Free Through the Door by Jodi McIsaac Page A

anywhere.”
    “We’re going to look everywhere we can, Cedar,” Riona said in a soft voice. “We have considerable resources, and we can cover a lot of ground very quickly. But someone needs to be here for Eden when she comes back. Wherever she is, she’s going to get tired and hungry, and then she’s going to come home. And I’m pretty sure the person she’ll want to see most is her mother. That’s how you can best help, by making sure Eden has someone to come home to.”
    Cedar closed her eyes. Her rising panic was beating away at the remnants of her resolve. She took a deep, slow breath, trying to quell it before it reached the surface.
    “Okay,” she said to Riona without looking up.
    Riona gazed at her worriedly, and then followed her husband out the door. Cedar breathed deeply, attempting to loosen the knot in her stomach. She tried to tell herself that Riona was right, that it would be okay, that Eden had just gone exploring somewhere and would be back soon. She repeated it to herself over and over again, a mantra that would hopefully help her hang on to her sanity.
    A strange sound broke her concentration. It was muffled and seemed to come from the direction of the front door. She jumped up, her heart racing. “Eden?” she cried, rushing toward the door and flinging it open. There was nothing there. Then she looked down. Of course. It was the neighbor’s cat, who spent as much time in Cedar’s apartment as she did in her own.
    “Oh, hey, Watson,” Cedar said. “Did you get locked out again?” The cat walked past her into the apartment, and Cedar shut the door. She dug around in the cupboard for the small bag of food she kept for the cat’s visits. Watson ignored the proffered food and jumped up onto the sofa. Cedar went and sat beside him, and the cat curled up in her lap and started to purr.
    “Eden’s not here, Watson,” Cedar whispered as she stroked his fur. “She’s missing. And it’s my fault. Of course she wanted to show Jane. Mum was right—what was I thinking? And now something has gone wrong, and she could be anywhere in the world.” She looked at her phone, wondering if she were making a huge error by not calling the police. She pressed her hands to her forehead and repeated her new mantra.
It was justa mistake. She’ll come back. She can come back.
Everything she had learned in the past few hours pressed in on her—Finn’s parents, their claims that Eden was “one of them,” her mother’s bizarre behavior. Cedar had the feeling she had just stepped into the middle of something much bigger than herself, and she felt completely out of her depth.
    She moved to stand, and Watson jumped off her lap. She started pacing again. She made a pot of coffee. She made a list of everything she knew about the situation, and then stared at it incredulously. She paced some more, every nerve in her body tensed, waiting for a door to suddenly appear in front of her, waiting for Eden to walk through it. She forced herself to keep moving, as though that could distract her from feeling completely helpless. She wiped down all the counters in the kitchen, swept the floors, and dusted every surface in the living room. All the while, Watson sat and watched her or circled around her legs or jumped up into her lap if she happened to sit down.
    It was 3:00 a.m. when Watson wrapped himself around Cedar’s legs, purring loudly, then walked into her room and jumped up on the bed. Cedar felt ridiculous, following this cat around her own house, but the warmth of his presence was no small comfort to her. So she made sure all the lights were on, and then curled up beside the small, warm body on her bed. She stared at the ceiling for a while, not moving, letting silent tears run down the sides of her face and into her hair.
    As her body yielded to sleep, she dreamed of a man walking through a field of the dead. It was a dream she’d had before, a recurring nightmare she’d experienced since childhood. It