Free Cruelest Month by Aaron Stander

house of cards came crashing down.
    When Mackenzie offered $100,000 less than the asking price, she was amazed at how quickly the bank snapped up the offer. She chided herself for not going lower. So much for toxic assets, she thought out loud as she looked around the room. She’d had spent little time or effort redecorating. The house was furnished with only the essentials needed for the next few months. She had, however, upgraded the security system with cameras, monitors, additional motion detectors, and a wireless uplink to the alarm company’s headquarters.
    Mackenzie walked to the front of the room and stood near the wall of glass that faced the bay. Small patches of snow were still visible on the opposite shore, and cold drizzle blurred the already formless landscape. After spending more than two decades in the west, most of it in California, she was having trouble adjusting to the cold, gray, March weather of northern Michigan. Sliding into an Aeron chair, she wondered, Is this just madness? Her eyes ran along the bleak horizon. Why am I here?
    Mackenzie Mason had left her senior vice-president position in a high-tech company on December 31. She and three other top-level executives walked away with severance packages equal to a year’s salary with the customary bonuses—a generous parting gift for the fortunate few. Based on their rank in the hierarchy, the other employees got from three months to two weeks wages as the once highflying dot.com slid toward insolvency.
    January 1 found Mackenzie at loose ends. But the search for a new job was the least of her concerns. Headhunters had started harassing her as soon as rumors of the company’s demise went public. More than one had made the point that she was the dream client: young, bright, articulate, the right education from the best places, and a solid track record of accomplishment. What they didn’t say, because it might be considered inappropriate, was that she was also funny, beautiful, and very sexy.
    For Mackenzie, the end of a long-term relationship was more problematic than the employment situation. Although she was the one who had insisted on it, she still woke up at night with the fear that she had made the wrong decision. Which was why she’d decided to come back to Michigan. There was something she needed to know, investigate, understand, and perhaps resolve before she could move on with her life.
    Even as she admired her now sumptuous surroundings, she could still remember being poor and hungry and vulnerable. For years she had done her best to avoid the painful memories of childhood and the trauma and sadness of her brother’s death. Those memories had intensified the day before, when she drove to the south end of the county to look at the village where she had spent two desperately unhappy years.
    Mackenzie was shocked at how the town, Sandville, had almost vanished over the past several decades. Any thoughts of taking a closer look at her grandmother’s old garden, or perhaps searching the cemetery for her brother’s grave, quickly evaporated when she saw a sheriff’s car parked on the road. The deputy, a young woman, had a small dog on a leash, and they were walking around the lot where the house formerly stood. Mackenzie slowed enough to take in the scene; she circled the block, then left, not wanting to attract attention to herself.
    What was that all about? Mackenzie thought as she drove north. She ran several scenarios that would explain the deputy’s presence at her grandmother’s house, but couldn’t generate anything more plausible than a chance happening. Perhaps the dog needed a walk. She reassured herself that it would be silly to read anything into the event.
    Mackenzie picked up an iPad and flipped through the apps. She opened a project planner and looked at her early notes. Scrolling through the first draft, she was struck by the disorder of her stratagem. She had been doing project planning for years and was known for the