Rule One Said I Was the Only Person Awake After Midnight, but My Mother Never Sleeps novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Black Coffee

The owner calmly explains what knocked last night, Meg's mother recognizes him from forty years ago, and the day manager tells Meg her mother is moving into the wing over the boathouse tonight.

The man from 108 walked right past the desk, humming, and went into the breakfast room.

I turned and looked out the front doors.

The place on the lake where he'd gone under was already flat and gray.

His pipe was still lying on the porch swing.

My mother woke up against my shoulder and looked at me with polite confusion.

"Are you the nurse?"

"I'm Peggy, Mom."

"Oh, good," she said. "I like Peggy."

At seven Erin came up the back stairs with her ponytail wet from the shower and two mugs of coffee.

She handed me one and took the other out onto the front porch in her shirtsleeves.

It was nine degrees out there, and she stood at the rail laughing at a pair of crows.

When she came back in, she said, "Lake door was open again this morning. I shut it. Old latch."

"Rule seven," I said.

"Rule seven." She winked. "I'll tell Mr. Coe."

She helped my mother upstairs to dress, and I went into the breakfast room because I couldn't stand to be alone in the lobby.

There were six winter residents at the Tamarack, and four of them were already eating.

The man from 108 sat at the window table with a newspaper.

"Coffee, Doctor?" the cook asked him.

"Black, please."

An old woman at the table by the fireplace was knitting something orange with a cup of tea at her elbow.

She was in 210, and at dinner she'd told me she taught fourth grade for forty-one years and didn't suffer fools.

She crooked a finger at me.

"Third winter I've watched that from my window," she said quietly. "You held. Good girl."

"It walked into the lake."

"They always do." She went back to her knitting. "Eat something. You're green."

In the corner, a big man in a red knit hat was watching me over a plate of eggs.

He looked about thirty, with a short dark beard and hands that looked like they'd been out in the weather all his life.

"Mr. Garrahan in 112," the woman in 210 said. "He watched it too. He watches everything."

He got up and came over with his coffee.

"You look sick about it," he said.

"Shouldn't I be?"

"Last year's night clerk wasn't."

Erin leaned in the doorway with my mother on her arm, dressed and combed.

"Neil, you want more eggs? Hi, Diane's here!"

"That's my sister," he said, and went back to his table.

At eight the owner came down.

He was a tall old man in a gray cardigan over a shirt and tie.

His silver hair was combed straight back, and a gold watch chain looped out of his cardigan pocket.

Everyone in the room said good morning to him.

"Miss Duquette," he said, and sat down across from me. "Hiram Coe. I hear you had a first night."

"A man knocked on the glass," I said. "I called his room, and he answered from his bed."

"Yes."

"Then he walked into the lake."

"Yes." He folded his hands. "What knocked last night was a late guest. The lake sends them up in the cold months. They wear the faces of the people asleep upstairs, and they want in."

"What happens if one gets in?"

"Nothing will, as long as someone keeps the desk." He smiled. "You kept it out, and everyone upstairs woke up this morning. That's the job."

He said it.

"You'll be paid in full at the Ice-Out Breakfast," he said. "The whole town comes up for it, the morning the ice goes out."

Erin brought my mother to our table and pulled out a chair for her.

"Mr. Coe, the lake door was open again," Erin said.

"Thank you, Erin."

My mother was staring at him.

Then she put her hand over her mouth and laughed.

"Mr. Coe! You haven't changed a bit."

"Have we met, Mrs. Duquette?"

"I made your beds the winter I was seventeen."

"Then you made my father's," he said kindly. "People say we look alike."

"No, it was you. You had that same watch."

He touched the watch chain and didn't say anything else.

A younger man came in checking his smartwatch.

He wore a quarter-zip with the hotel crest on it and enough gel in his hair to hold a shape in a storm.

"Grandpa," he said, "the clerk's mother was rattling doorknobs on the second floor at eleven last night."

"Travis," Mr. Coe said. "Good morning."

Travis didn't look at my mother at all.

He looked at me.

"We're a hotel, not a memory ward," he said. "Your mother's in the east wing tonight, over the boathouse, where she can't bother the paying guests. Or she goes."

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