Though there are no cars in the parking area, I knock anyway before turning the key in the lock. No answer. Inside, it appears that the housekeeping service has just left. The kitchen floor is still damp. A big, loose bouquet of cosmos commands the space atop the dining table. It, like delphiniums and daisies, reminds me of my mother. She loved blue and white.

I think more about how it was that the Warners and Mosses ended up at Octopus Hole over that long and deadly Memorial Day weekend. It was on purpose, of course. The assumption all along was that Connor stalked Sophie on Facebook, where she had posted their weekend plans: “Adam and I are headed to Octopus Hole #MemorialWeekend.” Kristen said that her husband was resolute in his desire to spend that particular weekend there.

But in reality it was her place.

She’d been going there for years with her family.

She knew the history of the cabins.

But so did Adam.

I think of that night that I spent here. Stupid me. Drunk and infatuated with the memory of a boy who found me. He told me about rumrunners on Hood Canal during Prohibition; how the big gray cabin had even been a speakeasy.

“Whenever the government agents came calling,” he told me, “they moved a bookcase, and it hid the hard stuff, revealing the kind of drinks only a kid would want. Lots of people out here back then with things to hide.”

“Hood Canal was a good place to get lost back then,” I said. “They never teach that in school.”

I remember how Adam and I sat in the sauna after eating oysters and drinking too much beer. Something struck me as odd back then. It comes to me as I return to the little sauna—the strange little panel by the firebox. He was dismissive about it. It didn’t seem peculiar at the time, but now I wonder as I examine it. The door is small, but not that small. It’s paneled in clear cedar like the rest of the space. When I give it a firm push, it springs open. The cedar is a cover over tight-grained fir, the original wood used to build the cabin. The hinges are timeworn, but the screws fastening them in place are new.

When I open it, I poke my head inside. It’s dark, so I reach for my phone and turn on the flashlight. Its beam points downward to some old, worn steps.

I start down the steps.

The space isn’t very large—maybe the size of a small bedroom. The floor is dirt, but the walls are concrete. As I swipe the beam of light over into the dark, something catches my attention.

A straw hat.