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AFTER WE LEFT LANCASTER, DREARY clouds blotted out the sun, spitting rain against the windshield. Back at home, Dad had watched the weather report every morning. If I got up early enough, I’d make some coffee and join him in the living room. But I always knew what the weather was supposed to be like whether I watched or not. Dad warned me about the forecast if he thought it important.

It bothered me that I hadn’t prepared for this weather, never mind the fact that we weren’t in New York. I was so used to knowing everything. The weather. My school schedule for the day. My to-do list for the lab. I didn’t know anything anymore. I didn’t even know where my next meal would come from.

Using the map Sam had bought at a gas station, we drove through
Whittier—a small town with country charm fit for a nostalgic postcard. A big banner strung up over the main road said the town’s Pumpkin Palooza was scheduled for the following weekend. Scarecrows stood like sentries in front of the little shops.

The downtown strip faded behind us as we headed farther and farther north. When we started down the road indicated on the deed, Sam reached over and turned off the pop song playing on the radio. Silence inflated like a life raft, filling the spaces around us. I wrung my hands. What would we do if this house was a dead end?

We drove up and down the long dirt road, checking mailboxes. None of the addresses matched the one on the house deed, but maybe that was deliberate. Finally, we spotted an overgrown track leading back into the woods, the drive located where our address should be, between 2156 and 2223.

As Sam pulled into the driveway, Nick racked a bullet in the chamber of one of the guns. Cas and Trev followed suit, all of them working in perfect synchronization.

About a mile from the road, the trees thinned out, giving way to a clearing. A cabin sat in the middle. Even in the shade of the storm clouds and in its state of disrepair, the cabin still managed to look homey. The shake-shingle exterior was weathered and faded to the perfect shade of red. A few rusty lawn chairs sat on a crooked porch, an empty flowerpot forgotten between them. A dead tree branch hung off the porch as if it had fallen there in a storm and had never been moved.

The windows were dark and covered in a thin sheet of dust and dirt. The only car in the driveway was ours. The place looked empty, but despite that, it
felt
empty, the loneliness hanging in the air like old tobacco smoke, waiting for someone to blow it away.

“What now?” I said. Rain continued to plink against the windshield, the drops becoming fatter and more frequent.

“Nick and Cas around back,” Sam said. “I’ll take the front door. Trev, stay here with Anna.”

I didn’t want to sit idly in the vehicle, but I didn’t want to search the house, either. I was afraid of what I’d do if I found more evidence of my mother.

The boys exited the vehicle with the sort of silent agility that contradicted their size. Nick and Cas ran around back, guns at their sides. Sam went right, to the tiny garage that sat detached from the house. He checked the lone window there before leaping onto the house’s front porch and sliding along the wall.

At the front door, he pulled out the key he’d found in the cemetery and tried the lock. The key worked, the door opened, and he disappeared inside.

“What do you think?” I whispered.

Trev propped an elbow on his knee. “It seems safe.”

“More so than the one in Pennsylvania.”

“Agreed.” I felt him watching me. “There’s nothing wrong with hoping.”

I turned around. “For what?”

“Your mother.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Hearing someone else talk about my mother made it more real, like it was possible she was inside that cabin, waiting for me.

“What if she isn’t alive?” I slumped against the seat. “What if all this wishing is for nothing?”

“ ‘In all things it is better to hope than to despair.’ ”

“Whose quote is that?”

Trev smirked, folding his hands together. He loved it when I asked him for more information, when I gave him the opportunity to show off. “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”

“What’s the Aristotle one? The one about hope?”

His eyes lost focus as he dug for the quote I wanted. I could see the moment when he remembered it, the glimmer returning to his amber eyes. I’d never met anyone with a real lightbulb expression like Trev’s.

“ ‘Hope is a waking dream.’ ”

I let the words echo in my head. The quote reminded me of that feeling you get when you start to wake from a dream you don’t want to leave. That crushing sensation in the center of your chest, like you are losing an important piece of yourself you won’t ever get back.

That’s what hope was. Clinging to something you weren’t sure would ever be yours. But you had to hold on anyway, because without it, what was the point?

That fit my life perfectly, in so many ways. Even more so now.

Sam reappeared on the front porch and waved for us, which I thought revealed enough of what he’d found. If my mother had been inside, he would have come out to warn me himself. So she wasn’t waiting. And even though I’d told myself I wouldn’t believe she’d be there, I had. The eagerness burned out and crackled.

We entered into a living room, where a few armchairs faced a brick fireplace. A couch rested against the far wall. Cobwebs hung like Spanish moss from a brass lamp.

A large kitchen took up the back corner of the other side of the house. A long, rectangular table filled the space to the right of the front door. Directly in front of me, stairs led up to the second floor.

Thunder followed a flash of lightning, the low rumble reverberating through the bare wood floors. Rain continued to patter against the windows, washing away the dirt. I pulled my jacket closed as the wind kicked up and crept through the cabin’s cracks.

“Is it safe?” I asked as Sam walked by.

“As far as I can tell.”

My shoulders relaxed. We’d just left the lab the day before, but it felt like we’d been on the run forever. Being in an actual house, tucked in the middle of nowhere, drained some of the pent-up anxiety from my bones.

I dropped onto the couch and was greeted with a cloud of dust. I coughed, clearing the air with a wave of my hand. This place needed a good scrubbing. My fingers itched to do something. I’d been in charge of the cleaning at home, and I worried about it now that I was
gone. I couldn’t imagine the house surviving on its own without me there to look after it. Or maybe what I really meant was that I couldn’t imagine my dad surviving without me to take care of him.

Was he worried about me like I was worried about him?

I jumped from the couch, restless, and joined Cas in the kitchen. A cobweb stretched over his hair. I nabbed it, holding it in front of him so he could see. “Sometimes I think you’re hopeless.”

He put an arm around me. “That’s why I have you. You’re good at keeping us in line.”

“And by
us
you mean you.”

“Sure. Whatever.” He left my side and tried the burners on the stovetop. Nothing happened. “Damn it. I’m frickin’ starving.”

“You are perpetually starving.”

“I’m used to having three square meals a day.”

“If the house has been untouched for years—and it looks like it has been—I doubt anything is usable.” I moved around the L-shaped kitchen counter to the window that looked out on the garage. “Have you been out there yet?”

“No. But I’m game for an adventure. What do ya say?”

I grinned. “Game.”

The others were in the living room, inspecting the fireplace and the chimney. Cas let Sam know where we were headed before we eased out the back door. We ran from the porch to the door at the side of the garage. A kiss of rain hit my face and I shielded my eyes with one hand. Cas rammed his shoulder against the door and it
swung open, scraping against the concrete floor. Poor light stole through the two small windows, but it was enough to see what we were dealing with.

“Look.” I hurried to the far left corner. “A grill. We could barbecue.”

Cas’s expression was nothing short of ecstasy as he caressed the black steel dome that made up the grill’s hood. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I had a grilled steak? Or a barbecued chicken leg?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Um… a long time?”

He ignored me. “All those damn barbecue commercials on TV. Dangling it right in front of my face like a frickin’ carrot in front of a donkey.”

“How do you even know what barbecue sauce tastes like? You never had it in the lab.”

“A man never forgets the taste of barbecue. I probably had it
before
the lab.” He hoisted the grill hood and took a whiff. “Oh, God—it still smells like charcoal and sizzling meat.”

“It’s amazing you don’t weigh three hundred pounds.”

He pushed up the sleeve of his sweaty, muddy shirt and flexed his biceps. “All that food gave me this svelte figure, I’ll have you know.”

I eyed the bulkiness of his arm, the broadness of his shoulders. “
Svelte
means ‘slender.’ ”

“But it also means to have clean lines. Which obviously I do.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

I left him to drool over the grill while I surveyed what else might be useful. Some yard tools had been organized on rubber-coated hooks on the far wall. Different-sized boards were stacked up below the tools. Directly across from that, I spotted a power box and a bulky contraption on the floor beneath it. “What is that?”

“That’s a generator.”

I looked over my shoulder to find Cas rummaging around a loft area built beneath the peak of the roof.

“How did you get up there?”

He nodded at the stack of boards. “I jumped.”

“You are such a monkey. Now come look at this.”

He hung over the edge of the loft headfirst, flipped and then dangled there for a second in a backhanded pull-up, the threads of muscle tightening in his forearms before he let go. “Whoa. Am I badass or what? I didn’t even know I could do that.”

I stood there, mouth hanging open. “Then why did you? You could have been hurt!”

“Because I felt like it.” He nudged the boxy generator with his foot. “Looks like it’s been wired into the power box. Good to know.” He twisted off the gas cap. “Not much juice, though, and considering we’re broke…”

“We’ll have to get by without it,” I guessed.

He nodded, but shot the grill another meaningful look. “At least we have that beauty.”

“Do you want me to help cart it out? We could put it on the back porch.”

“Are you kidding me? I got this.” He positioned his hands on the underside of the grill and picked it up without much effort. More evidence that he was stronger than any boy his age and size should be.

We spent the next hour scrubbing the grill with an old wire brush we found in the kitchen. Sam built a fire in the fireplace. Nick and Trev gathered wood in the surrounding forest. No one mentioned how long we planned to stay, but judging by the firewood now stacked along the back porch, we could survive at least a week without having to worry about warmth. Food was an issue, though. We had no money, no provisions.

We gathered in the living room to discuss strategy after dusk.

Sam stood near the fireplace, arms crossed tightly in front of himself. He was still covered in dirt from the cemetery. As far as I could tell, we had no running water to clean up with.

Cas sat on the arm of one of the easy chairs, a foot propped where his butt should have been. “You didn’t happen to find any money lying around here, did you?”

Sam shook his head. “If I left anything, it wouldn’t be easy to find. It might take some time.”

“I’d stand on the street corner to score a steak,” Cas said.

I couldn’t help laughing. “You know, you might be flooded with business.”

His mouth stretched into a lecherous grin. “If you come with me, we could be rich by morning.”

“Very funny.”

“Cas and I will head into town,” Trev said. “We’ll see what we can come up with.”

“And what am I supposed to do, boss?” Instead of joining us, Nick leaned in the doorway between the living room and dining room.

“You’re on watch.”

While Sam ran Cas and Trev through the specifics—which sounded an awful lot like “Steal whatever you can get your hands on without getting caught,” but not in those words—I went to inspect the kitchen.

Sam had mentioned earlier that there was a pantry, but half the food had expired. I wanted to see for myself what was inside. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do.

The pantry was a large walk-in tucked beneath the staircase. Enough light spilled in from the kitchen windows that I didn’t need a flashlight to start taking inventory. Gallons of water lined the baseboards. The lower shelves were stocked full of medical and emergency supplies, like batteries, matches, and rubbing alcohol.

The other shelves held hard grains, beans, and pasta. There were vacuum-sealed bags of salt, sugar, and freeze-dried food. Boxes of powdered milk, dried soup mixes, and cereal.

I started checking expiration dates. The cereal and beans had gone bad a while ago, but I thought we might be able to get away with eating the pasta and soup mixes.

It was just like Sam to be prepared for anything. He could probably survive an apocalypse.

The doorway darkened behind me. “Find anything useful?” Sam asked.

I turned around and pressed my back against the shelves. “Yeah.”

He stepped inside with me, and suddenly the pantry didn’t seem as big as it had before. He reached for a bag of rolled oats, grazing my arm as he did. Heat rippled out from where he’d touched me, even though it wasn’t on purpose and there were layers of clothing between us.

I slid aside, but it took every ounce of self-control I had to do it. “Anything come back to you yet?” I asked. “The house seem familiar?”

He set the oats down. “I’m having a hard time deciphering what’s real and what’s merely a sense of déjà vu.”

“Trev would say there’s no such thing, that it’s the mind recalling something from the past.”

“Trev thinks there’s a deeper meaning to everything.”