Chapter 6: Across the Hall

The private room on the second floor had a round table and a ceiling painted with gold leaf.

Willa sat at the far end, between her mother and an empty chair.

Daphne sat next to Ambrose and told him stories about Birdie's first steps.

Ambrose laughed at all of them.

Her father told him about the Orevine trip. Her mother kept putting more food on Willa's plate.

Nobody asked Willa a question.

She had cooked in a hotel kitchen for three years, so she could name every dish on the table and tell what had gone wrong in the sauce.

None of that was a thing she could say at this table.

At half past seven she put her napkin down and murmured, "Restroom."

Nobody looked up.

She pulled the heavy door open and stepped into the corridor.

At the same moment the door across the hall opened, and a man walked out.

They stopped, face to face, a yard apart.

Jasper Quarles wore a dark gray suit, and his shirt was white. His hair had dried.

Last night he had kissed her until she forgot her own name.

Willa opened her mouth to say hello, and the word Mr. stuck in her throat.

He looked at her, and then he walked past.

He did not slow down. He did not turn his head.

She watched his back go down the corridor toward the restroom.

Her face went hot, then cold.

If he was going there, then she wasn't.

She turned the other way, went through the fire door at the end of the hall, and stood in the stairwell with her phone in her hand.

She scrolled through nothing for ten minutes.

When she came back, someone was leaning against the wall beside her family's door.

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