Chapter 11: Lakeview

The Lakeview Hotel stood at the end of a pine road with its new white paint shining in the afternoon.

I had thought it would look smaller.

Instead it looked exactly like it did in my head, tall and square, with green shutters.

The porch ran the full width of the front.

"Your mother's hotel," Lucas said, beside me in the car.

"She'd have hated the paint."

"She'd have hated the lobby carpet more."

He laughed, and I realized I was holding his hand with both of mine.

Inside, the lobby smelled like fresh lumber and lemon oil.

Underneath it was something I hadn't smelled in eighteen years.

Hot cotton, and bleach, and steam.

The laundry.

I stopped in the middle of the lobby with my overnight bag.

"Magda?"

"I need the back stairs."

"I'll have someone-"

"I know where they are."

I did.

I walked through a door marked STAFF, down a service corridor with a rubber floor, and through a gray fire door.

The stairwell was exactly the same.

Concrete steps, a metal rail, the long window on the third landing with a view of the pines.

Someone had painted it a soft green.

I climbed.

Lucas came up behind me and didn't say a word.

At the third landing, I sat down on the top step and looked at the window.

"I spent every summer here," I said.

"Right here.

"Mom would put me on this landing with a sandwich while she did the third floor, because the laundry was too hot."

"Alone?"

"Mostly.

"There was a boy."

I tucked my knees up.

"He'd come down from the fourth floor with a book he wasn't reading.

"He was older than me, twelve or thirteen.

"He sat two steps above me for a week before either of us said a word."

Lucas had gone very quiet.

He was standing on the step just below, with his hand on the rail.

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