Chapter 13: The Door Closes

Rupert was already reaching for his coat.

"I have to get to the lodge," he said. "Before she finishes."

"You can't drive there," I said. "It's dark."

He stopped with one arm in a sleeve.

"I'll go anyway."

"You'll go in the morning, in daylight, and you'll sit at their table when Marcy isn't in the room."

"If I wait, she wins the night."

"She's had three years of nights," Cal said from the door. "One more won't hurt."

Rupert looked at him, and then at me, and his arm came slowly out of the sleeve.

Cal drove him down the lane to Birdie's spare room over the bait shop.

I stood on the porch until the taillights turned onto the gravel.

Then I opened the lock app and found the guest list.

Rupert Linwood, guest, last used 9:04 p.m.

I pressed delete, and the phone asked if I was sure.

I was.

The house chimed once, as it had for Marcy, and then it was only mine.

I carried the last of the broken glass out to the porch and set it by the rail.

Headlights came back up the lane in ten minutes.

Cal came in stamping snow off his boots and stopped inside the door when he saw my face.

"He's asleep," he said. "Mother put a quilt on him and took his boots."

"Took his boots?"

"So he can't leave at night." His mouth moved. "She didn't say that's why."

I laughed, and then I stopped, because my eyes were hot.

"Greta."

"I'm fine."

"You said that to me at the lodge, and you weren't."

"I'm not," I said. "I'm not fine at all."

He crossed the kitchen in three steps and stopped in front of me, a foot away, and didn't touch me.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

It was the first time anyone had asked me that in a year.

"I want you to stop standing there," I said.

He didn't need telling twice.

His hand came up under my jaw, warm and rough from the boat shop, and his thumb moved slowly along my cheekbone.

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