Chapter 5 - The Cabin in the Mist
By dawn, the city lights had dissolved into an endless expanse of jagged pine trees and gray, churning ocean.
The directions Dr. Wright had given me led off the main highway onto a narrow, unpaved logging road that wound steeply down toward a rocky cove. The tires crunched loudly over frozen gravel and wet pine needles, the car slipping slightly on patches of black ice.
According to the slip of paper in my pocket, the cabin was secluded—miles away from the nearest town, completely cut off from cell towers and civilization.
When the rusted iron gate finally came into view, half-hidden by overgrown blackberry bushes, my hands were cramped so tightly around the steering wheel my knuckles were stark white. I hopped out of the car, unlocked the padlock with the brass key Dr. Wright had given me, and pushed the creaking gate open.
A hundred yards down the winding dirt track sat the cabin.
It was a weathered, two-story structure made of dark timber, its roof blanketed in a thin layer of frost, looking like something straight out of a gothic ghost story. Smoke was curling lazily from the stone chimney.
My breath caught in my throat.
Smoke.
Someone was inside.
I grabbed my baby from his car seat, pulling my worn sweater tightly around him to shield him from the biting coastal wind, and crept slowly up the wooden steps of the front porch. The floorboards groaned beneath my boots as I approached the heavy oak door.
I raised my hand and knocked.
Once. Twice.
Inside, the shuffling of footsteps stopped dead.
For a terrifying five seconds, there was absolute silence. Then, the heavy deadbolt turned with a loud, mechanical clack, and the door pulled inward.
There he stood.
Logan.
He looked thinner than he had seven months ago, his beard overgrown, dark circles bruised deep beneath his eyes, wearing a faded flannel shirt that hung loosely on his frame. He looked like a ghost of the man I had loved.
He stared at me, his jaw dropping open, the color draining entirely from his face as his eyes moved from my exhausted, tear-stained face down to the bundle wrapped securely in my arms.
"Joanna..." he whispered, his voice cracking violently. "How... how did you find me?"
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"You left a lot of loose ends, Logan," I said, my voice cutting through the freezing morning air like a blade of ice as I pushed past him into the warm, fire-lit cabin. "And now, your family’s lawyers are less than twelve hours behind us."
Logan slammed the door shut, locking the deadbolt with trembling hands, and turned around just as headlights cut sharply through the dark, fog-shrouded trees at the top of the driveway.
