The night still hung in the air around me, like fog. Coffee was definitely in order. I ran a brush through my hair, hopped into jeans and a T-shirt, and slid my glasses on, intending to head downstairs to the restaurant.
But as I was pulling my door shut behind me, I noticed Dominic sitting on the balcony at the end of the hallway, overlooking the lake, a full carafe of French press coffee on the end table next to him. He turned his head to look at me, as though sensing I was there.
“Good morning!” he called out. His expression was open and inviting, so I walked out on the balcony to join him, my heart pounding.
The lake shimmered. Down the street to the harbor I could see a handful of boats already moored to their slips. A sailboat floated lazily by, its colorful spinnaker unfurled, and the ferry that made its way to the islands every twenty minutes was chugging its way across the bay.
Wharton was the jumping-off point for travelers to explore the Redemption Islands, a chain of impossibly lovely wooded, mostly uninhabited (save a lighthouse or two) islands that attracted campers, hikers, and kayakers from around the world.
Only one of the islands, Ile de Colette, had a community of year-round residents and summer-cabin owners as well. I hadn’t been there in a long time, but I was going to make it a point to hop on the ferry soon and take a look around.
“What a beautiful morning,” I mused, still staring out over the water.
“Join me for some coffee?” Dominic asked, lifting up his French press. “There’s too much for just me.”
I smiled down at him. “I’ll grab my mug,” I said, and hurried back to my room, where I scooped it up and popped open my little fridge, grabbing my carton of half-and-half. Back on the balcony, Dominic poured coffee into my mug, and I watched as steam rose in the chilly air. It felt good, the cool nip on my face. I settled into the Adirondack chair next to him and, after splashing my coffee with half-and-half, took a sip.
“Thank you,” I said, raising my mug. “Can’t get the day started without coffee. Especially this morning.”
“True that.” Dominic smiled. “Long night?”
I leaned my head onto the back of the chair and sighed. “First night in a new place, I guess. I didn’t sleep much.”
“I get it. A new environment, new sounds at night. Unidentified creaks and groans. It can take a while to feel comfortable.”
New sounds, indeed. I wasn’t intending to bring it up, but I heard myself saying the words.
“Did you hear anything in the hallway last night?” I asked him.
He narrowed his eyes and grinned. “No,” he said. “Should I have?”
I took another sip of my coffee. “Well, you did say the place was haunted.”
Dominic laughed then, a deep chuckle that made me feel warm on the inside. “That’s what LuAnn says. You should talk to her about it. Or Gary. He’s got the stories. Did you hear something ghostly? Chains, maybe?”
“No, just the odd moan or two of the undead,” I said, raising my eyebrows. We both smiled, but I cleared my throat. “I did hear someone, though. A woman.”
He held my eyes in his gaze for a long moment. “What did she say?”
I winced. “She asked if anyone was there, and if I would let her in.”
Dominic’s eyes grew wide. “Let her in? What? Hell no!”
I dissolved into laughter at the horrified expression on his face. “That’s exactly what I thought,” I said.
“So, you didn’t let her in?”
“A disembodied voice asks me to let them into my room in the middle of the night? I’m going to go with no every time. It’s one of my rules to live by.”
Dominic laughed and shook his head. “Sensible.”
“Are there any other guests?” I asked him. “I was thinking it was just you and me, and Gil and Jason, but another of the rooms could be rented.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t hear of anyone checking in, but I went to bed pretty early last night.”
“Same here,” I said.
Both of us exhaled then. We stared out at the water for a while, and then Dominic broke our silence.
“Now that your day has started, what will it hold?”
I took a last sip. “I thought maybe I’d ramble around town this morning and get reacquainted with the place. It’s been a while since I’ve been here.”
He nodded. “What brought you back?”
The inevitable question. “I just needed a break,” I said. “I’m a professor. I was on sabbatical last year, and I’m gearing up to go back to work in the fall. Not sure I want to, actually.”
I winced at the thought of it. I hadn’t admitted this out loud to anyone, but I wasn’t sure I had it in me. The first student—or worse yet, his or her mother—who complained about a grade would do me in.
“A professor, huh? What do you profess?”
I smiled at that. “Modern American literature.”
“Is that right?” he said. “Why literature?”
“Why?” I asked, furrowing my brow.
“Why do you spend your life focusing on that? What’s important to you about it?”
His eyes were filled with curiosity, looking not so much at me, but into me. I couldn’t remember if anybody had ever asked me that before.
“I’ve loved reading since I was a kid,” I said. “But I noticed that, in college, I wasn’t reading much. Not for pleasure. Just the books I was assigned to read for classes. I hadn’t read anything current in years. So, when I decided I wanted to go into teaching—I loved the idea of spending my life on a college campus—it just made sense to me to follow my passion where it led. As it turns out, I really love the idea that I’m giving students the opportunity to read fun and interesting current works of fiction in contrast to all of their schoolwork. I like to think I’m giving them a respite from studying.”
“Now that doesn’t sound like a lady who doesn’t want to go back to teaching.”
I had said the words, and meant them, but I couldn’t imagine getting back to the normalcy of my job. September would indeed arrive. Students would file into my classroom. I’d get through it, one way or another. That was what the doctors said, at least.
He took another sip of his coffee, and I noticed his perfectly chiseled jawline.
“So, did you write the great American novel on your sabbatical?” he asked, eyeing me over the rim of his coffee mug. “Isn’t that what literature professors do?”
I winced. “Not exactly,” I said.
The image of my mother floated into my mind.
“This is going to be so hard for you,” she had said, looking up at me with sunken eyes from the bed where she lay dying. They were the last words she ever said to me. But they were not the last words she spoke.
I had turned my parents’ guest bedroom into a hospice, bringing in a hospital bed for her and hiring nurses to come in around the clock. They had wanted to move her to an actual hospice facility, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I was the one making the decisions then; my dad was too strangled by his grief and terror to do anything but hold her hand and tell her how much he loved her. They had started their lives in that little house in the small town where they both grew up, and that was where my mother would end hers if I had anything to say about it, not in some sterile hospital room hooked up to God knew what kind of machines.