Jim Reynolds first began to seriously consider that there was something dangerous in the lake behind their home when the cat missed dinner.

Mimi was an adventurous tabby with a penchant for snacking on lizards, palmetto bugs, and just about anything else she could capture in the wooded preserve behind their lake-front home. She slept inside and spent a lot of time with the kids, but her natural instincts yanked her into the woods and down to the lakefront almost every day.

When she failed to respond to Jim’s whistle and the promise of half a can of Friskies (the vet had her on a diet, given all of her native grazing), the hairs on his arms stood up just a little in the cool January air.

Mimi never missed the dinner bell.

He glanced out at the lake, another perfect Florida sunset painting the surface in vivid hues of pink and orange, and called for her. He waited another ten minutes, spitting tobacco over the deck railing and watching an adventurous duo on jet-skis hop each other’s wakes in the center of the lake, until the chill chased him inside.

Jacksonville in January could still be a bitch, and it wasn’t quite fifty degrees according to the thermometer he’d bolted onto the deck.

“Anybody see Mimi today?” he hollered, stepping inside and relishing the warmth. They had a nice home—a sturdy home—and he silently counted his blessings as he went to the fridge and opened a bottle of Budweiser.

“She was here this morning,” Lauren called from the living room. She was working on a puzzle and sipping from a glass of red wine. They were still on break, and she wouldn’t have to return to her job of rallying parents, gently discipling children, and running the day-to-day operations at Stillman Middle School in her job as principal for three more glorious days.

“I just whistled for her, but she was a no-show,” he said, settling into his recliner. “It’s not like that little rascal to miss supper.”

“Probably full of bugs. You know, she left a baby duck on the front porch mat the other day?”

Jim smiled. “No shit? That would be cute if it wasn’t so sad.”

“The poor thing was just stunned. I picked it up and held it in my hands for a few minutes and then walked it down to the waterfront, and mama was there. Everything worked out. I can’t believe I forgot to mention it.”

“You have a lot on your mind, honey. Mimi probably didn’t have the heart to kill the duck. Glad she didn’t.”

He flicked on the television and they watched the news in companionable silence. There was more bad news about the pandemic, the economy, and the border between Russia and Ukraine. Every new day was a curveball, and humanity was batting around the Mendoza line, at least in Jim’s view.

He was thankful when the doorbell chimed, giving him an excuse to switch the television off and collect the pizzas they’d ordered from Domino’s.

“Dinner!” Lauren called up the stairs, and Cody and Kelly scampered down the hallway in their stocking feet. “Make sure you have both some milk and some salad.”

The twins were twelve, and right there at the cusp of adolescence. They still had that childlike innocence about them—that appreciation for pizza and boardgames with their parents around the dining room table—but they were both wrapped up in their phones and the siren song of social media.

Jim slid a couple of slices of pepperoni and mushroom pizza onto his plate. “What have you kids been up to this afternoon? It was a pretty nice day to spend it cooped up in your rooms.”

“Targeting,” Kelly replied. It was her phrase for online shopping at the mega-retailer. She doused her greens with vinegar and oil and took a piece of cheese pizza. “I still have almost sixty dollars on my gift cards, Daddy!”

Exhibit A in the transition from childhood into early adolescence. Kelly had been a tomboy growing up; she wouldn’t have missed an opportunity to spend the afternoon fishing Doctors Lake for anything even a year ago, but now she spent much of her free time scanning through beauty products and clothing.

“And you?”

Cody grinned. “Fortnite, Dad! Duh…”

They made small talk about their weekend plans to visit the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville for a time until the talk swung around to the missing cat.

“I’m going out to take a look around after dinner,” Jim said. “I could use some company.”

Kelly declined, telling her mom she’d pitch in with giving her baby sister a bath, but Cody was all in for an adventure. “Can we take the flashlights?”

“Of course. Grab a jacket and a hat, too. It’s probably dropped five degrees since sunset.”

They entered the woods on the little trail the neighborhood kids had carved into the dense thicket of pines, palms, and oaks. Saw palmetto brushed their legs as they pushed their way into the forest.

“What is it about that game that gets you so worked up, Cody? You’re on there more than an hour a day lately.”

“Just while we’re on break, Dad. I’ll have spring soccer and school before you know it. It’s a fun game, and there are kids my age from all over the world playing at the same time. In fact, Des and Billy were on there with me this afternoon. We cleared thirty husks in record time today!”

“Husks?”

“Zombies, Dad. The living dead. It’s a zombie survival game.”

“Huh.” Jim wondered whatever happened to pick-up basketball at the end of the street. When they’d first moved into the neighborhood, the cacophony of neighborhood basketball games had left him feeling fortunate—as if the kids were having the same childhood he’d enjoyed while growing up outside of Boise.

Now, it seemed a miracle if the kids shot hoops once or twice a week.

The neighborhood was still growing on him. Having spent his childhood on a working farm in Meridian, Idaho, the long lines of golf carts dropping kids off at the middle school that looked more like a trendy shopping mall still irked him.

But he felt fortunate for his success as a manager at the concrete company, and Lauren loved her work at Stillman. They were solidly in the upper tier of the middle class, and even if it was different than hunting squirrels and fishing the trout streams of Idaho, it was comfortable and his kids were happy and seemed well-adjusted.

“Mimi!” Cody called. “Here kitty-kitty!”

Jim joined in, and they played their beams over the dense foliage and pushed further into the woods. The developers had carved their little development—Old Mill Downs—out of the woods, erecting lake-front “estates” on the shores of the sprawling lake (it was more of a swamp in most places, really) for miles in all directions.

“What’s that, Dad?” Cody played his beam up a small berm, to where a corner of vine-shrouded brick was just visible over a gnarly copse of shrubbery.

“Not sure. You see a way up there?”

They looked for a trail, but it seemed pretty well cut off from the meager path they were on.

“You kids haven’t been up there?”

Cody played his beam under his chin. “Never been this far back here. I don’t think we can get up there.”

“Reckon you’re right, Son. We’ll come ba—.”

He was interrupted by the sounds of something scuttling in the underbrush. Something big. A loon called from some perch out over the lake, and Jim felt his heartbeat kick up a notch.

“Back up,” he said, his voice low. There were black bears in these woods, that was certain. Black bears, along with rumors of Florida panthers and the descendants of a troop of rhesus macaques that had flourished in this stretch of woods since they’d been abandoned by a Hollywood production company in the 1930s.

There was even a woman that had told a news reporter on camera she’d seen a monkey eating an orange from the tree in her backyard.

“Let’s get home, Cody. I’ll come back when we have the light.”

“What about Mimi?”

“She’ll come home when she gets hungry. Come on…I don’t want to see where the teddy bears have their picnic, if you follow my meaning.”

They made it home without incident, their cheeks red with the chill air. Lauren made them hot chocolate, and they played Monopoly for an hour on what had become a never-ending Reynolds-family battle.

When the kids were in bed and Jim had taken a shower and joined his wife in bed for the evening, he told her about the shack in the woods.

“Maybe an old moonshine still?” she ventured.

He shrugged. “Couldn’t get to it. I’ll take a look in the morning.”

“The afternoon,” she corrected him. “We need to make an early start if we mean to see the whole museum.”

He nodded, and with that they tucked into their books and read until sleep beckoned and they turned out the lights.

“Hope Mimi’s okay out there,” he sighed, switching off his light.

“She’ll be fine,” Lauren yawned.

Somewhere beyond the safety of their energy-efficient windows, the haunting call of a whippoorwill echoed in the night.