Into the Fog (Fisher's Bay 1) ✅

A Course Uncharted

Nadia sat in her old Ford Escape, staring at the dark cabin in front of her. It sat buried in the trees, nearly hidden in the night though she could hear the steady roar of the waves. The beach and ocean were just on the other side of the house and she imagined it probably was beautiful in the daylight.

Right now the building was silent and empty, her headlights providing the only light, giving her a straight view of the front of the house and the porch that spanned it. An ancient SUV was parked to the side, looking as though it hadn't been driven in months.

Nadia took a deep breath and leaned forward on the steering wheel, studying the structure in front of her. It was different here. Quiet. She wasn't used to quiet. Or the feeling of being the only person within a few miles radius. Part of her wondered if she should be frightened. The small, dark town she had driven through to get here had certainly appeared creepy. But yet, Nadia felt an odd comfort even though she had never stepped foot in the area before.

And curiosity.

She wondered how long she intended to sit in the car before she went in. And just what secrets about her past the home held.

"What could you be hiding?" she whispered into the darkness.

Nadia was surprised how big the house was, though maybe she shouldn't have been. She had never met her grandmother. Didn't even know what she looked like or much about her at all. The only times her mother mentioned the woman, it was usually mutters about how she never understood. Or the rare times she heard her mother crying in the middle of the night when she was supposed to be asleep, whispering, "I'm sorry, Mama..."

Granted, Nadia never really knew how to take the things her mother said. There were times when she seemed lucid. These were usually the rare moments Mara Johansen was ever sober. But even then, she would tell Nadia that she had to be careful. That it wasn't safe to tell anyone who she really was. As such, every few moves, Mara would change their names. Nadia grew so tired of it that after her mother had dumped her off with a neighbor just before she started high school, she returned to her original name out of spite.

Nadia was fairly certain that the demons Mara ran from were more imagined than real anyway.

Thankfully, the only thing Nadia had gotten from her mother was her dark brown hair, tan skin, and features. She remembered thinking her mother had been rather beautiful when she was a child. And that she had a beautiful voice, though Nadia hadn't heard her sing since she was a small child. There was a time when she wished she had her mother's warm brown eyes that reminded her of melted chocolate. Instead, Nadia had a peculiar shade of blue that was almost purple at times and attracted more attention than Mara had wanted. Well before she was old enough, her mother forced her to wear brown contacts.

A habit Nadia continued to this day, though she hadn't stopped to wonder why. It had long ago become a habit, and well, she did have to admit that she too wasn't fond of the attention her eyes drew the few times she ventured out of the house without contacts.

It was another on the long list of strange things Nadia's mother had done that she learned to never question. When Nadia was younger, her mother had made it seem like a game. But eventually - like all things - her mother gave up on that.

Nadia wondered just what role the woman who had lived - and then died - in this old cabin in the woods near the sea had played in it all.

A woman who had left everything to a granddaughter she had never met and somehow managed to track down after years of estrangement. Though it wasn't like Nadia had made it hard. She had been in Boston since high school and went by her real name for the first time in her life. It was surprising her mother hadn't somehow found out about it in the many years since then, as paranoid as Mara was.