Chapter 2

After I rescued the Jeep from an extremely obdurate sheriff's deputy (Deputy Mai, for anybody who wants to put him on their naughty list), I didn't see Vivienne or Mr. Huggins the rest of the day. I did as Vivienne suggested and moved the Jeep into the coach house (er, motor house). I caught another glimpse of the boy from the kitchen. He was watching me from the corner of the house, and as soon as I noticed him, he darted out of sight. And then I went inside and, well, did absolutely nothing. At all. For the rest of the day.

I mean, sure, I carried my luggage up to my room. I unpacked. I put my clothes in the dresser, hung some more in the closet, loaded my books onto the shelves (yes, they were built-ins, and yes, they were on either side of the fireplace). I took stock of the room and decided that, even though it wasn't how I'd been living (Hugo had loved anything and everything mid-century modern), I liked it. The dark blue of the damask wallpaper. The antique sconces. Even the canopy bed (a few exploratory bounces told me the mattress was excellent), which made me feel, a little bit, like I was living in a fairy tale. But believe it or not, you can only spend so much time bouncing on a bed before you start to feel like you need medication, so I explored the house.

I saw the billiards room (another specimen of Victoriana, almost perfectly preserved) and the den (a mouth-watering array of books, plus club chairs you could swim in and, yes, a full bar), and the reception room, which had only ever been used once, when Ulysses S. Grant came to visit. (I made that up.) I nosed around the other bedrooms upstairs, and they all looked like mine. I decided that maybe Mr. Nathaniel Blackwood had loved horse paintings a little too much. I thought maybe he should have invested in landscapes. Or portraits of anemic-looking white people wearing way too much whalebone. Or a safety inspector to check out his balcony.

Indira caught me going through a dresser in one of the unoccupied bedrooms.

"Sorry," I said, sliding the drawer shut as fast as I could. "Vivienne said I could look around."

On the other hand, Vivienne hadn't said, Go through this place like a BE guy, but I figured there was some wiggle room in the invitation.

Indira still hadn't said anything, so I added, "Occupational hazard of being a writer." My face heated. "We're snoops at heart."

Her face remained frozen in that look of pure professionalism. "Dinner is ready. If you're not hungry now, you'll find it in the refrigerator, and you can warm it up yourself."

"Is Vivienne eating?"

"Vivienne keeps her own hours. If she comes to dinner, the food is ready. If she doesn't, I leave it in the refrigerator."

"Right. It's just—she's been in there a long time."

Indira didn't do anything dramatic like look at the dresser I'd just been rifling. She didn't say anything like, This area is off limits. She didn't even put her hands on her hips.

"I'm sorry if I got you in trouble earlier," I said. "I didn't know—I guess I still don't know what happened. But I'm sorry."

She said, "I'll be in the kitchen for another hour if you need anything."

"Thank you."

The only answer was the click of her steps moving away.

I spent an agonizing few minutes debating whether I should go down and eat dinner now, which seemed like the polite thing to do, or wait until she'd had time to clear out of the kitchen, which seemed like the safe thing to do. But the polite thing won out, as it usually did (my parents had engrained that in me pretty well, along with the snooping), and I made my way down to the kitchen. Indira redirected me to the dining room, where she brought me my food (a filet of sole cooked to perfection, a lemony-and-herby rice pilaf, and garlicky broccoli). It was all healthy, which normally was a deal breaker for me, but it also happened to be delicious, so I decided to be magnanimous and let it slide just this once. I decided, though, that when I wasn't quite so terrified of Indira, I'd ask her where the Victorians had kept the deep fryer.

It was a lonely meal. The house felt chilly, and even though it was June, the day had persisted in its grungy grayness, the marine layer thickening as it came off the water. Once, I thought I heard laughter from the servants' dining room, but the old house swallowed up sounds, and after a minute, I figured I was imagining things.

When I went upstairs, a strip of light still showed under Vivienne's door.

I spent the rest of the evening in my room, alternating between reading and watching cat videos on my phone. The thing about cat videos is that they're like popcorn (or, I suppose, perfectly braised children): once you eat one, you have to have more. In other words, I didn't get very far in my Lawrence Block novel. Part of that had to do with the fact that I was exhausted; Vivienne had been right about the rough start to the day, and I could barely keep my eyes open. I fell asleep watching a kitten try to climb out of an Instant Pot (why it was in there in the first place, I had no idea), and I woke sometime later to a loud noise. My brain decoded it as a door slamming. The clock by the bed (not the intimidatingly expensive one on the mantel, but a genuine Radio Shack with a red digital display) said it was just after midnight. A car started. My window looked out on the front of the house, and a moment later, I saw headlights moving down the drive. I fell asleep again almost immediately.

I wasn't a morning person. That was putting it, well, kindly. Imagine a Romero zombie shuffling around, moaning, "Brains," and you're on the right track. I'm a firm believer that nothing good happens before the sun is up, and nothing great happens before noon. But, since this was technically my first day on the job, I got up at the crack of dawn. Eight am. Okay, eight-thirty. Okay, I got out of bed at nine, but I was awake before that, promise. And then I promptly had no idea what to do aside from the usual morning emergency of finding a large amount of coffee as quickly as possible.

My bedroom had a Jack-and-Jill bathroom, which meant I shared it with the bedroom next to mine. I probably wouldn't have loved that layout if there had been anyone to share with, but since it was just me, it was fine—plus both doors locked, so I didn't have to worry about anyone wandering in on me. (Millie came to mind; I had a horrifying, and thankfully momentary, vision, of her ripping back the curtain, staring at me naked, and announcing, CUTE!) That thought helped me wake up. So did the fact that the house was, well, freezing.

Maybe it wasn't technically freezing, but it felt like it was. I mean, it was June. In Providence, we'd been getting into the 80s, with plenty of sun. Growing up in Portsmouth, the summer days had been warm and bright (and, let's face it, humid). But here, the day was overcast again, and everything I touched felt like ice. On top of that, the house had that persistent damp common to all oceanside towns. It wasn't new to me, and it wasn't necessarily unpleasant, but combined with the cold, it made me grateful Mr. Nathaniel Blackwood had believed strongly in fireplaces. I shivered as I dried myself off, and I kept waiting for my breath to mist in the air as I made a mad dash back to my room to get dressed. I found a pair of gray shorts, one of my favorite tees (it says I Paused My Game To Be Here), and white sneakers (Mexico 66, in case anyone cares). It was my first day, and I was going to look cute even if I died from exposure. I'd be a modern-day hero, probably. Another Shackleton.

When I emerged from my room, the door to Vivienne's study was closed. So was the door to her bedroom. I waited for a minute (okay, I crept over to her bedroom door, and then to the study) and listened. Nothing. Which was…great, right? I mean, if Vivienne wasn't a morning person, and I wasn't a morning person (although years of writing workshops had trained me to say, I'm not a morning person yet), then that would work out perfectly. Plus, she'd had a late night with Huggins. Whatever it was, it must have been serious to keep them locked up together for so long.

Although, if I were being honest, that door slamming in the middle of the night had hung on to me. Who slams a door in the middle of the night? Not a happy camper. Maybe Huggins was a morning person. Maybe he wanted to be in bed by eight, and he'd been feeling a little of what I was feeling right now. Which more or less could be summed up like this: if I didn't get some coffee soon, I wasn't responsible for my actions.

I made my way downstairs. I thought about trying the servants' dining room. But maybe that would be presumptuous; maybe I was supposed to use the, uh, proper dining room. Or should I just help myself in the kitchen. Too many possibilities; and then genius struck.

When I went outside, the day was even colder than I'd expected. The wind off the ocean cut through my T-shirt and shorts and raised goose bumps on my exposed skin. It ruffled my hair, which I was realizing now, I'd forgotten to comb. It was raining, but so lightly that it only misted my glasses. I thought about going back—I'd packed a jacket—but it was, technically, summer. So, I was going to dress like it was summer. The locals were probably all taking this in stride. Everybody was probably in swimsuits, soaking up sun (or at least cosmic radiation).

I got my car out of the coach/motor house and drove into town. That was the beauty of an intense desire to avoid all social interactions, especially potentially awkward ones: your brain came up with all sorts of creative solutions. Like, if you can't decide whether to go through door A or door B, instead, you literally run out of the house and drive away so that you never have to actually deal with your problems. That's called a life hack.

My drive took me through the lush growth of the Oregon Coast. Massive conifers turned the road into a tunnel, and fog hung in the branches. Ferns filled out the understory. Hills rose and fell, and where the ground dropped away, I looked down on misty ravines where more spruce and fir speared upward. Even with my window up, I could smell the slight hint of evergreen, of cedar, of rich, dark soil, and of course, the salt-tang of the sea. I drove with my headlights on because it was so gloomy; I only saw one other car, and it had its headlights on too.

It wasn't far to Hastings Rock; Hemlock House was still technically within the city limits. But it felt far. It felt, in fact, like I was driving through another world. (If I'm allowed to nerd out fully and completely for one tiny second, I felt like I was in a Twilight movie.) And when the trees thinned and I saw the first outbuildings of Hastings Rock appear—a Sinclair service station with halogen lights, a matchbox-sized shave ice stand in an empty gravel lot, a mobile home with firewood ricked along one side—something in my chest eased, and I thought maybe this was how astronauts felt.

The Maps app on my phone began working once I was clear of the trees, and I found the (apparently) one and only coffee shop in town. It wasn't a Starbucks. It wasn't a Dutch Bros. It wasn't a Stumptown (I'd heard great things about them). It wasn't even a Dunkin'. It was a place called Chipper, and I realized, with a name like that, I was in trouble.

It was a small building shoehorned onto a corner, with board-and-batten siding painted bright yellow. In the window, someone had chalked a smiling sun. A line of people ran out the door, men and women and children, all of them with the same Romero zombified look, which said we were all in the same boat. It shouldn't have surprised me; Hastings Rock was a tourist town, after all. From what I'd learned (from Google and Wikipedia, on crappy motel Wi-Fi, as I'd driven across the country), the town still had some industry, but every year, more and more of its revenue was tourism. And tourist season ran from June to September. I checked my phone just to make sure, but no other coffee shops showed up. Which was perfect. In a town of thousands, there was only one coffee shop. That made sense. That was great. Maybe I could drive around, find a grocery store or a gas station with coffee—but then, I liked good coffee, and I didn't have anything pressing—but then, what if Vivienne was already awake and working and she was wondering where I was and waiting for me—

Fortunately, the line moved—if not quickly, at least steadily. When we finally got inside, I saw that Chipper lived up to its name: the walls were that same bright yellow, with smiles and suns painted everywhere. As I watched, a little boy with a crayon was adding yet another smile. The shop had booths and seating clusters with driftwood accents, and well-tended ferns softened the space. Soft music played in the background—acoustic pop, probably on a playlist called "Coffee House Vibes" or something similar. A Black woman with her hair in beaded braids laughed as a white woman told a story with expansive hand gestures. The espresso machine shrieked as it released a cloud of steam. A girl who had to be ten, eyes glued to her tablet, walked into me from behind. She didn't even look up; her mom just steered her toward a booth and mouthed an apology. So yes, Chipper was small and crowded and noisy, none of which were my scene, but it was also undeniably cute. Or, as Millie would have put it, CUTE.

The coffee shop also had a perfect location on Main Street. It was a few blocks from the water, so you couldn't see the boardwalk or the ocean, but the display windows gave a great view of downtown Hastings Rock, which was, in a word, picturesque—an architectural jumble of timber frame and modern coastal and even a few well-preserved Victorian homes (which I guessed had been inspired by Hemlock House), with everything clean and well-maintained and tastefully commercial. The whole point, after all, was to get people to spend their money, whether it be at a taffy "workshop" (which sounded impressively artisanal) or an art "gallery" (which sounded impressively sophisticated) or Seaside Sips Wine Tasting (which sounded impressively free of children). Vivienne had mentioned that Fox was an artist, and I wondered if they had a gallery or a studio or something nearby—

"DASH!"

I didn't even have to look around.

But, of course, I did.

Millie stood behind the counter, and it came back to me: she had mentioned, the day before, that she worked at Chipper. She'd even said that she brought Vivienne her coffee. Now, as the family ahead of me moved aside, I found myself stepping up to order, face to face with Millie. The same cloud of blond flyaways. The same sense of frenetic energy. Caffeinated energy, I realized. Like someone had hooked her up to an espresso IV.

"Oh my God, Dash, I was just telling Tessa about you. Tessa, this is DASH!"

Tessa was a weary-eyed woman with hair dye on her collar. She didn't react to Millie (no sign, for example, that Millie had just blown out her eardrum). She just gave me a smile and said, "You just moved into Hemlock House."

"Uh, yes."

For a moment, her smile got a little bigger. "Millie told us all about it. Hate to break it to you, but if Millie knows, everybody knows."

Millie nodded enthusiastically. "And he's so smart, and he's such a great writer, and Vivienne is obsessed with him, and he's going to be famous one day."

"I probably won't—" I tried.

"What do you want this morning, hon?" Tessa asked.

"The campfire latte," I said. "Can you do oat milk?" Oat milk sounded like a healthy, responsible adult thing to order. It didn't stop me from asking, "And double marshmallow sauce?"

"Write it down," Tessa told Millie, who seized a paper cup and a pen and began jotting furiously, breaking now and then to look up and beam at me. "Anything else?" She eyed me, and even though she couldn't have been ten years older, added, "Something to eat?"

"The, uh, bagel sandwich. The everything one."

"Make sure it's toasted," Tessa said.

Millie was off like a shot. "Oh definitely, toasted is the best. Dash, one time I didn't toast mine, and I was like, YUCK because the texture wasn't right—"

She kept talking, in case you're wondering, but as she moved back to prepare the food, it was harder to hear her. Well, it wasn't, actually. That girl had an impressive set of lungs. But it seemed like far enough that I could pretend not to hear her.

Tessa settled up with me at the register and directed me to the pickup zone. I had about sixty seconds of peace before—

"DASH! Dash over here! Dash, can you hear me? I saw your eyebrow twitch."

People got caught in undertows and riptides every year. They got washed out to sea and drowned, and nobody could help them. They couldn't even help themselves; eventually, they wore themselves out struggling against the current, and they went under.

I drifted over to the espresso machine.

Millie's head didn't quite clear the machine, but that didn't stop her. "Do you have something wrong with your hearing? Sometimes my mom says her ears are tired. What are your parents like? Where are you from? Do you have any brothers or sisters? I have two brothers, and their names are Paul and Ryan, and two sisters, and their names are Kassandra and Angeline. Oh, and my mom and dad, of course. Duh! Their names are Matthew and Christine. Matthew and Christine Naught. Did you always want to meet Vivienne? Was that your life dream? I don't know what my life dream is, but Tessa says I don't need to know that yet, and it seems like so much pressure. Are you under a lot of pressure? I bet so. One time Vivienne was under so much pressure that her eye started twitching, and I asked her if there was anything I could do to help, and she yelled at me." She came around the machine and, with a flourish, presented me with the sandwich and the latte. "Double marshmallow sauce, just the way you like it. Do you have any pets? My dog's name was Chuck Norris, but he died a few years ago. Do you have a girlfriend? Is she beautiful? How old is she? Is she blond?"

And now, of course, was when she chose to stop talking. Apparently, so had everyone else because the coffee shop seemed remarkably quiet, even with so many people in it.

"No girlfriend," I said and tried for a smile. And then, as bait, "I do have a sister, though. Her name's Dorothy."

But Millie was not to be distracted. "What about a boyfriend? Or a partner? Or a throuple? Or—"

"Nope," I said. "Nobody." And then, since I had an idea which direction this was going, I tried to head it off. "I broke up with my boyfriend before I moved here."

"OH MY GOD!"

I kid you not, the glass rattled in the windows.

"Did he break your heart? Did he cheat on you? Was he a jerk? Should I beat him up? Tessa, I have to go get on a plane to beat someone up."

"Quad espresso, one pump cinnamon sauce, two-percent," Tessa called back.

The distress in Millie's face told me she had heard Tessa, but she wasn't quite ready to abandon this sinking ship of a conversation.

"I'd better run," I said. "Nice to meet you."

"We already met, remember? It was yesterday, and Indira told me to distract Vivienne because Keme was in the kitchen, and—" She was already coming around the counter, untying her apron, apparently having completely forgotten (or no longer caring) that she was working.

"Millie," Tessa called.

"I think she wants you to make that drink," I said.

"Oh dang. You know, we should totally hang out, like, I'm off work today at three, but then I have to go to my other job—"

"Yes," I said, creeping backwards, hoping that my natural instinct to flee every and all social encounters would guide me to the door. "Sure. Sounds great."

"Maybe I should get your number!"

My back bumped the door, a bell jingled, and I said a prayer that I wouldn't crush any children or trample any senior citizens as I shoved it open and darted outside.

The line, of course, was gone, which was my luck. And although the day had brightened some, the cloud layer meant it was still cool. I shivered; if anything, the day felt even colder after the warmth of the coffee shop. Then I noticed that people on the sidewalk were definitely not dressed in what I would consider summer wear. I saw a fair number of people in shorts, but just as many wore jeans or leggings. Almost everyone had a hoodie or a sweatshirt or a sweater or a thermal-knit long-sleeve. Layers, in other words. A few people even had coats. It was like that Mark Twain quote about San Francisco, I realized. So much for locals who were immune to the elements. I guess I'd be buying more layers. Lots and lots of layers. And, maybe, a can of bear spray for the next time Millie showed up.

I immediately felt bad about the thought. She was nice. Actually, she was lovely—authentic and kind and happy. This was a Dash problem, that was all. Too many people. Too much noise. And, of course, the…experience of talking to Millie, which was probably more talking than I'd done in the last year of my life. That had been the beauty of being an adjunct professor. I could teach my assigned classes, meet with the occasional student, and spend the rest of my time safely—and silently—buried in my office. Even at home, Hugo and I had always been comfortable with silence.

Then I spotted the ticket. It had been slipped under the windshield wiper. I stared at it for a moment in disbelief. And then I spotted the red curb. And the fire hydrant. I tossed the ticket into the Jeep with all the other papers and headed back to Hemlock House.

I followed the same two-lane out of Hastings Rock proper and into the dark tunnel of spruce and fir. I rolled down the windows and caught the sweet smell of resin and bark and duff. I tried not to think about the disastrous trip into town. In a few months, I'd probably be laughing about it. It would be a great story to tell, how I'd had a rocky start but now everything was wonderful. That kind of story. I could hear myself telling it: And then I came out of Chipper, and there was a ticket on the Jeep! It worked. After a few minutes, it all felt distant, better. I'd learned a long time ago that telling stories could make just about anything better.

When I got to Hemlock House, I went through the rigmarole of opening the coach house (I'd given up on motor house—it just didn't roll off the tongue) and parking inside. I hit the button to send the overhead door rattling down, and then I made my way to the house. Even up here on the sea cliffs, the sound of the surf breaking was enormous. Big combers were rolling in, and when the waves crashed against rock, the sound was enormous. Spray tinkled up, catching the light like aluminum flitter—

Something red bobbed in the water. I moved closer to the edge of the cliff. I forgot the coffee and the bagel. I couldn't hear the sound of the waves. I stared for what felt like a long time at that swatch of red. My brain kept telling me what it was, and I kept saying no. I remembered her red sweater. I kept thinking it couldn't be.

I didn't even remember putting down the coffee. I had my phone pressed to my ear, and a man answered, "911, what is your emergency?"

"I think—I think there's been an accident."