Inside it was the fusty brownish dusty-dark of a hallway long neglected. I pressed along the walls on both sides of the door until a push-button switch rose beneath my fingertips. The yellowed bulbs turned on, one after the other, leading down a hallway to a half set of stairs that dropped behind the reception desk in the resort’s main lobby.

It was a vast, double-story atrium—once a welcoming, airy check-in and lounge—the walls paneled in warm wood and modish squares of orange and green melamine. I stood behind the long reception desk, in a kind of faux-Mondrian design, where a rusty bell and an old ballpoint pen, draped in a soft pool of dust, were the only remaining office supplies. The keyholes were vacant, the shelves empty.

On the opposite wall, the main doors were padlocked with a thick bicycle chain. To my left, a wall of windows faced the restaurant and the lake; to the right, a wide staircase led to upper floors that must have once contained lower-priced, motel-style rooms for those who couldn’t afford the expense of a separate bungalow. Dark rectangles haunted the walls at eye level, where pictures had once hung.

And in the middle, as Tyler had mentioned, there was a treasure trove of furniture. What had once been a breezy reception lounge was now a storage facility. Stacks of plastic and metal chairs rose between vinyl sofas and easy chairs, alongside metal bed frames, musty spring mattresses, ancient melamine side tables, and modernist lamps with torn, stained shades.

“Help yourself,” I muttered, running my fingers through the quarter-inch layer of dust that coated everything. Nearly all the mattresses reeked of mildew, but one on the end had spent its recent exile in a sunbeam. The fabric was crispy to the touch and its once-floral pattern was now bleached a rancid yellow, but at least it didn’t smell.

I dragged the mattress through the dust, wedging it behind the desk and up the narrow half stairs and out through the side door, then sorted through the bed frames until I found enough pieces to make something work. The vinyl sofas were too heavy to carry alone, but I was able to take two metal folding chairs, three side tables, a plastic-wrapped pile of linens—cheap, hospital quality—and four metal lamps too, and stack them out front.

Still—there was no Julian.

I went back into the lodge and crept up the wide staircase.

I expected more mildewed furniture, maybe some shag carpeting, but the upper two floors of the lodge had twenty-four empty motel rooms scraped down to the studs. Most didn’t have flooring, only joists; the beginning of a renovation. In the room next to the stairs, I found a folded NYT crossword puzzle atop a three-gallon paint can. The date on the newspaper was three years old, shortly before Carey died. It seemed that no progress had been made since then.