the faded awning, staring at the sheet of loose-leaf paper taped crookedly against the glass. One corner had already worked itself free in the autumn wind, fluttering beneath thick black letters she recognized immediately as Anita’s handwriting.

CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

“Well. That seems dramatic.”

She reached for the handle anyway.

Locked.

Chrys pulled it again, harder this time, because apparently she had reached the bargaining-with-inanimate-objects stage before she’d even confirmed she was unemployed. When the door refused to reconsider, she leaned toward the glass and cupped her hands around her eyes.

Inside, everything looked almost exactly as it had when she left the night before. Twelve tables sat beneath the dim emergency lighting, their chairs tucked neatly underneath. A coffee mug rested beside the register, one laminated breakfast menu had slipped from its stack onto the counter, and the little brass bell above the kitchen pass still hung crooked from where Anita had smacked it with a tray two days ago after the cook yelled that table seven wanted more bacon.

It doesn’t look closed.

It looked like everyone had stepped out for five minutes and forgotten to come back.

Chrys pulled out her phone and called Anita. The call rang twice before slipping into voicemail, and a small knot tightened in her stomach. Anita answered her phone at ridiculous hours for ridiculous reasons. Chrys had once called her at eleven at night because she couldn’t remember whether she’d turned off the soup warmer, and Anita had answered with, If the restaurant burns down, we both get tomorrow off.

Okay. Not ominous at all.

She sent a quick message telling Anita she was outside and asking her to call, then lowered the phone. Her reflection floated faintly across the darkened glass, long dark hair lifting around her face in the wind. She tucked it behind one ear and stared back at herself through green eyes while she tried to decide whether she should be worried about Anita or herself first.

Her gaze drifted past her reflection toward the booth beside the front window, and despite everything, the corner of her mouth lifted.

He had always preferred that one.

Same booth, same side, usually sometime after a long shift with his heavy work jacket unzipped and his dark brown hair flattened from hours beneath a hard hat. Nicholas Mercer worked exploration drilling connected to the Holden Minerals uranium operation outside town, spending long days around rigs that brought lengths of core up from beneath the ground. Chrys had grown up hearing enough about drilling from her geologist parents to understand the basics, although she’d usually been more interested in the man sitting in the booth than whatever had happened at the rig that day.

Nick could come through Anita’s door tired, windblown and dirty after a long shift and somehow still be unfairly handsome. His coffee order never changed.

“Black as sin.”

He said it every time in that low voice of his, usually with the faintest smile playing at his mouth as though ordering plain coffee had somehow become flirtation. Chrys had pretended not to notice for approximately the first three days. After that, they both knew exactly what they were doing.

One morning during a packed breakfast rush, she’d reached across him to set down his plate at the same moment he reached for his coffee. Instead of the mug, his fingers closed gently around hers. Chrys looked down at their hands before slowly lifting her eyes to his, finding those warm brown eyes already fixed on her.

“Careful,” she’d said. “Plate’s hot.”

His thumb shifted once against her finger. “Wasn’t the plate I was worried about.”

The bastard hadn’t even smiled.

And here I am, grinning like an idiot.

Worse, she’d walked away and completely forgotten where she was going. Anita found her several seconds later standing beside the kitchen pass with two plates balanced in her hands while staring blankly at a row of ketchup bottles.

“Chrysanthemum.”

Chrys blinked. “What?”

“Earth.”

“I’m working.”

“You’re staring at the ketchup.”

“I was thinking.”

“About Heinz?” Anita followed Chrys’s gaze toward the window booth and made an exhausted sound. “Oh, for God’s sake. Give that man your number before one of you dies of sexual tension.”

Chrys laughed quietly at the memory now. She hadn’t given Nick her number, although she’d come close more than once. Somehow there had always seemed to be another morning coming, another breakfast rush, another chance for one of them to stop flirting over coffee and actually do something about it.

Then their schedules had slowly stopped cooperating.

As exploration work slowed around Holden’s operation, Nick’s drilling shifts became less predictable. Anita started trimming Chrys’s hours as the diner got quieter too. Three mornings of seeing him in a week became one, then none, then Anita would casually mention that he’d come in the day before and watched the door every time the bell rang. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Nick left drilling for steadier railroad work. He hadn’t disappeared, and neither had Chrys. They still lived in the same small town. Life had simply stopped putting them in the same room.

Chrys stepped away from the window and tucked her phone into her coat pocket. Around her, the town carried on with the ordinary rhythm of a place that had spent the last few years learning how to survive on less. Across the road, the bakery door stood propped open despite the cold, sending the smell of warm bread and cinnamon into the morning air. Two delivery drivers unloaded crates outside the grocery store while Mrs. Bell wrestled a bundled toddler into a stroller and called a greeting across the street.

The Holden Minerals uranium operation had once kept the whole region comfortably busy. Chrys remembered when every table at Anita’s filled around shift changes and Holden work trucks lined both sides of the street. The company name had been part of the town for as long as she could remember—on equipment, work jackets, community projects and the paycheques that kept half the local businesses alive.

Susan and Graham Rowan had done well then too. Both were geologists, and as a child Chrys had thought their careers consisted mostly of disappearing into the field, returning with rocks and maps, and arguing cheerfully over things nobody else at the dinner table understood.

The decline had happened slowly enough that nobody could point to the day everything changed. Exploration budgets tightened. Shifts were reduced, then reduced again. People who could find steadier work elsewhere took it, and every family that moved away meant fewer customers for the businesses left behind. One closure weakened another, and over a few years the town had learned to notice every darkened storefront.

Miller’s Hardware had closed the previous winter after nearly thirty years. People still complained about having to drive farther for half the things it used to carry. The pharmacy remained open. So did the florist and bookstore. Kids still rode bicycles through parking lots, neighbours still waved to one another across the street, and somebody was currently leaning on their horn at the intersection like the fate of civilization depended on the car ahead moving three seconds faster.

The town wasn’t dead. It was hurting, but there was still life here. Chrys loved it enough that every new closure felt personal.

And now Anita’s. Damn.

She glanced back once before continuing toward Iris’s house. She had savings, although calling them savings was becoming increasingly generous. Rent was due soon. Groceries had developed the irritating habit of costing money, and Raven and Jasper were both apparently determined to continue growing regardless of what that did to the household budget.

I’ll figure it out. I always do.

Chrys pulled her phone out again as she rounded the corner beside the bakery, checking for a reply from Anita. Nothing. She was still looking at the screen when she walked directly into someone.

A solid chest stopped her forward momentum, and two hands caught her gently by the upper arms before she could stumble backward.

“Oh, sor—”

Chrys looked up.

The apology died as recognition spread across Nick Mercer’s face.

“Whoa.”

Chrys laughed before she could help herself. “Well. Look who survived.”

For a second he simply stared at her, and Chrys didn’t particularly mind. Without the hard hat and work gear she was used to seeing him in, he was somehow even more handsome.

His dark brown hair had grown longer, thick enough now to sweep back from his forehead and kick out around his ears in those little wings hockey players always seemed to end up with, the ends curling slightly at the back of his neck. Dark stubble roughened his jaw, and standing this close after colliding with him had also reminded Chrys that Nick had filled out since the last time she’d seen him regularly, broader through the chest and shoulders than she remembered.

The morning light caught in his rich brown eyes, warming them almost amber around the edges, and when his surprise turned into a grin, fine crow’s feet appeared at their corners. That had always been the part Chrys liked most. His eyes seemed to smile before the rest of his face caught up.

His hands were still around her arms, and his gaze moved slowly over her face as though he was reacquainting himself with it. Chrys felt the familiar pull low in her stomach and nearly laughed again. Apparently their schedules failing to line up had done absolutely nothing useful for either of them.

“You almost took me out,” he said.

Chrys glanced down at the considerable size difference between them before looking back into his eyes. “I think you would’ve recovered.”

“Eventually.”

“Glad to hear you’ve stayed brave.”

Nick laughed, those little lines deepening beside his eyes, and Chrys liked seeing them enough that she immediately wanted to make him do it again. He seemed to realize he was still holding her at the same moment she did, and his hands slid slowly away before settling into the pockets of an unfamiliar work jacket.

Her eyes dropped to the reflective striping and insignia stitched over his chest. “Railroad?”

“Freight.”

“So that’s where you disappeared to.”

“Yeah. Friend of mine got me in.”

“How is it?”

“Weird hours. Long runs. I sleep when normal people are awake and occasionally forget what day it is.” He shrugged. “But it’s steady.”

“Good.” Chrys meant it, and something in her expression must have told him so because the teasing in his face softened. She knew exactly what uncertainty did to people after watching it work its way through the town for years. “Seriously. I’m glad.”

“Thanks.” Nick studied her for another moment.

A thought occurred to her. “Where were you headed, anyway?”

Nick glanced back the way he’d been walking. “Anita’s. Thought I’d grab a coffee.”

Chrys blinked. “Anita’s?”

“Yeah.”

Something about the answer caught at her. Nick hadn’t been around in months, and yet this morning he’d been walking toward the diner where he’d spent so much time sitting across from her counter.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Just coffee?”

Nick’s mouth tipped at one corner. “That was the idea.”

She held his gaze for another second, warmth beginning to creep into her cheeks. “Right.”

Something shifted in his eyes then, the warm brown catching almost amber as they lingered on hers. That familiar spark returned to his eyes. “You noticed I disappeared.”

“Of course I noticed.”

His smile widened. “You missed me.”

“I did.”

That shut him up.

Chrys almost laughed at the effect two words had on a man who could make ordering black coffee sound indecent. She wasn’t embarrassed by the admission. She had missed him, and pretending otherwise seemed ridiculous now that he was standing in front of her looking entirely too pleased with the answer.

“I missed you too,” he said.

For a moment, the old flirtation softened into something neither of them joked away. Nick glanced toward the diner and then back at her. “You heading to work?”

“Was.”

His attention sharpened. “What happened?”

Chrys tipped her head toward Anita’s. “Closed until further notice. I showed up to the sign this morning. She hasn’t answered me yet.”

“Shit.” Nick looked toward the restaurant. “I loved that place.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

His eyes returned to hers. “Not just the coffee.”

Chrys smiled. “I know.”

Nick stared at her. “You knew?”

“Nick. You ordered black coffee and somehow made it take twenty minutes.”

“That was strategy.”

“That was terrible strategy.”

“Worked, though.”

Chrys raised an eyebrow.

Nick considered the fact that they were standing on a sidewalk after months of near misses without so much as each other’s phone numbers and slowly nodded. “Fair.”

Their laughter came easily after that. Nick told her enough about the railroad for Chrys to understand why they hadn’t accidentally crossed paths lately. Overnight runs, early departures and stretches away from town had replaced his already unpredictable drilling schedule. Chrys filled him in on a few of the diner regulars he’d missed, and for several minutes the locked restaurant and looming bills receded beneath the simple pleasure of seeing him again.

Eventually Nick checked the time and grimaced. “I have to go.”

“Look at that. Railroad has schedules after all.”

“Unfortunately.” He reached into his pocket for his phone but hesitated before unlocking it. For a man who had spent months looking at Chrys like he knew exactly what he wanted, there was something unexpectedly sweet about the way his confidence softened when he held it toward her. “You know, I waited a long time for you to give me your number.”

Chrys laughed. “Funny. I think I was waiting for you.”

His eyebrows rose. “Seriously?”

“You seemed pretty confident. I assumed you were working up to it.”

Nick looked down, laughing under his breath. “That strategy was terrible.”

“It lasted six months.”

“Painfully.” He looked back at her and held the phone a little closer. “Think you could help me out this time?”

Chrys took it. “You could’ve asked me sooner.”

“I know.”

She entered her number and handed the phone back. A few seconds later her own phone vibrated in her pocket. When she checked it, a new message waited.

Now you have mine too.

“Efficient,” she said.

“I’m learning.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Nick slipped his phone away but made no move to leave. “Dinner?”

Chrys looked at him.

“Not eventually,” he added. “Not another six months. Dinner.”

She liked the tiny trace of nerves beneath his confidence almost as much as she liked the fact that he was finally asking. “I’d like that.”

The pleasure on his face was immediate. “Good.”

“Now go before your new steady job becomes your old steady job.”

Nick laughed and started away, turning once after several steps. “I’m texting you.”

“You already did.”

“I’m doing it again.”

“Go to work, Nick.”

His grin followed him around the corner.

Chrys stood there for another moment before continuing toward Iris’s, unable to stop smiling. The morning had begun with a locked restaurant door and the very real possibility that she had just lost her job, but something she’d thought she’d missed completely had somehow wandered straight back into her.

At least one good thing had happened today.

Her phone buzzed before she reached Iris’s front walk.

Dinner soon. I’m not waiting another six months.

Chrys smiled as she typed.

Look at you learning.

Iris opened the door before Chrys could knock.

The older woman took one look at her and frowned. “You’re early.”

“Good morning to you too.”

“It’s ten-thirty.”

“Then technically I’m very late for breakfast.”

Iris stepped aside to let her in. “What happened?”

Chrys pulled off her coat. “Anita’s is closed.”

Iris stopped. The concern on her face came quickly enough that Chrys busied herself hanging her coat. She didn’t want pity. Concern she could handle. Pity made everything feel more permanent.

“Closed for the day?”

“Until further notice.”

“Oh, sweetheart.”

“I’m okay.”

“I know you are.” Iris squeezed her arm. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.”

That made Chrys smile. “It does, in fact, suck.”

Raven appeared from the hallway with a book tucked against her chest. “Why are you here?”

“Apparently nobody is happy to see me today.”

Raven grinned and came straight over for a hug. Jasper followed seconds later carrying what appeared to be half the contents of Iris’s junk drawer in both hands.

Chrys looked at the collection of wire, tape and miscellaneous pieces of plastic. “What are you doing?”

“Building something.”

“That clears everything up.”

“It’s a trap.”

Chrys looked at Iris.

Iris lifted both hands. “I asked no questions.”

“For what?” Chrys asked.

Jasper frowned as though she’d missed the obvious. “I don’t know yet.”

“Excellent. Love a flexible business model.”

Raven rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

The normalcy of it settled something in Chrys. She spent a few minutes helping them gather their things while Iris quietly packed leftovers despite Chrys telling her she didn’t need to. Iris ignored her with the ease of someone who had known her long enough to understand that I don’t need it and we couldn’t use it were two entirely different statements.

By the time they left, Raven was carrying her book and backpack, Jasper was carrying his mysterious collection of junk, and Chrys had a container of food tucked under one arm.

The walk home wasn’t too far. Jasper talked almost the entire way, explaining a school argument about whether ravens could remember people who had been mean to them. Raven insisted they could, which somehow became a detailed warning about maintaining positive diplomatic relations with birds.

“You should listen to her,” Chrys said. “Ravens hold grudges.”

Jasper looked toward his sister. “Is that why Mom and Dad named you Raven?”

Raven shrugged. “Mom said they were always around.”

Chrys smiled faintly. That much she remembered too. Whenever Susan and Graham took them out to the ridge overlooking the valley, there always seemed to be ravens somewhere nearby, black shapes moving between the trees or circling lazily overhead. Susan used to say they were keeping an eye on everybody, and Raven had loved the story when she was little.

They reached the apartment building still debating whether befriending the local raven population could eventually result in an army. Chrys was laughing when they climbed the stairs.

Then she saw the door.

Her laughter stopped so abruptly that Raven nearly walked into her. The apartment door stood open by several inches, the wood around the lock split inward and splinters scattered across the floor.

No. No, no, no.

“What happened?” Raven whispered.

Chrys handed her the food container. “Stay here with Jasper.”

“Chrys—”

“Right here. Both of you.”

Something in her voice ended the argument before it began. Chrys approached the door and pushed it open carefully, her pulse climbing as the living room came into view. Couch cushions covered the floor. Cabinet doors hung open. Drawers had been emptied across the carpet, leaving papers, clothing and pieces of their lives scattered everywhere.

Burglary?

The town had been struggling for years. People got desperate, and everybody knew everybody until somebody did something that made you realize maybe you hadn’t known them as well as you thought.

“Hello?”

No answer.

Chrys stepped inside and moved carefully through the apartment, checking the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms. Whoever had broken in had already gone. When she returned, Raven and Jasper were exactly where she’d left them, although Raven had taken Jasper’s hand and pulled him close beside her.

“Nobody’s here,” Chrys said.

They followed her inside slowly, staying close enough that Jasper’s shoulder brushed against her hip. The mess seemed worse now that Chrys wasn’t concentrating on whether someone might still be hiding inside. Someone had gone through their home with no concern for what they broke along the way.

“Why would somebody do this?” Raven asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

Jasper looked up at Chrys. The colour had drained from his face, and the collection of junk he’d been so proud of at Iris’s was still clutched against his chest. “Are they coming back?”

The question landed harder than Chrys wanted it to.

She crouched in front of them. “I don’t know who did this, Jas, but nobody’s here now. We’re okay, and I’m going to fix the door.”

“But what if they come back?” Raven asked quietly.

Chrys looked between them. She wanted to promise they wouldn’t. She wanted to tell them whoever had done this was long gone and would never come near them again, but she wasn’t going to build their sense of safety on something she couldn’t know.

“Then they deal with me.” She took one of Raven’s hands and one of Jasper’s. “And Iris is right down the road. We know practically everybody in this building and half the people on this street. We’re not alone, okay?”

Raven nodded, although the worry didn’t disappear completely. Jasper moved closer, and Chrys pulled both of them against her for a moment.

“We’re staying together tonight,” she said.

Jasper nodded against her shoulder. “In the living room?”

“Absolutely.”

“With all the pillows?”

Chrys pulled back enough to look at him. “Every pillow we own.”

Raven managed a small smile. “There are eight.”

“Then eight pillows are reporting for duty.”

That helped.

Once the kids were calmer, Chrys finally looked at the apartment instead of merely the damage. Someone had searched everything, but the worst of it surrounded Susan and Graham’s old desk. Every drawer had been emptied, the thin backing pulled loose and several storage boxes overturned across the carpet. Field notebooks, folded maps, survey documents and old rock samples were scattered together beneath the desk.

Jasper crouched and picked up one of the stones. It was smooth along one edge and rough along the other, with bands of deep red and brown running through it.

“Dad’s?”

Raven leaned over to inspect it. “Could’ve been Mom’s.”

Jasper turned it over in his palm. “Family rocks?”

Despite everything, Chrys laughed. “That might be the cutest explanation of geology I’ve ever heard.”

Susan and Graham Rowan had filled their old house with rocks. Rocks on shelves, rocks in boxes, rocks Chrys had been forbidden to touch and others she’d been encouraged to hold while one of her parents explained something about them she immediately forgot. Growing up around two geologists meant Chrys recognized plenty of the terminology spread across the floor. Understanding what any of it actually meant was another matter entirely.

“Can I keep it?” Jasper asked.

Chrys looked at the stone in his hand. “Sure.”

He slipped it carefully into his pocket. Raven lifted a cracked picture frame from beneath a stack of papers. “Chrys?”

Chrys took it from her.

The photograph had been taken years ago on the grassy ridge outside town. Susan stood tucked beneath Graham’s arm, both of them laughing at something beyond the camera while the land stretched behind them toward the shallow slough and valley below. A dark bird sat high in one of the distant trees, little more than a black shape against the sky. Near Susan’s feet, tiny pale flowers grew among the grass, too small in the photograph for Chrys to pay them much attention.

They loved that place..

Susan had always called the valley beautiful. Chrys had maintained for years that beautiful was generous for a stretch of grass surrounding what was essentially an oversized puddle, but the ridge itself had been peaceful. When she’d later been forced to make decisions no twenty-something should have had to make, she’d remembered how often her parents talked about it.

Susan and Graham were buried there now, on the rise overlooking the valley they had loved. Chrys brushed a shard of broken glass from the photograph and set it carefully on the desk.

Her phone vibrated, and for one stupid second she expected Nick. It was Anita.

I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I couldn’t keep it open. I thought we’d make it through the month. We didn’t. I should have called you.

Chrys read it twice before answering.

Are you okay?

The typing bubble appeared, disappeared, then returned.

No. But I will be. Hang in there, kiddo. And keep in touch, okay?

The tightness in Chrys’s throat came unexpectedly.

You too. Promise me.

A few seconds later:

Promise.

Chrys slipped the phone back into her pocket and looked at Raven and Jasper. They were both still hovering close to her, their earlier curiosity about the scattered belongings already fading beneath the reality that someone had been inside their home.

“All right,” she said. “The first thing we do is fix that door.”

Raven glanced toward the splintered frame. “Can you?”

Chrys studied it. “Oh, it’s about to meet my drill.”

That earned a small smile.

She pulled Graham’s old toolbox from the utility cupboard while Raven found the flashlight and Jasper announced that he knew exactly where Chrys had left the drill. Raven immediately informed him that he absolutely did not, only for Jasper to return less than a minute later holding it above his head like a trophy.

“Told you.”

“You got lucky.”

“I heard that.”

Chrys took the drill from him. “Home security first. Sibling warfare later.”

The three of them worked together beneath the warm hallway light. Chrys reinforced the damaged section of frame with a spare piece of wood and reset the strike plate with longer screws while Raven held the flashlight. Jasper handed her screws one at a time with such intense concentration that Chrys appointed him Assistant Foreman, a promotion he took extremely seriously.

When she finished, Chrys closed the door and locked it, then pulled hard once and again to feel the repaired frame hold beneath her hand. Jasper watched closely before stepping forward and testing the handle himself.

“Can nobody kick it in now?”

“It’s a hell of a lot stronger than it was this morning.”

He nodded but didn’t move away. A few minutes later, while Chrys gathered broken glass, she caught him checking it again. The third time she noticed him testing the handle, she leaned against the wall and crossed her arms.

“Still locked, Assistant Foreman.”

“I know.”

“You checking my work?”

“No.”

“You’re definitely checking my work.”

Jasper gave the handle one final pull. “Just making sure.”

The teasing left Chrys’s face. “It’s okay to make sure.”

He looked at her for a moment before nodding.

They cleaned until the apartment felt like theirs again, or close enough that Chrys decided the rest could wait until morning. Raven stayed nearer to her than usual, following her from room to room with an armful of clothes or blankets, while Jasper kept the red-and-brown stone tucked safely in his pocket. Iris’s leftovers became dinner, eaten cross-legged around the coffee table because none of them felt particularly interested in separating.

“Do you think whoever did it knows us?” Raven asked after they’d been eating for a few minutes.

Chrys looked at her. “I don’t know.”

“Everybody knows everybody.”

“Pretty much.”

Jasper stopped eating. “That makes it worse.”

Chrys wished she could disagree. She reached across the coffee table and nudged his plate gently toward him. “It also means there are a lot of people around here who know us and care about us. That’s the part we’re focusing on tonight.”

Raven looked toward the repaired door. “Are we safe?”

Chrys didn’t answer immediately. She hated that Raven noticed.

“We’re together,” she said finally. “The door is fixed, Iris knows we’re home, and I’m right here. That’s what I know for sure.”

Raven held her gaze for a second before nodding.

After dinner, nobody suggested going to bed. Raven started gathering pillows without being asked, and Jasper dragged out the largest blanket they owned, immediately tripped over it, disappeared beneath it entirely and informed them from somewhere under the fabric that he was fine.

For the first time since they’d opened the apartment door, Raven laughed properly.

The living room slowly transformed into a ridiculous nest. Eight pillows did, in fact, report for duty, along with nearly every blanket they owned. Chrys put something mindless on the television and settled into the middle of the heap. Raven curled against one side of her while Jasper wedged himself against the other, his head pressed against Chrys’s ribs and the stone still clenched loosely in one hand.

Neither child said they were afraid anymore, but they didn’t need to. Raven’s fingers remained hooked around Chrys’s sleeve, and Jasper shifted closer whenever a sound came from the hallway outside. Chrys didn’t mind. Truthfully, she wasn’t particularly interested in having them out of reach either.

At some point Jasper fell asleep halfway through telling Chrys that if somebody tried to break in again, they should build an actual trap this time. Raven lasted another twenty minutes before her grip on Chrys’s sleeve finally loosened. Chrys remained where she was long after both of them were asleep, listening to their breathing settle beneath the low sound of the television while the day’s events replayed in her head.

This morning she had gone to work. Now she apparently didn’t have a job, Nick Mercer had wandered back into her life, somebody had kicked through her front door, and both of the children she was responsible for were asleep practically on top of her because they were frightened to be anywhere else.

Quite a day.

Chrys rested her cheek briefly against Raven’s hair before looking down at Jasper. The rock had finally slipped from his fingers and rested beside his hand among the blankets. She picked it up before it could disappear between the couch cushions and set it carefully on the coffee table.

Eventually, she eased herself out from between them. Jasper made a small disgruntled sound when she moved, so Chrys tucked a pillow against his side in her place and pulled the blanket higher over both of them. She didn’t go far. The mess around her parents’ desk was only a few feet away, close enough that she could sit on the carpet and still see Raven and Jasper sleeping soundly in their pile of blankets.

Chrys began sorting quietly. She placed her parents’ field notebooks together, maps in another pile and survey documents in a third. Everything she couldn’t identify went into a fourth pile, which grew considerably faster than the others. The work was strangely comforting at first. Each page returned a tiny piece of order to the room, and every few minutes she glanced toward the kids to reassure herself that they were still there.

The cracked photograph Raven had found rested nearby. Chrys picked it up again, brushing her thumb carefully along the damaged edge of the frame while she studied Susan and Graham standing together on the grassy rise. She remembered that day only vaguely. Wind. Her mother’s hair blowing across her face. Graham complaining about somebody forgetting something in the vehicle. Ravens calling somewhere overhead while the kids ran through grass that had seemed impossibly tall when they were little.

The valley stretched behind her parents in the photograph, quiet and unremarkable. Chrys had looked across it countless times growing up without ever understanding what Susan found so beautiful about it.

Beside the photograph hung one of her mother’s charcoal sketches of the same view. It had been knocked crooked during the break-in, so Chrys stood and straightened it. Susan had drawn the slough in dark sweeping strokes, surrounded by long grasses and clusters of tiny flowers. A few black marks sat among the trees along the ridge, barely detailed enough to be birds.

“Still looks like a swamp, Mom,” Chrys whispered.

She smiled faintly and returned to the floor, careful not to wake the kids. For several minutes she continued sorting through the papers, but the longer she worked, the more something about the room bothered her. At first she assumed it was simply the lingering discomfort of knowing a stranger had been inside their home, touching their things and opening their drawers. Slowly, though, the feeling became more specific.

Something just doesn’t make sense.

Chrys looked toward the television. It had been knocked facedown beside its stand but left behind. Their tablet was still wedged beneath one of the couch cushions, and her purse sat exactly where she’d left it that morning. She quietly crossed the room and checked inside. Her wallet was there, along with her cards and every dollar of cash she’d been carrying.

She frowned and opened the little drawer beneath the television. Forty-three dollars of emergency cash sat underneath a stack of instruction manuals, untouched.

Chrys stayed crouched there for a moment, looking across the apartment with a growing uneasiness. She thought back over everything she’d picked up that evening and began noticing a pattern she hadn’t seen while Raven and Jasper were awake and frightened.

Whoever had come into their home had opened ordinary cupboards and drawers, but they’d done something entirely different around Susan and Graham’s belongings. Their old desk had been pulled apart. Storage boxes containing their work had been emptied. Maps were unfolded across the carpet, field notebooks had been searched and geological documents Chrys barely understood were scattered everywhere.

Yet the things somebody breaking into a struggling family’s apartment might actually steal were still sitting exactly where they’d been left.

Chrys’s eyes moved toward Raven and Jasper. They were tangled together now beneath the blankets, Raven’s foot sticking out from one end of the pile while Jasper had somehow acquired three pillows. They looked peaceful again, and Chrys was grateful they were asleep before the realization settling over her had a chance to frighten them even more.

Her gaze returned to the cracked photograph of Susan and Graham. Nothing valuable had been taken. Whoever had come through that door hadn’t wanted their money or their electronics. They had spent their time searching through the belongings of two people who had been dead for years.

This wasn’t a robbery.

Someone had been looking for something of her parents’, and Chrys had no idea what, or why.