Chapter 8: The Blue Room

The drive took two hours, and Dennis said nothing for ninety minutes of it.

At the turnoff to the cove, he glanced at me.

"You can still tell me to turn around."

"Keep going."

The lake house sat at the end of a gravel road, a grey cedar house with a deep porch and a dock out back.

Randall's car was already in the drive.

He had taken the highway at speed, and he was standing on the porch with the key in his fist.

"Steph, wait," he said. "Please. Let me tell you first."

"You said that in the board room, and again in the car, and in the kitchen."

"This time I mean it."

"That's what a person says when it isn't true yet."

I climbed the porch steps slowly, one hand on the rail.

Dennis came up behind me.

"Open it," I said. "Or my brother does it for you. He opens doors for a living."

Randall looked at the two of us.

Then he turned the key.

The first thing I noticed was the smell.

It wasn't dust or closed-up air.

It was laundry soap and pancakes.

The living room had a rug with trucks on it, a basket of picture books, and a small yellow rain jacket on a hook by the door.

I picked up a child's cup from the coffee table.

It had a cartoon fox on it, and there was a little juice left in the bottom.

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