Chapter 9: Not the Room

Winston stopped me outside the door of Room Nine with two fingers on my wrist.

"Don't go in," he said, very low.

"Why?"

"Look at the ceiling by the window."

There was a smoke detector over the curtain rail. It was white and round and unremarkable.

"It's the wrong brand for this lodge," Winston said. "Every other one in the building is brown."

He lowered his voice.

"And it has a pinhole in the casing."

I felt my face go cold.

"She said the camera was off."

"The camera on the dresser is off. That one isn't hers to turn off."

I thought of Vera's kind smile.

"Then we don't sleep in there."

"No."

"Where?"

We looked at each other in the hallway for a very long time.

Neither of us said the word boathouse.

We went down the back stairs together, out through the kitchen door, and across the cold grass.

The lake was black and the dock lights were off.

Winston held the door of the boathouse for me.

I walked into the smell of wet wood and heater dust.

The space heater was still ticking in the corner. A gray wool blanket lay folded on a canoe rack.

I took off my coat. Under it, the green dress.

I reached for my left hand, worked the ring off over the knuckle, and put it in the coat pocket.

Winston watched me do it.

"I want you to know something," I said. "No dare brought me here. Vera didn't."

I turned the empty finger toward him.

"If I take off my ring, it's because I want to."

"Signe."

"Do you want to?"

He took his glasses off, folded them, and put them on a shelf with enormous care.

"I have wanted to," he said, "since the dock. And a little before the dock."

He took a breath.

"And possibly since a Tuesday in March, in Tyler's kitchen, when you handed me a bottle opener without being asked."

"That's the most romantic thing anyone has said to me this year."

"It's a low bar this year."

I laughed, and he caught the laugh against my mouth.