Her mother’s bedroom door was open.
Patience stood in her own doorway, her sleepy eyes wide as dinner plates with worry.
“I’ll get her.” Tessa ran to the open front door.
Outside, the motion-activated floodlights brightened the yard like a baseball stadium. Her mother stood in the middle of the front yard. Her feet were bare, and her nightgown flapped around her thin legs. In her sixties, she looked twenty years older. As her illness had progressed, she’d stopped coloring her hair. Then she’d refused to have it cut. Now, she protested even having it brushed or washed. It swirled in a tangled mess around her pale face. Tessa did her best, but there were days when she just gave up. Her mom shoved both hands into it and let out a scream that shook Tessa to her bones.
She ran outside. “Mom!”
Her mom didn’t respond. Another earsplitting yell pierced the night. Goose bumps rose on Tessa’s arms. She stopped ten feet short of her unpredictable mother.
“Mom. What’s wrong?”
“They’re dying,” her mother wailed. “They’re all dying.”
“What’s dying, Mom?” Tessa took a step closer.
Her mom whirled to face her. “My chickens. Something is killing them. Can’t you hear it?”
Tessa listened for three heartbeats. The night was quiet, other than the wind in the trees and the distant hoot of an owl. Beyond her mother, she could see into the side yard. A wire enclosure surrounded the chicken coop. No hens were in sight.
“I don’t hear anything,” Tessa said. “I put the chickens away earlier. They’re safe.”
“No! They’re dying!” her mother screamed, her voice shrill.
She didn’t tell her mother to calm down. Doing so usually upset her, as did trying to convince her she was wrong. Tessa had the best luck with distraction, but her mom seemed unusually focused tonight.
Tessa gestured toward the coop. “Let’s go see.”
Her mother’s eyes were wild, with too much white visible around the edges. Tessa stepped forward and tried to take her arm. Her mother snatched it away in an angry gesture. Tessa fell back a step. Anger was new. Until now, her mother had been upset, confused, and panicked at times. But this was a whole new mood. This was paranoia and—even worse—distrust.
“Don’t touch me!” her mom yelled. “No one believes me. Not even you.”
“Okay, Mom. What do you want to do?” Tessa lifted both hands in a surrender gesture.
Her mom lifted her hand. She held a chef’s knife in her fist. Floodlights gleamed on the blade.
Where had she gotten that? And how had Tessa not seen it? Where had she been keeping it? Tessa’s heart double tapped. “Mom, please give me the knife.”
“No!” Her mom turned toward the enclosure. “There’s an animal in there.”
Tessa paced by her mother’s side. They approached the chicken enclosure.
“See?” Tessa waved toward the coop. “There’s nothing in there.”
“I can hear them crying!” Her mother jabbed the air with the knife.
Was she hallucinating?
“What’s happening?” Patience yelled from the front porch.
“Stay inside!” Tessa ordered. “She has a knife.”
Patience gave a little yelp that cracked Tessa’s heart. Tessa had worried about her mother getting lost and hurting herself. She’d never thought she’d have to worry about her mom hurting one of them.
What if her mom hadn’t gone outside? What if she’d thought Patience was a threat? How long has she been hiding that knife?
Tessa scanned the yard. She needed to get that weapon. She couldn’t do it alone, not without hurting her mom. She needed help. “Patience, would you call Logan and ask him to come over?”
“Okay.” Patience’s voice broke.
Tessa’s heart stuttered, but she couldn’t focus on her sister yet.
“Mom,” Tessa said in the calmest voice she could manage. “Tell me what you see.”
“There’s something in the chicken yard. It’s hurting them. They’re crying. They’re dying.” Her mom stumbled toward her pets.
Tessa stayed close but out of reach of the knife. Her mother looked older than she was, and she was physically stronger than most people would expect. Tessa had no doubt she could disarm her mother, but could she do that without hurting her?
“Mom, please give me the knife,” Tessa said.
“No! I have to save them.” Her mom slashed the knife through the air. The blade passed barely an inch from her thigh. She was going to stab herself.
Tessa inched closer. She needed to change her approach. Sanity wasn’t working, because her mom couldn’t relate to it. She needed to bring her mother back to the present. But how?
Tessa raised her hands. “Move out of the way, Mom. I’ll take care of it.”
Her mom stopped.
“I’ll chase away whatever is hurting your chickens.” Tessa moved past her mother. “You don’t need the knife.”
Her mom lowered the knife, staring at it. Tessa continued her charade. She went into the chicken enclosure and opened the coop. Hens clucked from their roosts, annoyed at Tessa for disturbing them. Killer Hen side-eyed Tessa from her perch. But she was too sleepy to launch an attack. If there had been an animal in the coop, the chickens would have been squawking and panicking, not dozing.
“Sorry, ladies,” Tessa whispered.
“It’s right there!” her mom cried. “Look at all the blood.”
There wasn’t a drop of blood in sight. Tessa counted the chickens. All were present. All looked fine. No foxes or other predators in sight. But could she convince her mother, who was clearly deep in a hallucination?
“What do you think was in the coop?” Tessa asked.
“A bear!” Mom clutched the knife close to her body.
Tessa could remember exactly one bear ever on Widow’s Island. She’d been in grade school, and a black bear had swum over from a neighboring island. It hadn’t hurt anything, and it hadn’t stayed long. But Widow’s Island was boring, and the bear had been big news.
Her mom’s eyes darted around. Tessa didn’t know what to say. “I’ll chase away the bear, Mom. You go inside. Give me the knife.”
Her mother’s head shook slowly. She gripped the knife tighter, her knuckles turning white. “No. I need it.”
Headlights approached. Logan’s beat-up Range Rover parked in front of the house. He stepped out and approached, his hands in front of his chest in a nonthreatening position. “Hey, Tessa. What’s happening?”
Her mom spun, brandishing the knife. “Who is he?”
“The forest ranger, Mom,” Tessa said. “He’s come to help. Logan, my mother says there’s a bear in the chicken coop.”
Logan raised an eyebrow but played along. “I’ll take care of that for you, ma’am,” he said in an authoritative, commanding voice. Then he walked toward her.
“Wait—” Tessa protested.
But Logan ignored her. He went into the chicken coop and made some noise. Then he emerged. “The bear is gone.” Logan walked out the wood-and-wire door and latched it behind him.