Page 99 of The Hermit on the Hill

"Uh, you probably want to leave them on, honey."

Sam puffed out his cheeks and swallowed hard. Then he walked right into the shower as he was. He kept Aidan out of the spray because the water wasn't warm enough, yet, but he stuck as much of himself as he could under the water.

I stripped quickly and joined them. The water was just the right temperature, so I unwrapped the baby carrier from around Sam and took Aidan from him. Sam turned quickly away. There was poo all over Aidan's back and down his legs.

I stuck Aidan under the water, and he cooed at the feel of it. I couldn't leave him under the water for too long or his diaper would swell like a pumpkin, but I got him as clean as I could before I turned back to Sam. "You want the baby or the diaper?"

Sam stared at me like I'd asked him to compute the square root of five thousand six hundred and twenty-three. "Uh, baby?"

I handed Aidan over and took off our baby's disgusting diaper. I rolled it into as neat a bundle as I could and sprinted, naked, to the diaper disposal in the nursery.

By the time I made it back to the shower, Sam was sitting on the bench with a poo-free Aidan on his lap. Sam was cleaning Aidan with soap and singing him a little song. Since I hadn't gotten poo on me, I dried off and pulled my clothes back on.

"I can take him now." I held out a towel for Aidan. Sam handed him over and I took our boy to get a new diaper on before he made another mess.

Sam, I assumed, would scrub every inch of himself and his sweatpants and the baby carrier for at least the next hour.

By the time I got Aidan dressed and in a clean diaper, he was yawning and his lids were heavy. I took him back to the master bedroom, where he napped and slept at night, sang to him until he fell asleep, and set him down in his bassinet.

I raced back into the bathroom, got naked again in record time, and jumped into the still-running shower. "Baby's sleeping. Time for the parents to play."

Sam wasn't there.

What the hell?

I shut off the shower and put my clothes back onagain. Which was annoying because it was winter, so I was wearing layers and I wanted sex, damn it.

I couldn't yell for Sam without risking waking Aidan, so I jogged around the house in sock feet, checking every room and hissing Sam's name.

I found him on the front porch, entirely naked and dripping.

"Where the hell are you, Fluffy?" Sam swore softly as he walked across the porch, staring out at our property.

"What'cha doin'?" I asked.

Fluffy was tough, but also very lazy. If Fluffy had gotten out of the house, which seemed unlikely, there was no way he'd gone far.

Sam spun to face me and gave me the kind of smile usually reserved for creepy Jack-o'-lanterns. "Just looking for Fluffy. He took off when Aidan started screaming."

"Uh-huh. He takes off every time Aidan screams. Did you look in the laundry room?"

Last time he'd taken off, we'd found Fluffy in the bottom of the laundry hamper under a pile of dirty clothes.

"He's not there."

"So you think he learned how to open the front door all on his own and took off to join the circus?"

He put his hands on his hips and glared at me. I bit back a laugh because he looked genuinely worried. "Nana could have let him out."

Now I was worried. "Honey, your Nana left. Remember? She said goodbye."

Well, she'd left us white and yellow Chrysanthemums on the kitchen counter after we'd brought Aidan home safely. Since Chrysanthemums symbolize goodbye, we figured that's what she meant. Since we hadn't seen or heard a sign of her since, it seemed pretty certain she was gone.

I'd tried a seance a few months before Aidan was born, but she hadn't spoken to us or given us any sign she was around. It seemed she preferred to communicate by slamming doors, throwing things, and dropping flowers everywhere.

Sam ran a hand through his hair. "It was the best plan, Jenna. Do you know how long it took me to come up with? And now it's ruined."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but the water droplets on his skin and in his hair were freezing. I grabbed his hand to pull him inside, but stopped when a flash of movement at the edge of the woods caught my attention.

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