Chapter Twenty-Eight
Nathan and I stay on the floor in the middle of the living room until his sobs slowly dissipate. Until his breath comes easier
and his fingers loosen. And then, finally, I push myself up. My knees ache from the hard floor. I drag Nathan up with me,
moving us both toward the couch. We collapse, sinking into the worn-out cushions. I lean my head back until it hits the wall
with a dull thud, closing my eyes.
I don’t know how long we stay there, but it’s long enough that when I open my eyes, I realize Nathan has fallen asleep, half
slumped against the pillows piled at one end of the couch, his feet tucked against me.
I rub my eyes and realize I haven’t texted Dina and Sharon.
“Shit,” I whisper. I glance at Nathan, but he’s still fast asleep, so I carefully inch away from him, pushing myself off the
couch. I dig my phone out of my pocket and fire off a quick text, and then I set my phone on the coffee table and stretch
my back. My eyes go to the short hallway; it’s empty, and the door at the end is closed.
I glance once more at the Nathan asleep on the couch, and then I walk down the hall, grasp the glass knob, and open the bedroom door.
The room beyond is dark and empty, a chilly breeze whistling in under the window that I left cracked open to let out the heat
of earlier in the day.
I know I saw the younger Nathan walk back here, just like I know I saw him standing there at the edge of the living room.
I don’t know how. But I know he was there.
And now he’s gone.
A pair of headlights sweeps through the trees, outside the window. There’s a car coming up Spyglass Beach Way.
I leave the bedroom. The real Nathan is still asleep on the couch, so I pull the throw blanket down over him. And then I leave
the cottage, closing the door quietly behind me.
I reach the clearing just as Dina is climbing out of her car.
“He’s here?” Her voice is hoarse, eyes wide behind her glasses.
“Yeah, he’s here. He’s fine.”
“Where?” She slams her car door, ready to charge past me. “My house?”
“No . . . in the little cottage. He’s asleep on the couch.”
She stills, her eyes locked on mine, her face washed in the distant glow of her porch light.
Then she lets her breath out, long and slow. Her shoulders slump. She seems to shrink, shadows etching deep into her forehead,
around her eyes. “It’s over,” she says.
I don’t need to ask what she means. “Yeah. I think so.”
She turns away, locking her car. “Then you did what I never could.”
I hesitate, catching my lip in my teeth, and then I say, “So you knew.”
She’s quiet, shoulders rising slowly and then falling. “I never know. Most of the time, all I can do is guess. And with Nathan . . .” She turns back to me. Her face is sad; sadder than I’ve
ever seen it. “I could guess.”
“So why send him in there?” I ask. “Why tell him you needed help fixing things?”
“Because I did need help,” she says, frowning at me. “That place always has something going wrong.” And then the frown fades
and she runs her hand over her eyes. “I wanted to help him. He stopped . . . he stopped moving as soon as they were gone.
He wouldn’t talk to me. He wouldn’t talk to anyone. He was sinking. I thought the house could help him.”
I look down at my shoes, shoving my hands into my pockets.
“I suppose it was probably selfish,” she says quietly. “I sent him in there because I wanted him to stop being sad. I was
too impatient. Didn’t realize it wasn’t the right time.” Her voice catches. “Didn’t realize all I was doing was making it
worse.”
I hunch my shoulders up against the breeze rushing in from the ocean and look back up at her. “Why do you rent the cottage
out, if you know what it does?”
She shakes her head and starts up the steps toward her house. “It’s late.”
But I refuse to let it go. Not this time. “Does everyone who rents that cottage see someone?” I ask, following her. “Someone
from their past? Like we did?”
She stops on her front porch. “No,” she says. “For some people, the cottage is just a house.”
“But not for everyone.”
“No, not for everyone. Not for most people.” She sighs and turns to face me.
“I don’t rent that place out to just anyone, Harlowe.
I get plenty of booking requests, and I turn plenty of them down.
I try to keep the cottage for . . . for the right people.
After Nathan, I tried to be careful. I try to choose the people who might need it. ”
“And you decided I needed it?”
She raises an eyebrow. “You were an easy pick. All I had to do was google you to realize your life was a mess.”
I make a mental note to switch my Instagram to private indefinitely. “So why didn’t I see anyone the first time I walked in?
When I showed up with Rika and Yasmin, the house was empty.”
“Yes, well . . .” Dina runs a hand through her hair, which only makes it look wilder. “The house seems to activate when you walk in alone for the first time. Damned if I know why. It just seems to know. And if anyone’s with you—it waits.”
Except for tonight. Tonight, Nathan and I walked in together, and I could see his parents too.
I think, for a moment, about telling her this. About asking her what it could possibly mean.
But I don’t. It’s not really mine to tell, because none of what just happened really belongs to me.
“So why did I see a younger version of Nathan in the bedroom?” I ask. “I knew everyone else I saw. Why would the cottage show
me him?”
Dina takes a long, slow breath, as if pondering her answer, and then she says, “I’ve never been able to figure out why, but
the bedroom door is different.”
“Different how?”
“I’m not sure I understand it, but . . . Well, every other door in the house only shows the past—a person, a moment. Even
the front door works like that for some people. But the door to the bedroom seems to be different. My best guess is that it’s
got something to do with an event that needs to happen but hasn’t yet.
Not something that will happen. It never seems set in stone, whatever you see in the bedroom.
Just a possibility. Maybe that’s why I can never fix that damn doorknob.
I’ve tried, dozens of times, but it never takes.
Seems determined to stay loose and shaky.
” She sighs. “But I suppose that’s our connection to the future, isn’t it? Loose and shaky. Unpredictable.”
My mind flashes back to the first time I opened the bedroom door and the younger Nathan fell off the chair. Maybe that’s what
the cottage was trying to tell me—that I needed Nathan. Or that he needed me.
Who knows, maybe that’s even why I could see his parents tonight. Why the younger version of him showed up in the hall. Maybe
tonight was the moment the house was always trying to push us toward.
“Are you really going to sell the cottages?” I ask.
Dina looks down at the weathered floorboards of the porch, gray from decades of rain and snow, and then up at the overhang
above us. “I don’t know,” she says. “But I think it’s time for me to leave, one way or another.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to travel.” She tips her head down, eyes fixing on me. “I was never brave enough to do it when I was younger.
I never even left the Northeast. It always seemed too risky. Too dangerous to go out there, the way I was. George and I said
we’d do it someday. You always think you have time, until you don’t. So I’m doing it, while I still have time.”
“But Nathan—”
“Needs his space. And I’ve been terrible at giving it to him.” Her eyes soften. “We need time away from each other, Harlowe.
It’ll be good for both us.”
“Right.” But my heart sinks. “Sure.”
Dina regards me in silence. And then she says, “What about you?”
I run a hand over my face, suddenly worn out. “What about me?”
“Summer’s almost over.” Dina raises her eyebrows. “Are you ready to leave?”
I look back at her. A hint of panic bubbles back up, but I know she’s not asking about whether I have an apartment, or whether
I’ve packed, or even whether I’m looking forward to seeing the city once again.
I push the panic down and take a deep breath. “Not quite yet. There’s one more thing I have to do.”
She nods and turns to her front door, pulling out her keys.
“Dina—”
She turns back.
“Why didn’t you just tell me about the cottage?” I ask. “About what it does? That first day, when I asked you to come look . . .
I told you I saw people inside. So why didn’t you just tell me what was really going on?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Would you have believed me?”
I open my mouth, and close it again. I want to say yes. I want to believe I would have taken Dina at her word. It would have
saved me a lot of time spent wondering if I was losing it.
But then again, if she had told me exactly what was happening . . . would I have stayed? Would I have put up with it all long
enough to understand? Would I have talked to Professor MacAndrew or screamed at Jackson?
Or would I have run away?
“You could have made it easier,” I say, but it comes out half-hearted.
“There’s no power in easy,” Dina replies.
“Easy does not make you wiser or kinder or gentler. And some answers aren’t mine to give.
” She unlocks her front door. “Thank you for finding Nathan,” she says, and then she steps inside, closing the door, and I’m left alone on the porch with the wind whistling around the edges of the house and the waves roaring onto the beach in the distance.
The windows of the little cottage will be rattling tonight.
I hunch up my shoulders and turn away, starting back up the flagstone path. I don’t pull my phone out, even though the moon
is disappearing behind the clouds. I don’t need a flashlight. I know the way by heart now, even in the dark.