Tag: thriller

Dear Diary,

I should’ve brought some of those books about grief. You know, the ones I read and discarded because they were full of crap. Something about how when the student is ready …

He bought me some of the books when I refused to see a therapist, and I think he even read a couple of them before latching onto the one that made the most sense to him. Which made no sense at all to me. The book, not the latching on. When he finds something that mostly fits, he stops there instead of going on to see if there’s something that fits better.

God, I’m not talking about me. I don’t think. Fuck.

The point, dearest diary of my July, is that I wanted to go look through one of those books again. There’s a phrase that’s just out of reach, not even as close as the tip of my tongue, and I want to look it up. Pin it down. Etc. etc.

I even went up to the lodge library and had a look around. The very granola dude, Truman, poked his head in and asked if he could help me find anything. I couldn’t remember what book it was, so I just asked if there was a self-help section, and he directed me to a shelf.

They’re not labeled. Nothing’s labeled. It’s not a real library, just a collection, and I could’ve asked for certain books, or brought some of my own, or whatever, but of course I didn’t. Because I haven’t been reading, so I figured nothing would change, and if you want to make God laugh …

I’m full of those sayings today. Aphorisms? Is that what they’re called? Should’ve checked out the dictionary while I was there.

For the record, it’s stopped being cute and has started being seriously freaking annoying that I can’t just pull out my phone to look up something like that. There’ve got to be apps that lock you out of social media and things but let you search for random information, right? They could totally have Wi-Fi here. They don’t have a desktop computer all wired in at the lodge or anything. I asked Truman, and he doesn’t even own a laptop.

It’s so out of touch. We’re not completely limited. We can use the cabin phone to call the lodge and ask them to put a call through, like they’re 1950s operators, or walk up to the lodge and ask to use the phone, but that’s because we’re supposed to self-regulate. The people who call have to be pre-approved by us, with our July names and the pass phrase, and we have to take that extra step of asking for help to make a phone call. And we can’t type an email at all. We write it out by hand and give it to Jonathan, so just the fact that he has to read it limits what we’d say.

Which, again, is the freaking point of the place, but I’m totally sick of Loon Lake today. Give me doom scrolling and text messaging and the ability to Google some choice names.

I didn’t get a self-help book. I grabbed a couple novels, but no Agatha Christie, thanks. They’re sitting on the table in the living room area of the big room, which actually doesn’t feel all that big, and can you get cabin fever in less than a week even when you’re allowed to leave your cabin? It’s too cold to just sit outside in the shade, and writing or reading in the sun would give me a headache, so I’ve got the window open for the fresh air, but it’s still getting cold. I could light a fire in the fireplace, but it’s not that cold, and I feel like I’d die of carbon monoxide poisoning somehow. The chimney has to be open, but there’s probably a flue, which I know is a thing, but I don’t really know what it does, or how to check.

God, I’m useless. Is that a grief thing? Or is that because I went from my parents’ house to his house and I’ve never really had to fend for myself? He likes helping out. Being the manly man around the house. Taking care of me. Of us. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The us.

I didn’t do girl lunch today. Or I guess I did girl lunch, here, alone, with what I have in my little kitchenette, but it wasn’t a picnic lunch with the girls. I didn’t look to see if Emily and Jane did. I haven’t seen anyone but Truman today, and that’s because he came to find me. I didn’t find him. Diary, I tried to avoid him.

Yes, I’ve basically done everything you’re not supposed to do when you’re battling depression: stayed inside. Didn’t socialize. Haven’t eaten well. And so I’m feeling worse. I wonder why?

Okay, there are things I can control and things I can’t. I’m isolated, because I’m here at Loon Lake, and leaving is a major decision that should not be made by someone in my current mood. However, there is something I can do: I will go to the lodge for dinner, and I will eat it in the dining room. I’ll take a book, but if anyone else comes in and asks to share my table, I’ll say yes. If they don’t, they don’t. I’ve never seen anyone stay yet. But I swear I’ll go at six o’clock sharp, and sit at a table, so everyone else gets to make that choice of whether or not to join me. A girl has to keep a promise to her diary.

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Cold Comfort: Friday, July 5, 2024 – Alyssa, coming July 15

Oh, now this was a change. When Henry got up to refill his coffee, he noticed a series of ripples running across the water. At first his mind went to the Loch Ness monster, except it would be the Loon Lake monster, and it occurred to him that he’d never actually seen a loon. Henry was pretty sure the weird noises he heard early in the morning were loons, but hey, maybe it was a lake monster. Then another series of ripples dashed across the surface, and it clicked: someone was skipping stones.

He had the last cabin on this end. The one next to him was Jane’s. Their conversation was cut short yesterday. Henry decided to take his coffee outside.

The shoreline was more rock than anything, so he debated turning around for his sandals, but he caught sight of Jane through some of the trees and figured he couldn’t go back in case she saw him doing it. At this point he was committed to approaching her, and he’d have to hope he wouldn’t wince too much. Maybe the rocks were rounded by the water and wouldn’t cut into his skin. Getting driven out for medical care didn’t count as asking Jonathan if he could leave, but he didn’t need stitches on the soles of his feet, thanks.

Jane had shoes on, along with her yoga pants, camisole top, and thin zip-up hoodie. Her hair was in a bun at the back of her head, making her ready for ballet practice, and she held a number of stones in her left hand as she looked out over the water, turning one over in her right hand, and then went into the fluid tossing motion. Could you be a professional stone skipper? Was it a recommended hobby for ballet dancers?

Henry walked closer to the water’s edge, staying on what he thought of as his property, but the trees didn’t come all the way up here. He took a sip of his coffee and waited for Jane to run out of the rocks in her hand and look at him, breathing a little heavier than usual. “You ever hit a fish in the head?” he asked.

Jane blinked and looked out to the water, then frowned. “They’d float, wouldn’t they?”

“Do unconscious fish float?” he asked, thinking it was inane even as he said it.

She shook her head a little and squatted down to pick up more rocks, gathering and discarding too quickly to be looking at them. “I think it takes dead ones a while to float. You’ll have to check back.”

Henry wanted to hunker down, too, but then he’d have to stand again when she stood, and imagine putting all his weight onto the balls of his feet. The rocks were smooth enough, he supposed, but they shifted, and his luck, he’d fall on his ass. “You okay?” he asked before he could wonder if that was really a good question.

Jane stayed down there, pulling the rocks out of her left hand only to drop them back into her palm, letting them clack together.

Bad decision. He should figure out how to get out of this.

“Emily and Agatha were talking about guys,” Jane said abruptly, smoothly rising to her feet.

Okay. Um. “Oh?”

“Yeah, they’re both …” She stole a quick glance at his face and continued to clack the stones together. “I think they’re both here because of guy troubles. You know?”

“Because they just got out of bad relationships?” he clarified, and sheesh, was he just making himself sound even stupider?

Jane wrinkled her nose, which was super cute but also made Henry feel a bit like a pedophile. “I don’t know that they’re out of them yet. You’d think so, right?” She turned away from him a little and selected a stone, but this one only skipped twice, and maybe that was why she sighed. “Any relationship where you have to go away from him for a month, that’s not a good one. Right?”

Henry didn’t know if she was right or not, but at least that question was rhetorical.

“And they, I don’t know. They bonded over that, and I just …” This sigh was bigger and ended with her hands, one still holding rocks, hitting her thighs. “It seems so trivial. Don’t you think? Blowing all this dough on trying to figure out your relationship, alone, when anyone could tell them that’s not how you figure out a relationship if it’s going to last.” She shook her head slowly and repeated it: “Trivial.”

Henry chewed on his lip, but this really seemed like a pause he should break. “No man is worth this?” he suggested, and ugh, why did his voice waver in the middle? It should’ve come out sure.

Jane turned to look at him, really studying his face, and Henry fought the urge to take a sip of coffee just so he could hide behind his mug. “I think they’re the ones who are worth it, if they end up choosing themselves, but I don’t know. Men are pigs, so they’re here?”

Henry chewed his lip, but he couldn’t ask it.

She rolled her eyes anyway, and found the muscles in her arms, and considered her ammo for her next shot. “I’m not here because of someone I’m dating.”

That might be the truth, or it might not. “Neither am I,” he offered, finally taking a drink as she let another rock fly.

---

Cold Comfort: Friday, July 5, 2024 – Agatha

Today’s the fourth, so I don’t turn my car toward Copper Harbor. That’s going to be packed, and after all this time at Loon Lake, I’m not much for crowds. Plus sometimes a girl just wants to walk through a Walmart.

It’s a long drive to Houghton, but a pretty one. Most of the traffic’s headed up 41 the other way, and even though you’re going past a bunch of different signs, you don’t really see any neighborhoods. They’re all old mining towns, and most of them don’t look like much anymore. There’s Calumet, which has some cool stuff, but I keep on heading south, radio blasting, and cross the bridge, and head up the hill toward neon-lit aisles of more than you could ever want.

Walmart is like the anti-Truman: full of chemicals, lacking sunlight, all processed and neon and individually packaged. I want to hit the candy aisle, mostly, because the kitchen’s not stocked with much of anything sweet this month. Nobody requested snack cakes or even really any desserts, so I have to fend for myself. I only grab a basket instead of a cart, though, trying to be reasonable. Mostly I just need to be washed in the atmosphere of mind-numbing architecture and a bunch of strangers who don’t know any version of my name.

If I mentioned anything to Lydia, she’d probably put the candy on Jonathan’s list and I’d get it for free, but shopping feels a bit like taking some control back. That’s totally not the point of the summer, I know—it’s about following orders and being the perfect little customer service girl—but hey, weekends aren’t for work. Shake things up, do something that doesn’t happen the other five days, and put items in plastic bags that will make Truman cluck his tongue in despair.

The switch-up for lunch is getting a burger instead of having a cold sandwich, and I’ve got my book so I can sit in the booth and read it while I eat. I’m early, before noon, so it’s not too crowded, and that’s the way I like it. Although I’m not sure how crowded it ever really gets here on a weekday.

After lunch it’s time to head to the library because they have public computers.

Maybe it’s silly. Probably it’s silly. Before coming up here I deleted the Gmail app from my phone, and I haven’t checked my email on it since. Residents aren’t allowed to bring their phones at all because the temptation to make a digital record of Loon Lake and the other residents is just too great, so mine gets locked in my glove box most of the time, but I recharge it on the drive. Texts pop in once I hit an area with signal, but the important things only get sent in emails, and I don’t want to run the risk of someone breaking into my car, finding the phone, and reading the important things.

I paid for a library card so I can log in to one of their desktops, read my emails, delete the Internet history even though I don’t know if that step’s really necessary, and log out again. I don’t print anything, so Thursdays are really the only days I read them, if I don’t feel like driving down two days in a row. I don’t delete them, but I can’t really keep them.

He’s old-school in a computer semi-literate kind of way, which means he doesn’t sign his emails, but the display name tells me it’s from Aaron Gladieux all the same. Even though he knows I only check things once or twice a week, he usually writes every day. I read through all of them, clicking from one to the next, and then back to the one that’s his response to what I sent last week. I scroll down to the end and read those lines slowly, over and over: Hang in there, honey. We’ll get through this. I love you. Finally I take a deep breath, swipe at my eyes, and pull myself together enough to write back.

---

Cold Comfort: Friday, July 5, 2024 – Henry

Dear Diary,

The girls had lunch together today. That’s what Emily called us: the girls. We’re a set now, and that’s probably a good thing, considering Henry.

I think Jane took pity on him. She didn’t say so, and she didn’t want to talk about it, but the way she looked when Emily said “All men are pigs” makes me think she’s got a man problem, too. Probably not my kind of man problem, but a Henry kind of man problem. He’s like a vampire, especially in the way he tries to hide it.

I guess that rocking chair has his name on it now, which is fine, because if I want to sit on a porch there’s one at my cabin, but Jane was in the one next to him. I think she was trying to watch Edgar and Truman. She didn’t say that part, either, but they were out in the kayaks, and there’s something peaceful about watching the bright colors cut through the water. If Henry wasn’t there, I would’ve joined her.

Maybe it’s unfair, just because Jane’s such a little porcelain doll, but the way he sat was freaking predatory. They’re probably the same age (we’re probably all somewhere in our twenties, maybe early thirties) but he’s a foot taller and twice as broad as she is, and he was sucking her soul out of her eyes.

He always laughs when I say that. I used to think it was endearing, or maybe something to envy: the fact that he doesn’t know what that feels like. How people don’t demand that sort of energy from him, maybe because he’s a man, or maybe just because he’s him. That sort of confidence and poise. But lately, heaven help me, I’ve thought he’s never felt it because you’d have to have a soul in the first place.

Henry’s just so demanding. He’s got the attitude that means he’s only waiting for your mouth to stop moving so he can talk about more important things.

Himself, for the record. That’s Henry’s most important thing.

I could tell just by seeing him there in that rocker, knitting and pretending not to notice he was getting noticed. Alyssa’s seen it, too, because her knitting bag stays tucked away when he’s out. I could tell he’d already gotten dinner last night because she was knitting when I came in, and yeah, it was late, but it was kind of reassuring, since I wasn’t going to cross paths with him.

Not that he could follow a woman home (cabin?) without consequences. Although now I have to wonder why we don’t have emergency whistles or anything. There’s no guarantee someone would hear me scream, and to get to the 911 button on the phone, I’d have to let him in. But come on, Agatha, he didn’t follow you, and Jane could’ve left that porch any time she wanted, so if something happened because she stayed …

What, it would be her fault?

It doesn’t matter. I saw them, and hesitated, but Emily came in right after me, tucked her hand through my elbow, and pulled me out to the porch with her, all confident and with a sparkly smile. “Hey, Jane, you ready?” she asked, like we’d planned it. Like maybe Jane sat to listen to Henry, but she was only waiting for us.

And the look Jane gave us was grateful, but Henry’s not the type of guy to see it. How desperate she was to get away. He’s the kind to get pissed at Emily for saying something, but then she’s the kind to let it roll off her like water off a duck’s back, and it all just circles around and mostly the three of us ended up having a picnic again, and Emily said “All men are pigs,” and I said “Some men are more pigs than others,” and she laughed and toasted me with her Perrier.

And one of the problems with this plan, I’d like to tell Dr. Weber, is that I can’t talk about it with the girls, even if they’re my new friends. I can’t lay it all out from my perspective and get their opinions on it. There’s no one here to argue his point of view and maybe talk me around a little, because hey, he’s the one who agreed I should come here. He’s the one who paid.

I’m supposed to spend this time deciding what I want next, but really, he’s the one who needs the time. Time without me for a month to figure out if he wants life without me for a few decades. But that’s not the way he worded it. “We’ve been through so much,” he told me, holding both my hands. “I don’t want you to pick me because you think you should pick me.”

Meaning, really, that I could still change my mind. Maybe he hopes I’ve changed my mind. Everything I’ve done for us, and I haven’t crossed the point of no return.

He doesn’t understand. He knows what I’ve done for him, and maybe I was an idiot for confessing all that, but he doesn’t understand. Some men are pigs, but they’re our undoing all the same.

---

Cold Comfort: Thursday, July 4, 2024 – Alyssa

Persistence. It wasn’t intelligence that got reporters The Story, but persistence. At least, that’s what Henry grimly told himself. It seemed you only heard people say such things after they scored the scoop or won the Pulitzer or otherwise achieved your dream. It was entirely possible that the gutters were littered with persistent reporters whose main trait hadn’t ever gotten them to the point where anyone listened to what they had to say.

Stay the course. He had to stay the course, and remind himself this was only day four, and stop second-guessing himself.

Maybe he should’ve booked a double cabin and risked it and gone in with a female reporter. He wouldn’t have sent her out on her own to steal the scoop, but they could’ve pulled together enough money and …

Well. And his imaginary female friend could join the others in their picnic lunches and whatever else they got up to. Except all his female friends seemed to be imaginary these days, whether he was at home or at Loon Lake. Henry didn’t even have anyone he’d trusted with his information or his true location. The safety deposit box was his only backup. The one person who knew how to get ahold of him was his brother, because Mom was dead, Dad was off with a new girlfriend, and he didn’t even have a pet rock. It was just Henry, trying to make his mark on the world.

By mining other people’s tragedies? Yeah, Mom was dead, but her voice was alive and well between his ears. The Gladieux tragedy had already been mined. How else would he have heard about it? Annabeth Deschain was guilty as sin, and he suspected Aaron Gladieux deserved some of the blame, too, so really, they brought this part on themselves.

Okay maybe there was something to be said for age gaps and power dynamics. Gladieux was fifty, and Annabeth Deschain wasn’t anywhere near that. She was less than half his age.

Annabeth Deschain was young enough to think that her employer, who might also be her secret boyfriend, would appreciate it if she killed his little daughter to free him from everything that was tying him down and keeping him from her. Young, but apparently savvy enough to have avoided a social media presence and kept her face out of the press.

Savvy enough to get away with murder and that, Mom, was the real tragedy. Dani Jay died in a horrible accident and Annabeth Deschain was free to kill again, wherever she was. Whichever one of these cabins she was in.

Henry sipped his coffee and looked at his notes, starting with Jane in the cabin next door. Small as she was, it was hard to really pin down an age. Her figure was boyish, her voice little girlish, but there was something about her eyes that made you reconsider that first assumption. And whether she was the sort of girl-woman who would murder a toddler.

She seemed quiet and reserved, not with a resting bitch face but a resting blank face. There weren’t any smile or laugh lines there, just perfectly pale skin, and her brown hair was always pulled back in a smooth mid-level ponytail. Henry hadn’t seen her in jeans yet. She wore yoga pants and track pants, so the whole impression was of a woman on her way to her workout, face free of makeup but clearly moisturized and cared for.

Emily, next to the lodge on the other side, didn’t just have smile lines. She had smiles. Her eyes were big and blue, always just a little wider than seemed natural, and her mouth was also wide for her face even when she wasn’t smiling. Her hair was blonde except for the roots, and it flowed down to her shoulder blades and put her in this glorious golden cloud.

She dressed like she was ready to walk a city street, maybe L.A. or New York, and she knew a lot of high-powered people would be looking at her. Henry didn’t know if those were stiletto heels on her strappy sandals, but they were at least heels, and it was only a matter of time until she tripped on a root and ripped off one of her painted toenails or fell and got a non-fashionable hole in her tight jeans. Her stride and her shoulders and her height all made her look older than Jane, but that didn’t mean she seemed to be a more likely candidate for Annabeth Deschain.

Agatha, the only other woman he’d seen, was a different type entirely. Her hair was darker than Jane’s, almost black, but generally indifferently pulled back in a sloppy bun that wasn’t stylish. She didn’t wear makeup, but her skin probably hadn’t been moisturized in a while, either. And Agatha’s clothes … Jane was a city woman on her way to sunrise yoga before hitting the office, but Agatha was heading for her favorite spot on the couch, bag of chips in hand.

Henry wanted to discount Agatha, because she never would’ve caught Gladieux’s eye, except for the fact that her own dark eyes seemed haunted. Emily’s were too wide and open to hold secrets, and Jane was guarded in an introverted kind of way, but Agatha was haunted. Out of all of them here this month, Agatha was the one deepest in hell.

But would Annabeth Deschain feel that way if Aaron Gladieux paid for her stay? That was his safety deposit box secret info, after all. Gladieux paid for a cabin and a single meal plan, so it would indeed be a boyfriend helping out his young bit on the side.

Although, to be fair, Annabeth Deschain wasn’t all that much younger than Dani Jay’s mom who, from the few photos Henry found, was one smoking hot young thing. She dolled herself up even above and beyond Emily, with giant sunglasses and the sort of body-hugging outfits iced with bling that made you think mob wife. Granted, Gladieux didn’t have to choose the same type for his side chick, but Agatha just couldn’t compete. It was time for him to go knit some more. At this rate, he’d have to start taking breaks so he didn’t get a repetitive stress injury. If any of the females came by alone, he’d go ahead and unabashedly start the conversation. God, he had to end the day with something more than knitting progress and another James Patterson book. He couldn’t go home empty-handed.

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Cold Comfort: Thursday, July 4, 2024 – Agatha

Perfect Days is a thriller by Brazilian author Raphael Montes. I know this because we have a copy in the lodge library, and I read it last month. It’s definitely not an Agatha Christie, which is more my style. It’s creepy as hell, a stalker novel, and at one point the main character holds his kidnap victim in a cabin, outside of cell service, keeping her captive in all but plain sight.

So. You know. That hasn’t been bothering me all day.

It doesn’t line up. I haven’t wanted to go up and grab the book and double-check, because Percy could walk in at any moment, asking for another drink—which of course I’m capable of making, but most guests make their own—and then see that no, his little private joke wasn’t so private, after all.

It was an odd sentence. Strange wording. I think Henry caught something, but not enough. Not the whole reference.

What is it with me thinking guys don’t catch references?

I’m sitting here with Evil Under the Sun open in front of me, on alert for either door or the sound of footsteps, trying to remember exactly how Teo pulled it off in the book. I know he drives in and installs Clarice in the cabin without anyone seeing her, but Percy couldn’t do that here. Residents agree that they won’t have their own cars, because then it’s too tempting for them to leave and come back when they should commit to staying for the whole month. You don’t come here unless you need to get away for the whole month.

Jonathon picks them up from the airport, so he must have seen Mary. Presumably she wasn’t bound and gagged, or drugged senseless, when she got off the plane or during the ride.

Okay my brain kicks into overdrive because maybe there’s not an excuse for handcuffs, but have Jonathan and Lydia ever had guests with terminal illnesses? Could Percy have passed it off as that kind of drugged? There’s a lot of trust going on here with residents. We assume that they’ll adhere to the NDA. That they’ll follow the rules.

That they won’t use the Meyers’ discretion to help them kidnap the objects of their obsession.

Okay, slow down. It’s only July 3. Last month we had a resident I never saw until the final week because she requested all her meals to be left on her back stoop and holed herself up to finish writing something. I don’t know what she was working on, because she wasn’t anyone I recognized. I wouldn’t ever be able to tell someone if I did, but that’s what she said when she emerged, glowing and bouncing and clearly doing just fine: It’s done. I finished it before the deadline. Where’s the champagne?

So there’s precedent for that. For someone coming here to seriously retreat, introversion to the max, no phone calls and no knocking. Plus, if you look at it, Mary Shelley’s in a better position than last month’s Virginia Woolf. Virginia was alone in there, so if something had happened, it was all on her to hit the 911 button on her phone. At least if Mary collapses, Percy’s there to notice and raise the alarm.

Unless she collapses and he’s the reason for it.

I need to stop reading Agatha Christie.

It’s pasta tonight, various kinds with different sauces, so the takeaway boxes have a stack of foil squares next to them. Lydia always seems to put things out when I’m not looking. She moves quietly, and it’s kind of a miracle she let Jonathan talk her into getting her face on the website, because she’s really not a people person. She’s a kitchen person, happy as a clam if she can make food that disappears. When the paperwork comes back from the next month’s residents, she’s absolutely gleeful, color-coding and cross-referencing and planning out meals and shopping lists and her daily schedule. The reason food gets put out instead of ordered isn’t because this keeps the residents from being tied to the dining room. It’s so she can slip away unnoticed and do something more important than let them look at her.

She’s plain, but not ugly. She has limp brown hair, but she won’t hear of using a different shampoo. She’s thin, usually wearing an apron, and the veins stand out on the backs of her hands like she maybe lifts weights half the time no one’s looking. I’ve never seen Lydia in anything other than a long-sleeve mock turtleneck and elastic-waisted pants in various color combinations under her apron. Most of the residents simply don’t see her at all.

Okay, and Perfect Days is in the lodge library, but I’m not worried that Jonathan’s holding her captive or something. I haven’t seen much of Lydia, but I have at least seen her.

And I’m so not saying Percy’s got Mary there, drugged or tied up or otherwise restrained. She’d have to be gagged, too. There are the screening trees, but all the cabins are really close to each other. I can’t get all suspicious just because of a single weird statement. All the same, it’s my job to be attentive to the residents. That means looking up as they come in and watching to see if, once more, Percy arrives, fills two containers—one with salad and the other with no vegetables whatsoever—and takes an Evian and some beer out the door.

It doesn’t mean he forces Mary to eat the salad and keeps the rest for himself. Maybe he puts both containers on the table between them and they pick what they want, so the hot food doesn’t melt the lettuce. He could even share out the beer. There’s no way of knowing what goes on in the Shelly cabin.

Truman hitches up his board shorts to sit on the edge of the desk, polishing an apple on his long-sleeved SPF 50 shirt. It’s a low-chemical alternative to sunscreen. “I didn’t think Percy was your type.” This is the man who’s basically the opposite of Percy in every way: definitely a country mouse, skin tanned and hair lightened by the sun, and wouldn’t be caught dead in an outfit that requires a belt.

The fact that my face instantly sets itself on fire really doesn’t help my case. “Have you seen his wife?”

“Why? Is she hot?” He bites into the apple.

I shake my head. “I haven’t seen her.”

Truman frowns and drags the back of his hand over his mouth. Maybe that’s more environmentally friendly than using a napkin. “So she doesn’t eat? She’s a, what do you call it, breatharian?”

“Truman, I have no idea if that’s what you call it. But either he’s a selfish ass who eats double portions, or he brings it back to her.” Or like. She’s dead.

That’s one of the concerns at a place like this: nobody back home really expects to hear from them for an entire month. They can write letters, and Jonathan prints off the emails that have the right subject to make it through, but the only calls get screened at the lodge and the only way to email back is to give Jonathan a message to type up the next time he goes into town. That’s a lot of trust to put in the Meyers, and in Truman and me, simply because the Meyers hired us.

Truman leans over, apple stuck in his teeth, to flick the black cover of my book, but he needs to hold the apple again before he can tease me. “This isn’t one of the crime queen’s hotels, you know.”

Okay except for the fact that it still fits the bill of a bunch of people who ostensibly have never met before, brought together in an eclectic mix, and stuck here for a length of time unable to determine each other’s bona fides. It’s totally the Calais carriage of the Orient Express, except we don’t have a dead body.

Unless we do, and just don’t know it yet.

“Alyssa Roberta,” he sighs, because when Truman’s exasperated with me, he assigns me a middle name. “What have I told you about making fanfiction about the guests?”

“Share every juicy detail,” I recite along with him. “Percy’s totally killed Mary and he’s using the rest of the month to get rid of her body so it’ll never be found and he gets away with murder.”

He laughs and holds out a fist for me to bump. “That’s the best one so far! Did you eat?”

And, just like that, my dramatic theory’s dismissed. “Not yet.”

“Grab a plate.” He gestures for me to move, because I don’t pop right up like an obedient Jack-in-the-box. “Take it on the porch. You don’t get nearly enough fresh air.” Truman and I disagree about how much fresh air a person really needs, but a break’s a break, so I get up, and grab my book, and ignore his laughter.

---

Cold Comfort: Thursday, July 4, 2024 – Henry

Dear Diary,

I had lunch with Emily and Jane today, completely by accident. I waited for them to leave the lodge (spying, guilty) so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone, especially because it’s always so damn obvious when I’ve been crying, but I have to pass Dickinson on the way back to Christie and I heard someone call my name.

Well. My July name.

“We’re having a picnic!” Emily told me, giggling like maybe there was alcohol involved. “Join us!”

She’s got enormous blue eyes, and she knows how to use eye liner to make them look even bigger. Her lips are painted the perfect shade of pink, even out here, and there I am, in old baggy clothes and no makeup and my hair falling out of a ponytail, and I said yes.

She caught me off guard. Seriously off guard. Emily is clearly a popular girl. Jane looks like a ballet girl, tiny and delicate, but Emily’s a popular girl. I’m a nothing sort of girl, especially lately, so washed-out I’ve started to disappear, but Emily asked me to eat lunch with them.

And I did.

Jane was out in front of the cabin. I think that’s the front. She was on the lake side, anyway, in the shade, on a red gingham tablecloth. Is there one of those in the closet in my cabin? Did they ask Alyssa for one? Or did Emily bring a picnic blanket along with her?

Life is full of unanswerable questions.

They had beer, bottles of stuff I’ve never heard of. Apparently you can only get it in Wisconsin, so I’m not sure if one of them’s from Wisconsin, but I accepted the offer. Alcohol’s a depressant, but I’m not on any meds right now, so at least whatever I feel is an honest reaction. Plus I only had the one bottle, so it’s not like girls gone wild. I’ve barely had anything since entering hell, so hey, I might as well drink as I wander around here, right?

It’s hard to talk when you’re not going to talk about yourself. Emily giggled about Edgar and Jane helped her list off all his recent roles and awards and stuff, but for some reason I haven’t paid much attention to the entertainment industry lately. You get accused of a few things … you get separated from the man you love … who cares who’s got what fake beef with whom over supporting actor whatevers?

“Okay, Agatha’s actually obeying the rules,” Emily finally said with a smile. I couldn’t tell if she was teasing me like a mean girl or like a friend. “Subject change. Maybe we have some hobbies in common.”

Jane snorted into her beer. “Henry knits.”

“Oh, God, I saw that.” Emily rolled those big blue eyes again, and this laugh was definitely mean girl. “You didn’t ask him about it, did you?”

Jane shook her head, her own brown eyes wide but not nearly as big. Seriously, everything about her is tiny. “I am not approaching him. There’s something weird about him.”

“There’s something weird about all of us.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud.

Jane nodded first and then shook her head. “I think the weird thing about him is that there isn’t something weird about him,” she tried to clarify. “Or it’s not the right weird.”

It sounded like nonsense, but then we were all nodding.

They got into it a bit more, and I did some more nodding, but it’s true: you don’t come here because everything’s perfect and normal. It’s a retreat, which means you’re retreating from something. Something’s driven you here, so you’ve run away in the hopes that it won’t find you. Jonathan goes out of his way to make sure it won’t find you.

“There is no weight on that man’s shoulders,” Jane declared, pointing her small finger very dramatically down toward the Longfellow cabin.

“Yeah? What’s the weight on yours?” Emily asked, the sort of challenge that meant her face changed half a second later and she slouched a little. “Sorry. I didn’t … sorry.”

I think that’s the entire point of me writing this right now: it came out of nowhere, and it hit her, and she’s this total Amazon woman with blonde hair and makeup and strappy sandals and a complete Look. She’s gorgeous with perfect skin and basically seems like a Barbie doll brought to life, and she still got completely blindsided by her own heavy thing.

It’s not just me. How weird and wonderful and awful is that? It’s not just me.

Maybe it’s because it hasn’t hit him the same. God, my own private diary and I’m going to burn it and I don’t even want to name him here. What, just in case someone breaks into my cabin and finds this book and reads it? I don’t want to write about what I did, the things I did for us, and how he reacted to those things, and how somehow the solution to our problems is me being away from him now, and how I’ve been walking through hell alone.

But the question, the thing I really need to ponder, is if I do actually want to tell anyone here. I might want to tell Jane, maybe, because she’s so elfin and not nearly as intimidating as an Amazon warrior, but that doesn’t really seem fair. If I’m going to share, it should be with both, and they can’t tell, anyway. They’re not allowed. I don’t need to name names, but I could just tell them about love, and the things we do for love, and the way men sometimes just don’t understand how much we love them. I could at least tell them that.

---

Cold Comfort: Wednesday, July 3, 2024 – Alyssa

Yesterday didn’t work. Henry sat on the porch knitting until lunch, when he made himself a plate with a sandwich and some chips. He picked up a book from the library for the afternoon; went for a swim after Mr. Popular got out of the water, thanks, but damn it was cold; and showered before dinner. That was mistimed because he was on his way in when Jane and Emily were on their way out, boxes in hands and heads together, so that was a lost cause. He ate dinner alone, took a little stroll to see if anyone was out afterward, and then went to bed.

It didn’t work, but he couldn’t just switch things up and make it obvious that it didn’t work. If he set up a routine, then maybe he was more approachable, or at least it didn’t look like he was doing any of it just to be seen. Even if he totally was.

Thirty-one days sounded like a long time, but midnight tonight meant ten percent of his month was gone. This venture was coming out of his own pocket, and those pockets were about empty. It wasn’t time to change his approach, but to double down. He had coffee in his cabin in the morning, check, even though there was no one to see him. It helped to get him in the right mindset, maybe: sitting in the strange chair, next to the strange fireplace, drinking the familiar coffee from the strange pot, and just spending time with himself the way everyone else was.

Well. The Shelleys and the Meyers came in pairs. He didn’t think Edgar had any playboy rumors, though, so all the other cabins likely held one person and one person only, all of them with their coffee or tea or whatever else they had in the thing that was advertised as a kitchenette. If that was a kitchenette, then he was a prince of England.

Okay maybe he should’ve spent more time looking at the promotional material instead of hustling to put his money down. He’d figured it was only a month, so he could survive anything, and it was heated and there was electricity and indoor plumbing and all.

Man, he was bored. He hadn’t finished his coffee yet, and he was already so. Freaking. Bored.

Henry packed a sweater knit in sock yarn because he figured he’d need something to last the month, and it was a very simple pattern because he’d imagined holding a conversation while knitting. At this rate, he’d have the sweater done by the fifteenth and zero conversations. This was turning into one damn expensive sweater.

That was defeatist thinking. Reporting took time and leg work. Staking out someone’s house was just as boring as this, and then he was stuck in a car with no hope of a conversation. That was waiting with a camera and a voice recorder, eating fast food and hoping he’d have time at the gym later, or that the cute brunette from the bar would call him back, as long as it wasn’t when something finally happened.

He’d gotten a couple good shots of Aaron Gladieux in and around his house, but the man always got into his car in the attached garage, and there was a gate over the end of his driveway. As far as Henry had been able to tell, Gladieux now lived alone. The hot tub was gone, though. Henry couldn’t be sure about the girlfriend, but he knew the hot tub was gone.

He checked his watch and decided he might as well head up to the lodge. It was hard to look into the dining room from the porch, because the glass was treated with the same stuff they put on the cabin windows, but at least the others who came for breakfast could get used to seeing him. Clearly the knitting hadn’t worked to lure anyone in, at least at first glance, but maybe if he kept at it, proving it was more than just for show, someone would bite. He sat in the same rocking chair as yesterday, bag at his feet—just like yesterday—and rocked a little as he knit. Just like yesterday.

Unlike yesterday, the guy called Truman was back, and he went down to the dock in step with Edgar, the two of them talking animatedly as they got out kayaks and paddles and generally ignored the rest of the world because of their boating bro bonding. Neither of them looked up to wave at Henry before they got into their kayaks and headed toward the island out in the lake, which was big enough for a bunch of pine trees but otherwise looked like nothing but rock.

Henry hadn’t even considered the idea of boat bonding, but it wasn’t a bro he was after. He kept knitting. Rocking and knitting.

The sun reflected off the water and started giving him a headache, but he kept knitting. He’d stay here until lunch, and maybe time things better and make his sandwich when he wasn’t alone in the room, but there were footsteps, and maybe …

Henry made sure his Damn it didn’t show on his face. It was Percy, laughing over his shoulder as he came out, surveyed the porch, and decided to leave one rocking chair empty between the two of them. He nodded at Henry’s hands. “Did your grandma teach you?”

It was teasing, so Henry took it seriously. “No. My mom.”

Percy’s smile widened by a couple teeth. A couple very white teeth. “She wanted a daughter instead?”

“My parents wanted a lot of children, yeah, but she kept having miscarriages,” he answered evenly.

This pause was longer, but Percy’s smile didn’t change. He was very clearly trying to figure out if Henry was trying to provoke him or simply stupid. “Sorry to hear that.”

Henry shrugged. “I mean, they’re still together. Half my friends’ parents were divorced by third grade.”

“Ah.” Percy cleared his throat and looked out at the water, starting to sling one ankle up over the opposite knee, but the arms of the rocking chair got in the way and he almost lost one of his loafers. Loafers, no socks, khaki shorts, and a salmon-colored dress shirt. Why, Percy?

“You’re married?” Henry asked, just to throw the man a bone.

“Ah, yeah. Yes.” Percy nodded once deeply. “We’re married. It’s good. Well.” He started to chew his lower lip, then clearly forced himself to stop. “Life is good. Back home, you know. But sometimes you just have to get away.”

Henry nodded because clearly he’d also opted for the month away.

“But. I mean, with … Mary.” He hesitated over his wife’s name and then looked up when the door opened and Alyssa came out holding a piña colada. “Thank you. But, with Mary …” He smiled a little strangely. “These are perfect days.” Percy took a drink and nodded. “Thanks, Alyssa.” It was clearly a dismissal, so she retreated and the men fell silent, one sipping, one knitting, and Henry started calculating exactly how long he’d have to keep sitting here until it was time for lunch.

---

Cold Comfort: Wednesday, July 3, 2024 – Agatha

Edgar walks in wearing cheap plastic flip-flops and swim trunks, a towel around his neck and a T-shirt sticking to his chest. There aren’t any droplets in his curls, but those are damp, too, despite the towel and the afternoon sun. His smile is almost shy, and I guess I get why so many people my age go to pieces over him even with the age gap, but I’m not one of them. I won’t tell him I know he’s almost my dad’s age, but I don’t have to remember Lydia’s lecture on not sleeping with the residents. They’re allowed to sleep with each other if they’d like to, but I’m staff. I’m supposed to be professional.

“You’ve been here a while, right?” he asks, crossing his arms on the high counter and resting his chin on top of them. “Had a month already?”

I nod, wondering which question’s coming next. Do you ever stop looking for your cell phone? Eventually, but after my “weekends” I keep reaching for it again. Does the water ever warm up? Define warm. Do you think there’s a God? Dodge and weave.

Edgar fixes his eyes on mine. “Can you identify birds by their calls?”

A laugh bursts out of me, mostly because I don’t want to get into a deep philosophical discussion with anyone just now, thanks. “I’m not the one to ask. Truman’s back tomorrow. He’s your guy.”

“Yeah?” His eyes sparkle.

“He’ll tell you what it is, how it’ll taste, and what he’d forage to go with it.” Wait, am I over-sharing?

Edgar grins without straightening up. “I don’t want to eat it. I just want to know what it is.”

Apparently I’m not over-sharing. “Well, you might be able to get him to stop there.”

“Because he’ll want to eat it.” He raises a challenging eyebrow.

I snort. “I’m pretty sure Truman just walks into the woods barefoot on his days off and lives on whatever he can find.”

He frowns a little. “Raw?”

Seriously, he’s cute when he wrinkles his nose, no matter how old he is. “No, he’s got to try out some new survival way to start a fire.”

He clucks his tongue. “That doesn’t sound very back-to-nature to me.”

“Oh, he’ll lecture you. Heating food causes it to undergo a chemical change that means we can digest it more easily, so it actually creates less waste.” I grimace. “Uh. Less of all kinds of waste.”

Edgar laughs, a guffaw that leans him back so he grabs the countertop to keep from falling over. “You know, I can’t say that’s something I’ve ever really considered.”

Despite the fact that one of his best-known roles involves surviving the apocalypse. “Truman has.”

“Is that …?” But he stops, cocking his head. “I was going to ask if that’s his first or last name.”

I shake my head. “I don’t even know if it’s after Harry S. or Capote.” Or if he’s the one who picked it, or it’s the name his parents chose.

“Ahhh.” He nods deeply. “Capote. That makes sense, with the rest of us. And maybe the, uh. The killing.”

“I don’t think he’s going to be shooting any bird around here with a shotgun.” Homemade bow and arrow is more likely.

Edgar winks, but I can’t tell if it’s because he’s pleased that I know In Cold Blood or because he doesn’t entirely get the reference. “I figured you’re named after Alyssa Orlen, the greatest children’s author of all time.”

My mom loved those books. She was also about Edgar’s generation.

I just smile, which probably doesn’t look all that knowing and mysterious, but at least he laughs again and holds up his hands. “Fair, fair. I should know better than to keep asking questions. Well.” He holds up a finger. “Personal questions. Because I do have another one.” The finger points toward the chalkboard that has the dinner menu. “How’s Lydia at chicken and waffles? Because I’m starving, but I’ll wait for the right chicken.”

“She’s great at both. We didn’t have them together last month.” That must be your request. I clamp down on it, because that feels too much like a personal assumption.

Edgar nods, rubbing at his chin and that recognizable scruffy beard. “All right. I can wait, as long as I get what I want in the end.”

I nod once sagely. “Margaret Thatcher would be proud of you.”

He laughs and does the wink again, and I’m still not sure if that means he caught my reference or if I missed the mark. At least he leaves with a smile, so that’s really the best I can ask for when it comes to customer service. And hey, let’s face it: my expectations for myself are pretty low these days. I’m in bare minimum survival mode where just getting through is worth a gold star.

---

Cold Comfort: Wednesday, July 3, 2024 – Henry

Dear Diary,

I didn’t sleep well last night. I mean, it’s been a long time since I slept well, but I really didn’t sleep well. First night in a new place, and the irony. Ugh. I like using the forest sounds on my white noise machine, so I thought I’d try just listening to the forest, but that didn’t work, so I plugged in the machine, but then I had to keep turning it up louder to drown out the real forest, and that got me worried I wouldn’t hear a bear coming up to the cabin and trying to eat me, so I had to dial it down again.

The sun was up at 6, so I figured I might as well be, too. The schedule in the binder says Lydia doesn’t start hot breakfast until 8, but anything in the fridge or on the table is up for grabs, so I headed over to the lodge. Jonathan was behind the desk, but I just nodded at him and went on into the dining room to see what was up.

It’s weird, right? You’re not making or even buying your own food. I filled out page after page of things I like and things I don’t like, things I eat daily or a couple times a week or only occasionally, and there’s coffee and granola bars in my kitchenette but for the rest of it I have to walk to the lodge. Not that it’s far. None of the cabins are far. I’m the middle cabin to the right, when you’re looking at the lake, and it wouldn’t be a hard walk in the middle of the night or anything, but I ended up bringing some things back for my little fridge all the same.

It’s nowhere near the fridge case they have there in the dining room, with milk and juice and yogurt and cheese and lunch meat and stuff there for the taking, though. I could go in and look for my favorite yogurt and grab an apple from the fresh fruit, and there’s a Keurig, so I took my little breakfast to a table by the window and ate it and zoned out for a bit. If anyone called me on it I could’ve pretended I was taking in nature, I guess, but that wasn’t it. I just drifted again.

I’m not supposed to get mad at myself for wasting time like that. I’m supposed to remind myself that that’s a very capitalist mindset, and I’m working through a lot of trauma, and progress isn’t linear, and all the rest. But nobody called me on it, and the reason I came out of it was because someone walked up onto that long back porch (or maybe it’s a front porch) to sit on one of the rocking chairs and start knitting.

Henry. Hot blond dude with the broad shoulders and chiseled jaw and sensual lips. That guy knits. If it were one of the other women, I would’ve gone out there and started a conversation. Asked about her knitting and how she learned. But when a guy knits … when a guy who looks like that knits … his entire point is getting you to ask. He has his answer prepared, and you’re supposed to ooh and ahh over whatever he makes, even if his tension’s off and he hasn’t used anything but Red Heart.

Stop it, Agatha. You can insult Henry without being a yarn snob.

My feelings are valid. I can’t just get out my own knitting and sit there and knit next to him, because of all the stereotypes and my worry that he’ll get all offended because he’s not special.

Look at how beautifully I worded that: my worry that. Not the assumption that he would in fact act that way.

Diary, I did not give him the chance to prove me wrong. I picked up my garbage, threw that away, and picked one of the reusable bags that were in a neat stack on the corner of the serving table so I could take some more food back to my cabin.

I was late enough that Alyssa was behind the desk. She caught sight of me and laid her book down flat, but I recognized the cover, because there’s a whole shelf of those in the lodge’s library: an Agatha Christie. I don’t know which one, because they all look alike, but that’s what it was. And I had to sidestep Jane on my way out, so I think she saw how I was looking at Alyssa, because she seemed startled.

I sat on my own porch for a while with my own knitting until I got cold, and then I came back in here and made some more coffee and wrapped a blanket around my legs and wrote all this. But now I have to figure out what to do with the rest of my day, because I agreed to come to a place with so few distractions. Joy. Maybe I’ll go try to drown myself in the lake.

---

Cold Comfort: Tuesday, July 2, 2024 – Alyssa