The girl at the desk had long dark hair pulled into a ponytail. On weekends she lifeguarded all day, and worked here at night. She was saving money to leave the island, but I could already tell that it would never happen. Soon enough, she’d fall in love, or get pregnant, or her parents would get sick, or she’d just learn to be scared of anywhere else. She was a lifer, I was certain. What mattered to me now was that she was scared of ghosts.

“Can you do me a really big favor?” I asked. “My friend left his ferry ticket in his room, and they won’t let him cross if I don’t show it to Jim by four. He said it’s in his jacket pocket—do you mind grabbing it for him? He’s in room eleven.”

“Eleven?” she said. She tapped her nails on the counter. They were painted, but chipped, lavender, dusk colored.

“Or, I’m happy to run in myself,” I said.

“Would you?” she said. “We’re just having a really busy day.” And she handed me the key, relieved to have avoided the haunted room.

I stood outside room eleven for several seconds. I put my hand on the doorknob and waited to feel something, but the knob was only old, cold metal.

I pushed the door open slowly and stood looking in, feeling the silence more than hearing it, the complete emptiness of the room. Cole had unpacked his duffel bag. It was empty on the chair like the skin of the bear when the enchanted prince has crawled out. A pair of shoes were lined up at the foot of the bed.

What was I hoping to find? I wasn’t entirely sure. I knew what I didn’t want to find: a diary documenting a scam of some kind, a newspaper article revealing Cole as an escaped convict, suspicious artifacts, evidence of hypnotism.

What did I find? Mostly just clothing in sharp, efficient folds, stacked in the dresser. There was a creased New York Times beneath the bed. I looked at the date. Yesterday’s. On the nightstand was a stack of books, popular literary novels. When did he read? While we were at work, I guessed. Inside the nightstand drawer, I found a spiral notebook. The first several pages were ripped out, a few clinging shreds of paper left behind on the spiral binding. The next three pages were covered with Cole’s neat handwriting. Our phone number was there among other numbers I didn’t recognize, although I could see they were island numbers. I saw our birthday listed, month and day, the name of two plumbers, the address of a store on the cape that sold guitars.