Read Chapter 2: The Locked Floor

The phone rang at 7:02 a.m., and Maren startled awake on the parlor couch, tangled in her grandmother's crocheted afghan. The landline was the old yellow kind, bolted to the wall in the kitchen, and she reached it by the fourth ring, her bare feet cold on the pine floor.

"Cole's Rest," she answered, surprised at how natural it sounded.

"Is this the new owner?" A man's voice, gruff and cheerful. "Ray Pemberton. Jim's my cousin. He said you've got a furnace that's seen better days."

"The boiler," she corrected, then softened. "Yes. It's dead. Or dying."

"I'll be there in the hour. The snow's letting up, but the plow hasn't made it past Covered Bridge Road yet. Don't go anywhere, in case I need you to open the cellar door."

The line went dead.

Maren stood in the empty kitchen, listening to the house settle around her. The radiators clicked and ticked like insects in the walls, cold and useless. Outside, the storm had moved on, leaving drifts up to the windowsills and a sky the color of unpolished silver. She had survived her first night in a house that had tried to freeze her to death, and she wasn't sure whether to feel triumphant or merely pathetic.

She made coffee in the percolator her grandmother had left on the counter—a relic she remembered from childhood visits—and took stock. The kitchen was exactly as she'd found it weeks ago when the lawyer handed her the keys: clean, organized, waiting. Someone had cleared the perishables from the refrigerator before winter had set in. Clem, presumably. The caretaker whose notes she'd found in the drawer, alongside an antique key stamped with the number 3B.

She'd meant to ask about him. About everything. But the phone had rung again just as she'd worked up the nerve to call the number on Clem's last note, and then the boiler had groaned its final protest, and she'd spent the rest of the night layering every blanket she could find.

Ray Pemberton arrived in a red pickup truck with a plow blade on the front and a dog in the passenger seat that looked like a small bear. He was a thin man in his sixties, with a puff of white hair and the kind of weathered face that came from decades of Vermont winters. He clapped his hands together when she opened the door.

"Quite a night for a first visit," he said, stomping snow off his boots. "You're Charlie's granddaughter, then. You've got her forehead."

"My grandmother's name was Frances," Maren said.

"The name folks used was Charlie. She had a stubborn streak a mile wide. You'll see it in the bones."

He carried a toolbox into the cellar without being asked, and Maren followed, watching him run his flashlight beam across the ductwork and the ancient furnace. He made a low whistling sound.

"Same boiler our dad installed in '78," he said. "I was just a kid, helping carry parts. She told us never to let it die. 'That furnace has more life in it than most men,' she used to say."

"She left me the inn," Maren said. "I didn't even know she owned one."

Ray grunted, kneeling to inspect a valve. "She didn't talk much about family. Just me and Jim, a few folks in town. Kept to herself, mostly, after her husband passed. But she took care of this place." He paused, squinting at her. "You're staying, then?"

"I don't know yet."

"Fair answer."

He worked for nearly an hour, replacing a circuit board and a nest of old wiring, while Maren handed him tools and tried to make sense of the cellar. Boxes lined one wall, neatly labeled in her grandmother's looping handwriting: *Christmas 2004*, *Frames on vacation*, and one that just said *Junk for later*. Maren recognized the handwriting from birthday cards that had arrived every year without fail, even after her mother had moved them across three states.

She wanted to ask about Clem. About the third floor. About the strange man she'd seen—or imagined she'd seen—watching her from the landing. But Ray had his head in the furnace, and the questions felt too large for the small, dusty space.

He surfaced at last, wiping grease off his hands with a rag. "You're going to want a new unit within the next two winters. This one will get you through. I patched what I could. Jim's coming by this afternoon to give it a tune-up; it'll be humming like a kitten by dinner."

"Thank you. I don't know how to—"

"Don't thank me yet. Let's see if it fires." He showed her how to reset the pilot light, and when the boiler kicked on with a deep, satisfying rumble, he nodded once, as if that settled something.

Back in the kitchen, he pulled on his coat, and Maren pressed a check into his hand. He looked at it and folded it into his shirt pocket.

"One more thing," he said at the door. "The previous owner—that's your gram, before she passed—always kept the third floor locked up. Said it was for storage, but a few folks figured she was hiding something. Or someone." He shrugged. "You inherited that too, I suppose. The lock's your business."

The floor creaked overhead.

Maren's gaze drifted to the ceiling, but Ray was already out the door, his truck growling to life in the snow.

After he left, she stood for a long time in the hallway, listening to the radiators hiss and knock. The third-floor landing was visible from the stairwell's final turn, a strip of shadow beneath an ordinary-looking door. She had not imagined the figure last night. She knew that the way you know a bad dream is real only after you're awake.

She found the key ring in a drawer of the kitchen desk, below the ledger book where previous guests' names were recorded in fading ink. A dozen keys, all shapes and sizes, some labeled with masking tape. *Boiler room*. *Cellar*. *Shed*. But the third-floor key was not there. Only the antique one from the drawer, 3B to the head, tarnished and worn.

She climbed the stairs. The second-floor landing was bright with morning light, guest rooms closed and quiet. And then the final flight, steeper than the others, and the door with the deadbolt.

The key turned with a click that sounded loud enough to wake the whole mountain.

She expected an attic—dust, boxes, spiders. But the third floor was a finished apartment. A small foyer opened onto a sitting room with a worn leather armchair, a wood stove, and a window that looked over the back meadow and the woods beyond. There was a small kitchenette, a door leading to what must have been a bedroom. And there, on a table facing the window, a typewriter. An old Olympia, the same model her father had used when she was a girl, tapping out letters to editors that always came back with rejection slips.

Stacks of paper surrounded it. Neat piles, some typed, some handwritten, all covered in a dense, looping script. She touched the edge of one sheet, half-expecting it to dissolve.

"Who are you?"

The voice came from the doorway. Maren spun, and her hand knocked a stack of paper off the table. She caught it too late; pages scattered across the floor like leaves.

The man was tall, mid-thirties, with dark hair that needed cutting and the kind of broad-shouldered build that suggested he carried a pack or chopped his own wood. He wore a navy wool sweater and corduroy trousers, both a little worn. His eyes were gray, and they were not warm.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realize—the caretaker's note said the third floor was vacant."

"It's not."

"I thought—the locks were all..."

He bent and picked up a page from the floor, not the one she'd been reading, but close enough. He set it on the desk without looking at her.

"You're her granddaughter," he said. It wasn't a question.

"What are you doing here?" Maren heard her own voice harden. "I own this building. The reservation I found was for a J. Hale, six months, starting in December. But it's January now. The inn's been closed for months. How long have you been staying here?"

He straightened, and something in his expression shifted—less harsh, more guarded. "Two months."

"Without my grandmother's knowledge. She died in November."

"I know."

This was not going the way she'd imagined. She'd pictured a squatter, a trespasser. But he'd been in her grandmother's house, kept the third floor warm, used the typewriter. And he'd known about her.

"She let me stay," he said. "Frances. She knew I needed somewhere quiet to work, and she said the inn was empty until spring. We made an arrangement. I paid her—cash, in advance. I have the receipt."

Maren's mind raced. "She didn't mention you in the will. Or to the lawyer. In fact, no one mentioned you at all."

"No one knew." He picked up another page from the floor. "I'm Julian Hale. I'm a writer. And I have a deadline, and a contract that guarantees me total privacy." He paused, looking at her finally, directly. "I intend to hold you to it."