Lies That Bind Us(10)

Not when you get back, I reminded myself. Executive team leader.

I forced an unsteady smile and told my inner voice to shut up for once.

“It’s good to see you,” I said, meaning it.

Simon had taken my luggage.

“I can manage,” I protested, but he waved me off.

“I’ve got it,” he said. “Come on. I’ll show you your room.”

“Don’t be long,” said Melissa, more to him than me. “I’m adding the ice to the drinks. Gretchen and Marcus are parched!”

I opened my mouth to say something but couldn’t find the words. As she bustled off, turning that beatific smile of hers on me like a lighthouse scanning the horizon for whoever needed it most, I lowered my gaze to the tiled floor and followed Simon.

The foyer was cool and dim, with a hanging tapestry and a little central table, upon which sat an ancient black rotary telephone with a braided, cloth-wrapped cord.

“Our one link to civilization,” said Simon, grinning.

This was one of the older parts of the house, I assumed, and the stairway in the tower—a tight stone spiral—seemed to come from the same era. It felt cool and massive. When I saw stonework on Charlotte houses, it was always obviously a shell tacked up around the house for old-timey decoration. This, by contrast, was structural and genuinely, unpretentiously ancient. On the next floor up, however, everything changed, opening up, most of the house’s antiquity vanishing, the angles getting crisper, more precise, the space airier and glowing with large modern windows. The next flight of stairs was polished pine in a black-steel frame that rang with each step.

“Just one more floor,” said Simon, wheezing slightly. “What do you have in here, the kitchen sink?”

“Sorry,” I said. “Never been a very good packer.”

“It’s fine,” he said, turning down a hallway with a lush blue carpet runner down the center. “Melissa and I are in the east wing. Master suite. Here you go. All yours.”

He unlatched the door with the heavy, old-fashioned key that had been left in the lock and pushed the door open, stepping aside so I got the full effect as I strode in.

It was a beautiful, simple room. There was a sink with a mirror in an alcove and a great rustic bed heaped with a cloudlike white duvet, a single wardrobe, and a bedside cabinet of polished close-grained wood, warm to the touch. Otherwise, it was just white plaster walls save for the one opposite the door, which was the raw amber stone I had seen outside, and a great arched window that dominated the chamber and white linen drapes. It looked out over the grounds, over treetops, and down the coast to the bright sea and the open sky.

“Wow,” I said.

I really had to stop saying that. It made me sound like a teenager.

“Right?” said Simon. “Thought you’d like it. Bathroom’s down the hall. That door there. You need to rest or something, or can we expect you downstairs for fog cutters?”

He gave me an imploring smile and looked, for a moment, so genuinely happy to see me that I forgot all my previous anxiety.

“Give me ten minutes to change,” I said.

Actually it was going to be more like fifteen. I checked my phone, even though Simon had said I wouldn’t get a signal, and saw he was right. But I had told Chad that I would text him when we arrived, so I sat on the end of the bed and tapped my way through the phone’s settings menu and hunted for a Wi-Fi signal, but there was nothing.

Will have to wait till you’re back in civilization, I told myself. No biggie.

As much as I loved the simplicity of the room, built as it was around its ancient view, I found myself a little disappointed that I was sharing a bathroom, something I had been hoping to get a break from. I barely saw Becky, my roommate in Charlotte, because we kept such different hours, but it was a mark of my relative poverty that I had to deal with someone else’s smear of toothpaste on the sink and her pubes on the toilet seat, like I was trapped in an endless adolescence that I couldn’t afford to escape. A trip overseas, I had thought, meant a hotel room to myself. Total privacy. And a bathroom I could call my own.

Some people like to imagine the other guests who have been in the hotel room they are staying in before—their histories, the things that brought them there, and what they were up to before checking out. Not me. I liked to pretend a hotel room has just been built, that I was the first person ever to sleep in its crisp linens and shower in its spotless bathroom. I don’t like sharing my space, even with people I know. Especially, in fact. So when I checked on the bathroom and found it clean and dry, as if it hadn’t been used for weeks, I took the opportunity to grab a much-needed shower and was able to sustain the illusion that no one else had used it yet.

It had to be quick, and not just because I had drinks waiting. The water, which began so piping hot that I was instantly pink across my breasts and shoulders, cooled fast. I got out before it was stone cold, but I couldn’t help wondering how we were going to manage with seven of us using the same supply.

Maybe there are separate cisterns, I hoped, or some sort of heater that hasn’t been switched on yet.

I remembered Simon’s throwaway remark about the lack of cell phone service and wondered what other comforts I might have to do without.

But if I was honest, the shower had been a stalling tactic. Marcus was downstairs. So was “Gretchen,” probably slopping fog cutters from a fistful of beer steins while singing selections from Cabaret. I needed a moment to prepare myself.