The first time I saw my six-year-old daughter come out of Robert Harris’s shed, she was carrying an old brass globe in both hands.

Mr. Harris came out behind her.

Then I noticed the freshly turned dirt about twenty feet from the shed.

I dropped the grocery bag I was holding.

“Lucy!”

My daughter stopped.

Mr. Harris did too.

For years, people in our little western North Carolina town had whispered the same thing about the old man who lived alone near the tree line.

His wife, Mary, had disappeared.

There had been no funeral anyone remembered.

No obituary pinned to the church bulletin board.

No family gathering.

One year she was there.

Then she wasn’t.

And now my daughter was standing beside him.

The House at the Edge of the Woods

My husband, Daniel, had died three years earlier.

Afterward, Lucy and I moved into a small rental house outside town, close enough to the Blue Ridge Mountains that deer sometimes crossed our backyard before breakfast.

Robert Harris lived about a quarter mile away.

His property backed into the woods, and most people avoided it.

He was in his seventies, tall but stooped, with gray hair he cut himself and an old brown jacket he seemed to wear in every season.

He also had two enormous gray animals.

Depending on who was telling the story, they were German shepherds, wolf hybrids, or actual wolves.

Linda Parker, who lived across from us, had warned me during our first week.

“Keep Lucy away from that property.”

“Why?”

Linda lowered her voice.

“His wife disappeared.”

I waited.

“What do you mean, disappeared?”

“Mary. Sweet woman. Then one day she was just gone.”

“Did anyone report her missing?”

Linda hesitated.

“I don’t know. It was years ago.”

That should have mattered more to me.

Instead, I remembered only the word disappeared.

A few weeks later, I caught Lucy sitting on Mr. Harris’s porch eating cookies.

I marched across the grass.

“Lucy Miller.”

She looked up.

“Hi, Mom.”

Mr. Harris immediately stood.

“I’m sorry. She came over because she saw Bear.”

A huge gray animal was lying under the porch.

I grabbed Lucy’s hand.

“You don’t come here without asking me.”

“But Mr. Harris was showing me—”

“Home. Now.”

Mr. Harris didn’t argue.

That almost made me more uncomfortable.

Then it happened again.

And again.

Lucy liked him.

She said he knew every bird in the woods. He could fix broken toys. He knew why the moon sometimes appeared during the daytime.

Then came the afternoon I saw her leaving his shed.

“What were you doing in there?” I demanded.

Lucy held up the globe.

“Mr. Harris fixed it.”

“Fixed what?”

“The little thing that makes it turn.”

Robert stayed several feet away.

“It belonged to a school. They were throwing it out.”

I barely heard him.

I was staring at the dirt.

A rectangular patch behind the shed had clearly been dug recently.

That evening, Linda came over.

When I described it, she stopped stirring her coffee.

“Behind the shed?”

“Yes.”

She stared at me.

“Sarah, that’s exactly where people always wondered if—”

She didn’t finish.

She didn’t have to.

“Nobody Ever Talks to Him”

I forbade Lucy from going back.

She cried.

Then she got angry.

“He’s my friend.”

“He’s an adult you barely know.”

“You barely know him.”

“Exactly.”

Lucy folded her arms.

“Then why do you think he’s bad?”

I told her there were things children didn’t understand.

That made her angrier.

“Everybody talks about Mr. Harris, Mom. Nobody ever talks to him.”

I remember standing at the kitchen counter with a dish towel in my hand.

I had no answer.

A few days later, someone posted a shaky phone video in a neighborhood Facebook group.

Two large gray animals were running through Mr. Harris’s property.

The comments multiplied.

Those are wolves.

Someone needs to call animal control.

Why does he need animals like that?

Then someone wrote:

Ask what happened to his wife.

By dinner, half the town seemed to have an opinion.

Two days later, Lucy disappeared.

Her backpack was on the kitchen floor.

Her shoes were gone.

A folded piece of paper sat beside the fruit bowl.

Mom, I took Mr. Harris some muffins. Don’t be mad.

I ran.

I didn’t even lock the door.

When I reached Robert’s property, I couldn’t see Lucy.

“Lucy!”

Nothing.

Then something moved between the trees.

Gray fur.

My stomach dropped.

Bear appeared first.

Then the second animal, Molly.

And between them walked my daughter.

“Lucy!”

She turned.