Chapter 4

4

We entered the cool, low-ceilinged entryway of the playhouse. The walls were a beige color, like old parchment, and timber beams marked the corners. The doors had odd shapes, with slanted lintels and one side longer than the other. There were transoms with more stained-glass sunrises. But what really got my attention was the circular staircase in the middle, which was made of wood and carved in the shape of a tree, with etchings of bark and wooded limbs that crawled along the ceiling, with painted green wooden leaves. It felt like Disney World—expensive fakery.

"This is where we stay," she said. "The playhouse."

"We live in here?" I asked. "With a fake tree?"

"I know, right? This room here..." She indicated a sunny room to the right, with windows facing the water. It had two sofas, beanbags, a TV, and a few video game consoles. "... is our lounge. It used to be their classroom. We use the rest for bedrooms. We had to move things around a little. This way..."

She tried the door to the left and it opened. It was lined with shelves—floor to ceiling—that must have once been filled with books. Now it had two beds and two distinct areas. One was tidy, spare, a reasonably made bed with a plain green blanket, everything put away but a laundry bag on the floor. There was some fishing gear in the corner, tucked up against an exposed beam. The other was lively, with a black fleece blanket with silver bolts on the bed, purple sheets, a spill of bright clothes, and a row of Lego figurines on the windowsill.

"Tom and Van are in here," she said. "Tom's family is into fishing and marinas. He handles a lot of the boats. Van's with us in the house. Up here—you can leave your stuff for a second..."

She ushered me out and to the tree stairs. At the top, they opened on a large, sunny space that encompassed the entire second floor. One wall was covered in mirrors, and there were floor-to-ceiling windows, with trees right outside, partially shading and obscuring the view. This room also had two beds, which were placed on opposite sides of the room. There was more symmetry here in terms of neatness, though one side had a bold red bedspread and bathing suits drying on a rack. The other side had baby-blue sheets with a white bedspread, and there were several tiny stuffed animals along the sill, with framed pictures on every surface.

"Liani and I are up here," she said. "We weren't sure where you would want to stay. We thought maybe up here, but maybe you'd prefer privacy. You can choose! We can move you up here, but for now..."

She showed me back down the tree and took me to the single room in the back. This room wasn't quite like the others. It ran along the back of the house and had stone walls and was as wide as the single bed, but three times as long. It had three large windows that were all pushed open, filling the room with soft breezes. It was deeply shaded by the trees. There was an old dresser on the far side of the room. The room was cool, even a little cavelike. It appealed to me. It fit my mood. I could live in this fairy-tale hut, in my stone room, away from the world.

"This was the art studio," she explained. "Originally, we were going to configure it all differently and have you upstairs with me and Liani, but we thought since you don't know us yet, you might like privacy? But you can come up if you want! Or move. You can decide whenever. I wasn't sure what you'd be able to bring, so I got you a throw pillow." April indicated a fuzzy yellow pillow sitting on the otherwise bare bed. She was hovering, clearly wanting to know if the room and the pillow were okay.

"It's great," I said.

"Oh good," she said, exhaling. "Let me show you where we eat—and the bathroom. The bathroom is kind of an adventure. It's not in this building."

I didn't like the sound of the bathroom adventure and followed nervously. She showed me back to the tree, and pointed out that along with containing the stairs, it also concealed a curved door. This opened to reveal another set of steps, these being plain stone and going down into a stone-lined tunnel, wide enough for maybe two people to walk side by side.

"There are passages that can't be seen by the public," she explained as she switched on the light and led me down the steps and through the tunnel. "For servants, so no one would see them walking from building to building."

We walked about fifty paces and reached a door.

"Oh," she said, pulling some keys from her pocket. "Your keys. You'll need these to access the house and the bathrooms, but we keep a spare here..." She indicated a hook by the door. "... you know, in case you're in a hurry and forget."

The door opened into a cavernous basement with a high ceiling. It felt more like an empty warehouse, echoey and pleasantly cool. We walked around a mostly empty warren of large rooms, some with a few tools lying around—shovels, rakes, sledgehammers, racks of cleaning materials and paper towels and toilet paper.

"Over here," she said, "our bathrooms are behind the public ones. They're gender neutral."

There were single bathrooms, and then two showers with just curtains for doors, and hooks outside for clothes and a towel. I was thinking of the many ways this setup could be awkward (1. Someone opens curtain, I am naked. 2. I see a spider, jump out naked. 3. I accidentally open curtain, someone is naked. 4. Curtain falls down for no reason, I am etc.) when a ghostly sound floated through the space.

"Helloooooo..."

I turned around, but there was no one in sight.

"Hellllloooooooooooo, neighhboorrrrr..."

April turned in confusion as well.

"Van?"

"Who isss Vannnnnnn. I'm a ghoosttttttt."

"Van, don't freak Marlowe out. She just got here."

"I would neeeverrrrrr..."

April zeroed in on the sound and found it was coming from the empty swimming pool that was at the edge of the basement. At the bottom was a lanky guy with a wild puff of brown curly hair and the widest mouth I'd ever seen outside of a Muppet. It looked like he could flip his entire head open. He was sitting at the bottom of the small but surprisingly deep empty swimming pool that was tiled in a vibrant aqua green, puffing cheerfully on a vape.

"You founddddd meeee," he said.

"Why are you sitting in the pool?" April asked.

"Privacy," he said with a shrug. "You're the new one! It's Marlowe, right?"

I nodded.

"I'm Van, as in, get in the."

"It's kind of early for that," April said, indicating the vape.

"Tours are gone by now," he replied with a graceful wave of his hand. "Best time of the day. Marlowe! Come down. Here..."

He held out the vape.

"I'm fine," I said. "Thanks, though."

He nodded graciously. "You burned a house down?"

" Van ...," April said. She had a look on her face that told me they all not only knew what I had done but had talked about how they were going to talk about it, and Van had just violated the terms.

I had practiced this too.

"It was a scented candle," I said, "and it... exploded..."

I was immediately off script as well, because talking about how you caused a house fire is hard. There is nothing casual about it.

"Oh, we know," he said. "It's fine. Shit happens. We get it. You've come to the right place for that."

"Seriously, Van, Dr. Henson is around. Don't let her see you doing that in the house."

"She doesn't care," he said, waving us off. "Anyway, Marlowe, come to me anytime for a kiki or an edible or whatever. It's lovely to have you."

April shuffled me off.

"He's really good at tours," she said as an explanation. "Van is the best, really."

She took me to the far side of the basement and opened a door onto a sparkling stainless-steel-and-white-tile kitchen, restaurant-sized, with a long wooden prep and worktable with a dozen metal bistro chairs set around it.

"The original kitchen was down here," she said, "but because this is going to be a retreat, they took it out and put this in. Obviously, no tours come here. We only do the upper levels. Anyway, the way it works is, everyone comes in and gets their own breakfast. There's cereal and bread and eggs and stuff. For lunch, you can come back here and make a sandwich, or if you want something from the refreshment stand, that's free, but just so you know, it's awful and it takes forever. For dinner, they did a deal with a restaurant in town and they make us up trays of stuff we can stick in the oven or warm up on the stove..." She opened a massive industrial refrigerator, where several marked tinfoil trays were stacked. "... so we have this roster. It's someone's job to come and warm one or two of these up. It's usually lasagna or a chicken casserole or something like that, and there are always vegan ones in there. And we have salad stuff. And we always have leftover hot dogs and hamburgers from the stand. We eat together, and we have a schedule for who cleans up and loads the dishwasher. And we have tons of ice cream from the place in town. There's always ice cream."

This was deeply reassuring to me, as I lead an ice cream–forward existence. I didn't start working at Guffy's by accident.

"What's your favorite?" she asked. "We can ask for it. We all request flavors. I like birthday cake."

"Moose Tracks."

"I don't think I've had that?"

"It's peanut butter cups and fudge in vanilla ice cream. Sometimes chocolate. They make extreme versions as well, but I like the regular one."

"I can see if they can do that," she said. "I mean, we have a lot of fudge in town."

April was doing all the heavy lifting here to make me feel welcome. This one hit home.

"So you've all been here for..."

"Two weeks," she said. "But we live nearby and we've been on the island a few times helping get things ready."

"So it's weird I'm here."

"Not weird! I was excited we were going to have someone new. We've all known each other forever."

"Seems kind of strange that they brought me in from so far, but... I guess she did it to be nice."

April cocked her head. "Dr. Henson isn't... she's not mean. But she's not nice. If she brought you here, there was a reason."

That sounded ominous, and April realized that.

"She's fine! I don't mean, like, she brought you here for a bad reason. It must have been a good one. We barely see her, anyway. She's working on a book about this place and the family, so she's in her rooms almost all the time. She comes out to have meetings with visiting students and historians, or she goes to town sometimes, but basically we run the place. Now you'll run it with us! We'll show you everything you need to know."

Her walkie-talkie crackled to life.

"Bring Marlowe up to the porch," said a voice.

"She's ready," April said, smiling broadly.

It was time for me to meet my new boss, the woman who had summoned me to Ralston Island.