Chapter 4 #2
Even as I say it, I picture our bedroom two nights ago. Mallory's side lit by the lamp. Mine empty until nearly three. The covered plate in the kitchen I didn't open because I'd eaten half a protein bar in the car and called that dinner.
I rub my thumb along the stem of the glass.
Jocelyn's voice softens. "That must be a relief."
"It is."
"She's lucky she doesn't have to live inside this part of it."
I look at her.
"Not an insult," she says quickly. "I only mean she has the better end of the arrangement. She gets you when you're real. The rest of us get the pressure."
The words are reasonable.
The lights flicker once, then settle.
Jocelyn reaches for her phone again. "Let me show you the exterior shots before the signal dies completely."
She leans in. Her shoulder presses mine.
On the screen, Ridgeline appears in fragments. Lake. Road. Half-built cabins. The fireplace behind my left shoulder. The two of us in that ridiculous photo.
Up close, it looks worse.
Wine glasses visible. Faces close. Firelight making an ordinary inconvenience look staged.
"Scandalous," she says lightly. "Good thing we're responsible adults."
"Speak for yourself. I'm trapped in a half-closed resort because I believed a weather app."
Her laugh is quiet.
She turns her head toward me instead of the phone.
For a moment, the space between us goes oddly still.
"I don't know how you manage it," she says.
Her fingers touch the inside of my wrist, just above my watch. "All of it. The company. The name. Everyone wanting something."
Her face is close enough that I can see the pale line rain left near her temple. She leans in another fraction, as if she's about to say something too quiet for the room.
I stand too fast and nearly catch my knee on the coffee table.
At the same moment, my phone rings. Beatrice's name flashes before the signal cuts out.
Thunder cracks so hard the windowpanes jump.
The phone flashes again.
"I should take this," I say.
"Of course."
Jocelyn sits back easily, already gathering the folder, as if there was nothing to notice.
Maybe there wasn't.
We're tired. Too much wine, too little sleep, too small a room. The mind turns proximity into meaning when weather locks the doors.
I call Beatrice back from the corner nearest the windows.
The line crackles. "Tell me you are not still on that mountain."
"The road flooded. We're here overnight."
A pause. "We?"
"Jocelyn and I. Separate cabins," I add, irritation slipping in before I can stop it. "Before you make that noise."
"I haven't made a noise."
"You made one in spirit."
"Does Mallory know Jocelyn is stranded there with you?"
"She knows the storm delayed me."
"That's not what I asked."
My jaw tightens. "She saw the calendar. She knows Jocelyn came."
"Does she know you're spending the evening with Jocelyn?"
I look toward the sofa. Jocelyn is stacking documents, calm and quiet, the fire moving over the side of her face.
"You make it sound sordid."
"I'm only repeating the facts," Beatrice says. "If they sound sordid, it's because they are. Call your wife. Explain clearly."
"There's nothing to explain."
"Then it should be easy."
The line distorts. Rain snaps against the glass.
"Beatrice."
"Innocence isn't the only issue here."
The call drops.
I stare at the dead screen.
Jocelyn watches me from near the hearth. "She's worried about appearances?"
"She's being Beatrice."
"That means yes." Jocelyn picks up her wineglass, then seems to think better of drinking. "She may have a point."
I give her a look.
"Not about us," she says. "About how it sounds. Mallory could hear pieces later and imagine something much worse than the truth."
"The truth is a flooded road and separate cabins."
"I know. You know." She sets the glass down. "But a remote property, a storm, wine, a fire. If you hand someone those details with or without context, they build a picture. Why put that in her head when nothing happened?"
My phone sits heavy in my palm.
I could call Mallory. If the signal holds. I could wake her and give her every harmless piece in the ugliest possible order.
Jocelyn. Fire. Wine. Overnight. Cabins.
I picture Mallory in bed, lamp on, tired eyes going still while she tells me she understands.
She would understand.
That's the problem.
She would swallow the image because I gave it to her, and then lie awake with it because what else could she do?
Nothing happened.
Nothing.
A bad photograph. A flooded road. A conversation by a fire. Jocelyn is not the threat Beatrice is making her into. She is helping me manage an inconvenient, innocent problem.
Mallory doesn't need pain manufactured for her out of weather and optics.
"We should call it a night," I say.
Jocelyn nods. "Agreed."
Outside, the path to the cabins is black except for two low lamps fighting through the rain. I walk Jocelyn to her door because the boards are slick and because I would do the same for any colleague stranded in a storm.
That's it.
She pauses with her key in hand. "Thank you for trusting me."
"It's not about trust."
"No," she says softly. "Of course not."
The wind pushes rain under the porch roof. Water dots the front of my shirt.
"We'll keep the details quiet," she says. "No reason to turn a glass of wine, a candid photo, and firelight into something."
I nod once, though a voice in the back of my head is loud enough that I feel it in my teeth.
Her mouth curves, small and satisfied in a way I barely register before she turns toward the door.
"Our secret," she says.
The words should feel absurd. Too dramatic for a flooded road and two separate cabins.
Instead, I am tired enough to accept the simplest meaning.
"Fine," I say.
She steps inside. The door closes between us.
I stand on the porch for another second, listening to rain hammer the roof and water rush somewhere down the slope where the road used to be.
Then I cross to my own cabin, unlock the door, and step into the stale, heated dark.
I close myself inside an innocent night.