Coram House

Chapter 1

1

I leave Brooklyn before the rest of the city is awake. The day is bitter and damp. No snow. Just wet sidewalks and mounds of slush clogging the storm drains. Usually, I find the brick townhouses cheerful and bright, but today the gray sky drains the color from everything around me. I pull the building’s door shut and hoist my suitcase down the stairs. Patches of confetti glitter on the sidewalk. Soon they’ll be washed into the river along with the slush. It’s unusually quiet this morning. As if, a day later, the city is still sleeping off its New Year’s hangover.

New Year’s Eve was particularly cold and clear, so the sounds of people celebrating carried all the way up to my empty third-floor apartment. A knot of girls passed beneath my window, laughing and drinking tiny bottles of champagne through straws. I’d shivered to see their bare legs glowing white. I’ve always hated New Year’s.

A few days ago, Lola had come over with a bottle of wine to toast my new book. She knew the rough details: the old orphanage, the church, all the usual horror and abuse, the case that had finally broken everything open and then the settlement that had shut it back in the dark.

Sounds like bestseller material was all she said, even after I told her about the fine print: six months in Vermont and someone else’s name on the cover.

Ghostwriter.

After everything that had gone wrong with my last book, the word appealed to me. Like I wasn’t there. And besides, I had a pile of unpaid medical bills in a drawer. Three years since Adam died and they still keep coming. No one tells you about that part.

All right , Lola had said, I’ll help you pack.

And she did try, pulling clothes out of my closet and holding them up. A chunky striped sweater. A long red dress with flowers. I hadn’t worn any of it in years. She refilled my glass, tried to make it fun, but I’d begged off. After she left, I drifted around, finishing the bottle on my own. It seemed impossible to take things off the shelves. Like, over the years, they’d grown roots. Adam’s closet was already empty, at least.

Alone, I’d made a pile of the things I cared about. Photos from our wedding. The cone of a giant sequoia tree, tiny as an acorn, from a trip to California. A perfectly round stone I’d found in a Peruvian temple and smuggled home. It’s an ancient Ping-Pong ball, I’d told Adam. Each object came with a memory that I shoved into the locked cabinet in my mind to be dealt with later—on the advice of a therapist I’d seen a few times after Adam died. I’d never asked her what happened if you just leave the memories in there, the door firmly locked.

My pile had fit inside a single box. The box went into Lola’s basement. Everything else went to the curb. The tiny bottles of vinegar. Brass candlesticks. A set of ugly brown sheets. Objects that had piled up over the years as if washed ashore.

Today, my car is parked right in front of the building—a small miracle I found the spot. I bought the car in some New Jersey suburb the day after I signed the book contract. A used Toyota with seventy thousand miles and two matching dents in the roof where the previous owner drove it into a garage with a bike on the roof. I like that the car comes with its own story. I load my suitcase into the trunk next to the boxes of work stuff. Laptop and reference books. Blank pads of paper, my favorite highlighters, index cards, empty binder. My stomach growls.

It’s just past six in the morning, but the OPEN sign at the deli promises hot coffee. I order my usual bagel with cream cheese and tomato slices, even though I know they will be pale and mealy. While I’m waiting, I drink in the bare branches of the trees in the park across the street, the chipped green paint of the stairs leading down to the subway. Pantone 350. New York green. My stomach tightens.

I’m being maudlin. The book contract is six months for a first draft. Then I can come back. Even here, I hardly leave the apartment in the early stages of a project. Besides, this isn’t even a real ending—that came three years ago. It’s more like tearing off a hangnail. Painful, yes, to sever that thread of flesh. But also a relief.

I take my bagel, diapered in wax paper, back to the car. My phone pings as I slide into the driver’s seat—a text from Lola wishing me luck and telling me it’s supposed to snow and not to end up in a ditch. Also an email from Alan Stedsan, my new coauthor.

Dear Ms. Kelley , it begins, with the same formality as all his previous emails. Maybe lawyers can’t help themselves. He wishes me a safe drive and asks if I’ll come by his office tomorrow to get started. I type back a quick reply, agreeing.

We’ve only spoken once on the phone, but that was enough to paint a picture. Stedsan did most of the talking. He gave a brief overview of the case against the Catholic church and his vision for the book—history for true-crime fans. He needed someone good at both, he said. Like a young Erik Larson. His tone suggested this was the highest compliment.

That conversation was supposed to be an interview, but I got the sense he was searching for something inside my answers, some mysterious quality. Right before we hung up, he asked if I’d like any changes made to the draconian contract, though of course he didn’t call it that. Full editorial control for him. A punishing nondisclosure agreement for me with a six-figure slap on the wrist should I violate it. Plus, a ruthless schedule and a move to Vermont so he could keep tabs on our progress.

I said no. It was fine, all of it.

My agent called an hour later with the offer. So I guess the quality he’d been searching for was compliance. Not so mysterious after all.

I pull up directions to the apartment I’ve rented sight unseen. Burlington, Vermont. Six hours north in an almost-straight line. The engine makes a metallic crunch as it turns over, but soon I’m merging onto Atlantic Avenue. Five blocks later, I realize I never took a last look at the apartment. A white van honks and cuts me off. Any regret is swallowed by the anxiety of trying to get on the highway without dying.

An hour north of the city, the traffic grows sparse. I reach for my bagel and coffee, both cold. Through the bare winter trees, I glimpse miniature towns down in the valley and snowy fields dotted with brown horses or cows. By the time I reach Albany, its office towers and smokestacks seem enormous.

After that, the towns get smaller and farther apart until I stop for gas in a town that consists of a post office and general store nestled in snow-frosted evergreens. I fill up at the gas pump out front, switching hands every ten seconds so I don’t freeze.

Inside, I navigate racks of every imaginable type of potato chip—dill pickle, ketchup, shrimp—until I find the coffee nestled beside a case of sugared donuts. I once read about a man who slipped razor blades into gas station donuts. Someone had to get their tongue sewn back together. I fill up a cup and take a donut out of the case and pay. Outside, the cold winds around me like it missed me. The donut tastes of apples and cinnamon. It’s delicious. No razor blades either.

Adam told me once that I see danger everywhere. He blamed it on my books. His theory was that if I wrote about kittens instead of people who were murdered, the world would feel less threatening.

No one wants to read books about kittens , I’d argued.

Everyone wants to read books about kittens , he’d said.

But I think I got the argument all wrong. Maybe I do see danger everywhere, but that’s because the world is dangerous. Some donuts will slice your tongue off. My books aren’t made up, is what I should have said to him. They’re facts. He’s the one who didn’t see things as they are. He’s the one who believed life would get better, right until the end.

I wonder what Adam would say about this new project. More darkness and death. Maybe he would have been excited at the prospect of leaving New York for a few months. Or maybe he would have hated it. For a while, I could summon his voice—imagine just what he’d say and how he’d say it. But it doesn’t work anymore. In my head, his voice just sounds like my own. The pain of this is less sharp than it used to be. More like pressing on an old bruise.

I get back in the car and drive.

The next couple hours are uneventful. No traffic, no blizzard. Just a road unfurling across hills with the occasional small town or lonely barn rising up on the side of the road. I keep an eye out for Camel’s Hump, a mountain whose distinct shape was all over my internet searches about Vermont, but I don’t find it. I begin to understand how people enjoy driving.

As I top out on the next hill, I see the flash of the highway in the distance. Then a mint-green bridge carries me over a river and back into the present. A shopping plaza stuffed with giant budget stores—the siren song of stuff, cheap and plentiful. The pictures of Burlington looked charming enough. Lots of antique brick buildings with the wide expanses of Lake Champlain as a backdrop, but now I worry they were misleading. Maybe this is going to be six months of dumpy strip malls and Egg McMuffins. Even though I’d protested to Lola that Burlington was a city—the biggest city in Vermont!—I realize part of me has been expecting not the wilderness exactly, but at least something charming and Thoreau-adjacent.

I crest a hill crowned by a college campus. Historic buildings mix with a giant glass student center. In the rearview mirror, the distinct shape of Camel’s Hump appears as if carved on the horizon. It feels like an omen that my first glimpse of it should be unexpected and through a mirror, but what kind of omen, I’m not sure.

I miss the next turn and get lost in a maze of one-way streets until I finally end up on Archibald Street. Most buildings look like they could use a fresh coat of paint, but the neighborhood is busy. There’s a bakery with fogged-up windows, a corner store promising samosas, a mural of Muhammad Ali so big I could curl up inside his nostril. Then a tiny colonial graveyard tucked among a row of old Victorians, each house divided into many apartments, judging by the number of mailboxes.

My destination is the last house on the block, a rambling place painted acid-trip purple. I double-check the address, but my phone assures me I’ve arrived. I’m scrolling through my emails, trying to find the landlord’s number, when someone raps on the hood.

Outside, a white-haired man motions for me to roll down the window. “You must be Alex,” he says. “I’m Joe. I own the building. How was the drive?”

I scramble to get out while he launches into an explanation of snowplowing and parking. The sidewalk is dotted in patches of ice, but he seems more confident on his feet than I am, despite his age and unlaced snow boots.

“Well,” he says, holding out his arms to embrace that monstrous expanse of purple house, “this is it.”

I wrap my arms around myself, regretting I didn’t take the time to pull on my coat and hoping he’ll take the hint, but he seems to be waiting for me to respond.

“It’s very cheerful,” I say finally.

“Well, it’s gray around here six months of the year, so I thought, why not brighten up the neighborhood a bit.”

He delivers the line like he’s said it before.

“All right. Ready for the grand tour?”

He unlocks the front door and I follow him inside and up a steep set of stairs.

Joe’s tour covers the hot water heater, the fire escape, how to flip the breaker if the stove overloads the system. Old house seems to be the explanation for everything. Finally, we stand in the kitchen, our boots melting onto the yellowed linoleum.

He nods at the doorway that leads into the living room. “I had an old table in the garage. Had my son clean it up and put it in there. Figured that would be better than a desk—more space and all—if you’re going to be writing a book in here.”

“Thanks,” I say. “That’s great.”

He pauses, waiting for me to go on, but I just smile politely. People are always curious when you say you’re a writer. Like it’s not a real job and you owe them a better explanation, but I’d long ago gotten over the impulse to fill the silence. Any silence. Besides, Alan Stedsan had instructed me to be cagey about our project. Don’t tell people what you’re working on , he’d said. Not until you have to.

“Anyways.”

Joe jangles a set of keys, then holds them out to me. The owl keychain looks at me with googly eyes.

“I usually swing by on Wednesdays,” he says. “To check up on things. But you have my number. Let me know if you need anything. And good luck with the history project.”

With that, he shuts the door behind him. Heavy footsteps thunk down the stairs and then the outside door slams shut.

I wander the rooms, taking inventory or maybe claiming them. The kitchen is clean and bare and smells of bleach and mildew. There’s an electric stove, a small fridge, and a window looking onto the asphalt lot behind the house. The living room is covered in gray carpet. The couch, with its wooden arms, reminds me of dorm furniture. Beside it stands a laminate coffee table and a small television. The promised table, which takes up most of the living room, is like something straight out of a farmhouse with its scarred pine top and turned legs. In Brooklyn, you’d pay thousands of dollars for that kind of perfectly distressed paint job. I run my finger over a line of tiny dents on the surface. Fork tines.

In the bedroom, the mattress is still wrapped in plastic. It’s the one thing I’d insisted on buying new after a decade terrified of bed bugs. The bedside lamp gives off a dim, yellow glow beneath a shade that’s far too large for its squat body. The one window looks out onto the street at a corner store and the cemetery. The mattress crinkles beneath me as I sit and take stock of the situation, searching for any hint of panic at my new reality.

I go through it like a checklist. Walked away from the apartment I’ve lived in for seven years, check. Gotten rid of most of my belongings, check. Moved to a town where I know no one. Agreed to ghostwrite a book with a complete stranger. Check, check, check.

But the panic isn’t there. I feel nothing but tired.

I’ll get my boxes out of the car, I decide. Find a pizza place that delivers. Buy a bottle of wine. Outside the window, a few white flakes drift from the sky. Then a few more. The promised storm, finally here.

The sky is inky black when I wake, the silence so deep, I think it must be the middle of the night. But no. My phone says it’s nearly six a.m. I untangle myself from the blankets and pad over icy floorboards to the window. The world is buried under a thick layer of snow. A plow scrapes somewhere in the distance, but the street below is untouched. The graveyard is painted in soft blue shadows.

My eyes feel like they’re full of sand, but I don’t go back to bed. Early morning has always been my favorite time. But I do need coffee.

In the kitchen it’s disorienting to see the grocery bag from my apartment in Brooklyn on the counter—like it got lost and wandered into the wrong life. I put a piece of bread in the toaster. No butter, no milk. But good enough for now.

While the coffee is brewing, I turn on my laptop. Last night, I’d set it out on the table along with the slim folder that contained everything I had from Stedsan so far, which is not much. My contract. The book pitch. A proposed schedule—one month for an outline, which is punishing for a research book. Stedsan promised he had boxes of deposition transcripts, interview tapes, and historical photos, all waiting for me at his office. And also that there might be more documentation with the church or local historical societies.

I send my agent a quick email, letting her know that I’ve arrived. She’s been quietly furious with me since I signed the contract. She’d assumed we’d negotiate—the money, the terms of authorship—but I said no. None of it. She sat me down in her office, actually crouched so we were eye-to-eye like a parent with a child. I know this story is interesting , she’d said, and sure, it’s been a dry spell, and yes, your last book didn’t turn out so well, but you’ve been on the bestseller list twice, and now you’re not even going to get a byline?

But none of it changed my mind.

The story was interesting. A haunted orphanage for a setting. The terrible stories of nuns and priests. The settlement that buried the whole thing. But that wasn’t the reason I took the contract. My agent thought I simply hadn’t written anything for the last year and a half. That I was grieving. I never told her how I couldn’t write. How I’d tried and failed. How I’d looked for that spark I felt with my first book, but couldn’t find it. How I was starting to believe it was gone forever. But maybe if I was writing as someone else. If everyone in the story was already dead so I didn’t have a chance to fuck up their lives. Maybe now, things would be different.

I unpack, which takes ten minutes. Then I drink my coffee. My appointment with Stedsan isn’t until ten, but by eight it feels like the walls are closing in. At home, I’d go for a run—sweat out my impatience on the paths that crisscross Prospect Park or along the river. Before I came, I scoped out some likely routes, but none took a foot of fresh snow into account. I think of the sign I’d seen yesterday in the window of the minimart, promising samosas. Then I pull on my brand-new snow boots, grab my keys, and head across the street.

The floor of the minimart is already slick with brown slush. I fill a paper bag with samosas and pour a cup of hot chai so spiced the smell alone is warming. I eat while walking, past a Nepali restaurant and a school with an impressive treehouse, already busy with kids, their snowsuits blurs of color against the white snow.

The road ends at a park, though there’s not much to it—an empty stone fountain and a stretch of piebald snow and brown grass all encircled by a retaining wall. If you rolled down the steep slope beyond, you’d land in the harbor. Granted, with a few broken bones.

I’d looked at Burlington on a map. Downtown is on a bay that looked like no more than a puddle-sized inlet off the rest of Lake Champlain. But now, seeing it in person, the bay is plenty big: a two-mile-wide expanse of solid ice dotted with fishing shacks. At the far end, forested peninsulas enclose it on both sides, like a forefinger and thumb nearly closed in a circle, cutting the bay off from the great expanse of open water beyond.

I bite into a samosa and grease dribbles down my chin. Sitting on the wall, feet dangling over the edge, is giving me vertigo, so I turn my back to the view to finish. On the far side of the park, three police officers cluster around a parked school bus. The nosy reporter in me wonders what’s going on. Then a man in an apron passes a cup and foil-wrapped package out one of the windows.

The officer tucks a few dollars into a jar. Only then do I notice the smell of grease in the air. The side of the bus is painted with big blue letters: BEANSIE’S BUS . The officers cross the street into a squat brick building. BURLINGTON POLICE DEPARTMENT , announces the sign above the door.

My phone buzzes. A text from Stedsan. Running late. 10:15 okay?

It’s almost nine thirty now. I write him back. No problem! See you then!

As soon as I hit send, I regret the exclamation marks. Then regret my regret. It feels pathetic that, at thirty-six, I can be sent into a spiral of self-doubt by punctuation. Five years ago, I don’t think I would have had that same doubt, but I can’t be sure. That’s a land too foreign to remember clearly. The grease in my samosa has hardened in the cold. I crumple the rest in the bag and throw it away.

The dashboard clock says 10:05 when I park in front of a small brick building with the kind of antique white patina that home improvement shows covet. In front, a carved wooden sign hangs from a post. ALAN STEDSAN, ATTORNEY AT LAW —black with gold lettering. Stately homes with turrets and gingerbread trim keep watch over the rest of the street. The setting has the flavor of old money and deep connections.

I glance in the rearview mirror, but my reflection is not encouraging—dark circles under my eyes, thin pale lips blending into the rest of my skin. I riffle through the glove box, find a tube of half-frozen lipstick, and smear some on my lips and cheeks. Good enough.

There’s no doorbell beside the red front door, just a brass knocker in the shape of a fist. I knock. After a few seconds, the door opens. Alan Stedsan is nearly seventy, but there’s something ageless about him. Like he might actually be thirty and just wearing stage makeup to play someone much older. I’m five foot eight, but I have to look up into his bright blue eyes and cut-glass cheekbones. He looks descended from Viking kings. The expensive suit helps too.

“Alex,” he says, holding out a hand for me to shake. “Alan Stedsan. Nice to finally meet you. Come in.”

I step into the foyer, a dark cocoon of green, striped wallpaper and slate floors.

“May I take your coat? You can leave your boots just there.”

He points to a copper tray beside the door. Below the hem of his suit he wears only socks, but makes it look elegant. I hand over my coat and pull off my boots, balancing on one leg and getting slush all over the cuffs of my jeans.

Stedsan guides me into the living room and then disappears to “get refreshments.” The room is all blond wood and modern furniture. In the corner, an egg-shaped wood-burning stove descends from the ceiling on a long tube like a spaceship. The vibe is rich-person IKEA—not what I expected.

The entire back wall is glass and looks out onto a snowy garden, though the only sign of life now is a small, twisted tree with a stone bench beside it.

“In September, it puts out hundreds of apples.”

I turn to see Stedsan holding a tray with a French press, silent as a cat in his socks. He offers a plate of delicate, flaky pastries but I decline, imagining crumbs all over myself and his expensive couch.

“Your office is lovely.”

I gesture to take in the room.

“I’m mostly retired, so it’s more home and less office these days. And how about you—how are you settling in?”

I think of the generic motel furniture and peeling linoleum in my apartment. It’s funny how some things don’t bother you until you see them in contrast to something else.

“Fine, thanks,” I say.

We talk for a little while about the city, the restaurants I must try, whether I ski. No , I shake my head. I’d tried a few times with Adam when we first met, when I was still trying to impress him with my gameness. He’d looked so elegant, his poles lightly tapping the snow as he carved turns. While I’d felt like a newly hatched octopus, all these extra limbs I didn’t know what to do with. It’s not an experience I ever looked to repeat.

“So the case,” I say, guiding us away from my personal life, back onto solid ground.

“Yes, the case.”

I’d done a little digging. I knew it had been settled out of court for practically nothing in today’s terms. In 1993, people had still been shocked by the idea of a priest doing that to a child. The unthinkable was still unbelievable. Then the Boston Globe ’s Spotlight article in 2002 cracked the church open and let the light in. If the Coram House case had been ten years later, things might have gone very differently.

Stedsan leans back and folds his long legs in a way that makes me think of a praying mantis. “The case, frankly, was a mess,” he says. “I inherited it from a senior partner who had taken it on pro bono from another lawyer. The plaintiffs couldn’t agree on anything and kept dropping out and starting their own cases. When the publisher approached me about writing this book, I have to say, I was surprised. But the more I thought about my legacy—” He pauses, shrugs. “It’s a story worth telling, and it appears I’m the one to tell it.”

It’s an interesting choice of words from someone who’s hired a ghostwriter. A reminder, perhaps, to stay in my lane. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

“The timeline is aggressive for a book like this,” I say.

He laughs, shrugs. “I’m not getting any younger.”

I smile. It’s probably true. Publishing is slow. But still, I sense something behind the words. A man who likes to control the room. He has a stare that traps you like the glare of two bright-blue headlights. It’s probably very effective in the courtroom.

“You’re not exactly what I expected,” Stedsan says.

No one’s exactly what anyone expects , I want to say.

“What were you expecting?” I ask instead, hoping he can’t hear the quiver in my voice, the way my uncertainty has gone into overdrive.

“Perhaps we should address the elephant in the room?”

I’ve always hated that expression.

Stedsan puts down his coffee. I think he was going for a sense of finality, but the cup makes a tiny clink on the saucer.

“Your last book was problematic,” he says, tone diplomatic. “Your agent mentioned that you had some personal circumstances. A breakdown, I suppose you’d call it, though she didn’t use that word exactly.”

The lump in my throat grows. But I keep my expression neutral. “A breakdown. That sounds very Victorian.”

He studies me, waiting for what he’s owed.

The anger leaks out like someone punched a hole in my gut. What does it matter, really. “My husband died,” I say. “And, for a while, work didn’t matter much. My last book suffered for it.”

I hate myself for offering this up. It’s true and not true. I had loved someone and he had died. After, all the things that used to matter— work, food, friends—became cardboard props. But the book had still mattered. Maybe the only thing that did. But that didn’t stop me from getting everything horribly wrong.

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d ever write another book.”

It feels good to say this out loud.

“You know,” Stedsan says, “my wife died a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He nods, but he’s not really listening. It’s just what you say.

“So why did you hire me?” I ask.

He drums his fingers on the table. “ The Isle was a good book,” he says. “And you were cheaper.”

The laugh bursts out of me. I was waiting for a story about second chances. “Yeah,” I say. “I probably was.”

“Anyhow, you’re here now,” he says. “Shall we begin?”

Stedsan leads me down a hallway and into a large office. The room is dominated by a desk large enough to be a dining table. Behind it, a door leads out to the street. It would make me uneasy, having a door at my back while I worked. But I get the sense there’s not much that ruffles Stedsan. He gestures to the corner where stacks of cardboard file boxes surround a brocade love seat.

“They’re a mess,” Stedsan says cheerfully. “Depositions, newspaper clippings, legal documents. Probably all missing pages. A box of unsorted photographs. The case dragged on for years and traded hands between God knows how many paralegals with their own filing systems.”

Stedsan rests his hand on a box teetering precariously on top of the stack. I count at least ten more. CORAM HOUSE , someone’s written on the side in all caps—like they’re yelling it.

“I think you’ll find my material is more organized,” he continues. “Some of the videos were destroyed, mice probably, but the surviving tapes are here, along with transcripts of all the rest. You’ll also want to request materials from the police.”

“The police?” I turn to look at him.

He shrugs. “Not that it’s likely to get you anywhere. And the church might have some documents too.”

“That they’re willing to share?”

The room smells faintly of old paper. The desire to cut through the tape and open the first box is an itch I’m trying to ignore.

Stedsan smiles, and there’s something foxlike about it. “Oh, yes, they’re very happy to be helpful. Speaking of…” He flips open a leather-bound calendar sitting on the desk. “What are you doing one week from Wednesday at nine a.m.?”

I want to laugh. I was contractually bound to move to a place where I don’t know a living soul beyond Stedsan. “Nothing,” I say. “What did you have in mind?”

“Father Aubry wants to have us over for tea.”

“That’s very… collegial.”

“Isn’t it? It’s your call, but I’d play nice. Father Aubry isn’t a bad sort.”

For a priest , I think.

“This meeting—”

“Tea. I think Father Aubry sees this as a social visit.”

I shrug, not caring what we call it. “Will it be at Coram House?”

Stedsan shakes his head. “No. The building has been turned over to the developer now. But the rectory is on the same property, just behind St. Joseph’s—the church. You can’t miss it from the road.”

“Do you think the developer will let us go inside?”

Anticipation bangs in my chest. I need to see it.

Stedsan waves his hand, as if it’s already done. “I’ll call him. I’ve known Bill a long time and he loves being helpful, as long as there’s an audience.”

I file that one away for later. “Wednesday at nine,” I say. “All right.”

Stedsan goes off to see if he can find a VHS player for the deposition tapes. I run my fingers over the rough threads of the love seat. They glow gold in the lamplight. I wonder again why Stedsan is writing this book. I assumed it was for the money, but now that I’ve seen where he lives, that seems less likely. There are plenty of rich people foaming at the mouth to get richer, sure, but he wears his wealth casually, as if he barely notices it’s there. His legacy, he says. And maybe that’s true. I push aside the unease creeping up my spine. It’s too late for second thoughts and I’m not going to let some fancy furniture send me into an anxiety spiral.

Stedsan reappears, empty-handed. “Sorry,” he says. “I was sure I had an old VCR in the basement.”

“No problem,” I say. “I can find one.”

I bring my car around the side. Stedsan looks doubtfully at the small trunk. “I could have the boxes delivered.”

But I can already hear the rip of tape and feel the old, brittle pages under my fingers. “I think they’ll fit,” I say and start loading.

After twenty minutes of cardboard-box Tetris, they do fit. Barely. I refused to let Stedsan help, but now my back aches and I’m soaked with sweat under my jacket.

“Will you be all right on the other end?” Stedsan asks.

I picture the steep, narrow stairs up to my apartment. The icy front porch. “I’ll be fine.”

“I imagine it will take some time to go through all that. Call me if you have questions. Otherwise, I’ll see you next week.”

I nod, surprised. Considering the contract, I assumed he’d be hovering over my shoulder.

As I climb into the car, Stedsan calls my name. He’s framed in the doorway, a hand gripping either side like some force is trying to suck him inside.

“There’s one more thing you should know for our meeting,” he says. “It’s not called Coram House anymore. It’s Sunrise House.”

“Sunrise House,” I repeat. The words taste bitter.

That foxlike smile reappears on his face. “Try not to mention it around Bill—at least not with that face. I believe he picked the name himself. Hold on.”

Stedsan ducks back into the office and reappears a second later with a glossy brochure. Sunrise House—on the Lake! , it announces above a stock photo of attractive thirty-somethings drinking wine around a fire pit, the glimmer of water in the background. Why do developers always pick names that sound like a high-end prison?

“Right,” I say, swallowing my grimace. “Noted.”

“See you next Wednesday,” he says and shuts the door.