'What are you doing here?'

It was as if Harper had been punched in the face. And a real one at that. She stood rooted to the spot in the doorway, staring after her aunt as she crossed the small hallway into the living room.

Was this woman trying to screw with Harper?

"Um... Wait...you wanted to know when I was coming," Harper tried to stay calm and followed Judith through the apartment, "You certainly didn't want to know for no reason. So what do you want?"

"Just to know when you're coming," was Judith's answer, which did nothing to improve Harper's mood, "I was just hoping you'd be here before I got picked up."

Oh, and that was so important. All right. The 'vacation'. The woman had only one vacation. Her life consisted of vacations. No, that, the next three weeks, was a vacation. Everything else was not.

Probably three weeks. It was going to be a short trip. To Scandinavia. The Scandinavian peninsula to be exact. First Norway, then Sweden, and finally Finland. According to Harper's estimation of her aunt, it could be six weeks.

But now that Harper was here, Judith could go over everything she needed to know with her, just in case.

Where the fuse box was, and which fuse belonged to what; where the water was shut off completely in an emergency, or the gas for the heater. Where was the woman with the heating, how was it turned on if it was going to get cold in the coming weeks. A list of emergency numbers was now taped up in the hallway.

All the things Harper was told once a year.