Henry suspected his lawyer was a fraud, or at least hadn’t passed the bar, but what could you expect up here? There were too many pine trees and not enough people to support a really good lawyer, so he had to make do with the one who showed up, and he didn’t even have a cell phone to Google her name and figure out if he was just being put on.
She seemed fine with Henry not surrendering any of his private papers, which was good, but she also put her foot down about Henry going back to Loon Lake for the night, even with the police watching the only road in. It wasn’t a question of danger from the missing residents, she informed him, but the ones who would be spending the night in their usual beds. “Your cabin’s sealed,” she told Henry, in case he forgot. “They can’t get in, and the police would have to break in, for which they have no warrant and no probable cause. You’ll get a room for the night, and stay there, and talk to no one, and when we get the chance, I’ll take you up so you can clear out your belongings. And just your belongings.” She’d repeated that talk to no one thing multiple times, like he was going to immediately start sharing the story—his story—with someone who would then just go and publish it first.
He didn’t have a car, and he didn’t have his wallet, so she found him a hotel room and paid for it with the understanding that really he was the one paying for it, and he ordered room service on the tab, and had a television he could watch, but other than that, it was just him, in the clothes he’d thrown on, with nothing to do. There wasn’t even a pad of paper and a pen with the hotel’s logo on it. It was simply a room, and honestly, he supposed he should be grateful there was an attached restaurant so he could get some food.
Henry tried finding local news, but there didn’t seem to be any. He could flip through maybe eight stations, and one of them was national news, but he didn’t see anything about Loon Lake. His lawyer probably liked that. Maybe she’d picked the place because she knew he’d be stuck with the Weather Channel, PBS, and Fox News.
Henry was bored out of his ever-loving mind. He didn’t have his notes, he didn’t have his knitting, and he didn’t have any way of pitching the story he was in the middle of living, or even starting to write that story. He was just stuck in this one-star motel in freaking Eagle Harbor, Michigan, which basically wasn’t on any map, simply waiting. He didn’t even know if today was the day he’d get to go north and get his stuff, including all those notes his lawyer had at least helped him keep, or …
Or. What was the or? He either got this story, this new and weird story, or he had nothing. He didn’t have Annabeth Deschain, and he certainly didn’t have Emily’s real name. He didn’t even have Alyssa’s phone anymore. Jane took that, and after he’d asked for a lawyer, he hadn’t seen Jane. He didn’t know what was going on at all, and that was annoying.
Plus Percy pointed a gun at him yesterday. When he showered with the hotel soap, it was partly to get the sticky spots off his arms and ankles. And his toe. He should’ve thought the whole shower thing through because water falling onto his ripped-off nail bed was painful, and he had to call the front desk and ask if they had Band-Aids or something. The police took the duct tape off him just fine, but he hadn’t mentioned the toe, so that wasn’t documented. Nobody cared. So here he sat, having drunk the serving of coffee provided in the room, not sure if there was breakfast anywhere around here, or if his underwear was dry where it hung on the rack in the bathroom, or if he’d have to somehow get through today and another night completely cut off and unable to make any decisions for himself. Really, it wasn’t fair.
Cold Comfort: Saturday, July 13, 2024 – Agatha (1), coming August 20
Rebecca Frost 
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