Forbidden Guest House novel · Chapter 14 of 32

Chapter 14: Storm Night

"I know what it was," I said.

"You shouldn't have."

"You sat in a cell for me. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for you. We're even."

"We're not even. I'm a guest."

"Then you owe me for the room."

The deputy slid the bail receipt across the counter without looking up.

"You two want to finish this in the parking lot?" he said.

We finished it in the truck.

Leif drove. I sat in the passenger seat with my feet on the dash.

Halfway home I reached inside my shirt and took out the stub.

It had gone soft and curved from my skin.

Jul 3. Mattson. Cash. 40,0

He looked at it for as long as the road let him.

"Put that somewhere fireproof," he said.

"The fire safe."

"Somewhere fireproof that's not in a house they already tried to burn."

I sealed it in a freezer bag and buried it in the chest freezer under forty pounds of walleye.

Hedy watched me do it.

"I'm not asking," she said.

"Good."

"I'm asking about the money."

I told her about the bail.

She was quiet for a second.

"Pay me in August," she said. "I've got a coffee can too."

By four o'clock the sky over the lake was the color of a bruise.

The radio said a line of storms was coming out of the Dakotas.

At six the wind came first, flattening the reeds and slamming the dock gate.

At six twenty the rain came sideways.

At six thirty-one the lights went out.

The dining room was half full. Nobody screamed. It was Loon Lake.

Hedy came out of the kitchen with a box of church candles.

I lit them along the tables in saucers.

The gas stove still worked, so we kept cooking by headlamp.

Upstairs, a shutter started banging.

"Room Seven," I said. "The hinge is loose."

Leif was already on the stairs.

The guests stayed after dessert because nobody wanted to drive in it.

The schoolteachers found Gran's old hymnal in the sideboard.

The man from Iowa started "Shall We Gather at the River" in a big bass voice.

Everybody joined in.

Then Leif came down the stairs.

His T-shirt was soaked through at the shoulders from leaning out the window.

His hair was dripping.

The schoolteacher handed him the hymnal.

"Oh, I don't sing," he said.

"Everybody sings in a blackout," Hedy said. "It's the law."

He sang.

He was terrible.

He was so flat the man from Iowa stopped to listen.

He sang the whole verse anyway, dead serious, holding the hymnal.

I laughed until I had to put my head down on the sideboard.

Hedy wiped her eyes with the dish towel.

The honeymoon couple from Rochester clapped for him.

He bowed.

When I lifted my head, he was looking at me across the candles.

He wasn't laughing.

He was looking at me.

Around ten the guests went up with flashlights.

Hedy went up to her apartment with a candle and a look.

I blew out the dining room candles one at a time.

I took the last one and went upstairs.

The hall was dark except for the lightning.

Every flash lit the window at the end of it, and Room Nine's door.

He was sitting on the top step in his wet shirt.

He'd been waiting. He didn't pretend he hadn't.

"Shutter's fixed," he said.

"Thank you."

"You laughed at me."

"Everybody laughed at you."

"Only one of you put her head down."

The thunder rolled across the lake and rattled the hall window.

I set the candle on the floor.

I stood one step below him, so for once we were eye to eye.

"I've had a rule my whole life," I said.

"I know."

"Gran had it too."

"I know."

"Gran had a rule about Room Nine. And she kept it for forty-five years, and look what it got her."

He didn't say anything.

He let me finish. He always let me finish.

"You went to jail for me last night," I said.

"Overnight. It had a bench."

"Leif."

"Yes."

"I'm done being careful."

He stayed exactly where he was.

His hands were on his knees. I could see them holding still.

"Say what you want," he said. "Out loud. I'm not guessing."

So I told him.

I told him I wanted him in that room, in that bed, tonight, and the rule could go out the window with the storm.

I said it plainly. My face burned the whole time.

He stood up.

He held out his hand, the way he had in the stacks, waiting to see if I'd take it.

I took it.

I picked up the candle with my other hand, and I unlocked Room Nine myself.

The door clicked shut behind us and the storm hit the window like a fist.

I set the candle on the desk.

The flame shivered, then stood.

The room smelled like rain and forty years of dust and the lilacs Gran had hung to dry.

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