After We Got Engaged, the Six of Us Planned One Last Trip Together Before the Wedding or 24-Hour Couple Swap novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Room Nine

Winston shows Signe his photo of Vera writing the slips, they agree to play along badly until they learn why, and Winston puts his jacket over her in the cold room until she sees Vera's camera on the dresser with its red light on.

Room Nine was at the end of the upstairs hall, with one window, one queen bed and a chair with a quilt folded over its arm.

Winston set my duffel on the chair and stood with his hands at his sides.

"I'll take the floor," he said.

"The floor is pine and it has a draft. I walked on it."

"Then the chair."

"You're six-foot-two."

"Then the bathtub." He said it so flatly that I laughed, and then I stopped, because it was the wrong laugh for tonight.

Winston sat on the end of the bed and took out his phone.

"I need you to see this before you decide anything."

The photo showed a plane tray table, a blue pen, and three small squares of paper in a row.

Each square had one word on it in round handwriting. I zoomed in with two fingers.

Tyler. Tyler. Tyler.

In the corner of the frame was a woman's elbow in a green rain jacket.

"That's Melina's sleeve," I said.

"She was in the middle seat. I was behind them."

"Why didn't you say something on Thursday?"

"I didn't know what I was looking at." He pushed his glasses up.

"In my job, a crack you see on Monday looks like nothing on Tuesday. You photograph it and you wait."

"And tonight?"

"Tonight you were the only one who emptied the bowl."

I sat down in the chair, on top of the quilt.

"What does it mean?" I asked. "You inspect things. What is this?"

He took his time with it.

"It means someone wanted Vera with Tyler, behind a closed door, with everyone's blessing and a camera running."

My stomach turned over once, slowly.

"Tyler wasn't surprised when she read his name," I said.

"No."

"He told me it was a bit."

"It probably is," Winston said. "To him."

I looked at the wall, where I could hear a low murmur, then a laugh.

It was Tyler's laugh, the real one, the one I hadn't heard in a while.

Winston heard it too. He looked at his hands.

"I want to know why before I do anything," I said. "If I walk out now, all I know is that I got tricked into a game."

"And if you stay?"

"Then I find out what the game is for."

"We'd have to play," he said. "All of it. For twenty-four hours."

"We play badly. Stiff and polite. Two people who got stuck with each other."

"I can do stiff."

"I know," I said. "That's why I picked you."

"Vera picked me."

"Well, she picked well."

He almost smiled. It was gone almost at once.

"What about Melina?" I said quietly.

Winston was silent for a while.

"Melina is my fiancée," he said. "She sat next to Vera and she saw it."

He turned the phone over in his hand.

"I'll decide about Melina. Not tonight."

"Not tonight," I said.

He built the wall himself, with four pillows down the middle of the bed, squared off at the top.

"Load-bearing," he said.

I got under the blanket in my sweater.

Winston lay on top of the covers on his side, in his gray work jacket, and turned off the lamp.

The old radiator ticked and went quiet.

The lodge turned the heat down at ten, and soon the window had frost on the inside corners.

I pulled my knees up and my teeth started to chatter.

I tried to hide it. I'm not good at that.

"Signe."

"I'm fine."

"You're not." Something rustled. "Hold still."

His jacket came over my shoulders, over the blanket, warm all the way through and heavier than I expected.

It smelled like cedar and cold air and the pencil he kept behind his ear.

"Now you'll be cold," I said.

"I run hot. It's a documented problem."

"By whom?"

"Melina."

Then neither of us said anything, because the name sat there between us on top of the pillows.

My hand found the inside of the collar. The lining was still warm from his body.

Through the wall, Vera's voice rose in a long, delighted laugh, and the bed over there creaked once.

I closed my eyes. On the other side of the pillows, Winston's breathing was careful and even, and I knew he was awake.

I waited for my fiancé's name to hurt more than it did.

Something small and red caught the corner of my eye.

On the dresser, between the lamp and the mirror, sat Vera's camera on its little tripod.

It had not been there when we came in. I would have noticed. I notice where everything is in a room.

"Winston," I whispered.

His head turned on the pillow.

The red light on the front of the camera was on.

It had been on the whole time.

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