In the corner, there was a desk, an old-fashioned desk, modest, not too elaborate, as if it was a desk for a kid. There was a paperweight on it, which Tess realized instantly had the same orange blown glass center as the cat’s eye marble and similar to the key, as if they were all part of a set or had been made by the same glass blower.

The desk was very tidy but there was a note on it. Tess wondered if that was an ethical dilemma—if you find a note on somebody’s desk are you allowed to read it? Was it sort of like looking at somebody’s email without their permission? And then she realized it wasn’t. Because she didn’t know where she was, and if there was a clue there somehow, she had to read it.

The first thing that struck her was the date:

December, 1926

Three Days before Christmas

And then she recognized the stationery. It said at the very top, centered and engraved in black ink:

SANBORN HOUSE

And nothing else. No identifying address underneath. Just Sanborn House. It was a note from Colin’s mother, handwritten, in an old-fashioned ink-pen-perfect curlicue way.

Dear Colin . . .

And then his mother went on to tell him in the note that she and his father were going out that night to a party and asked if he would help take care of his sister Lizzie. Not much more than that.

Except that it was December, 1926. That was the date. Three Days before Christmas.

Tess reasoned, hotels like to hold onto history and sometimes display historical items. But she touched the paper and it was thin, exquisitely thin, but not the least bit fragile. There’s a way paper feels when it’s new that is very different from the way paper feels when it’s old or even been sitting around for a few years. And this had been sitting around for . . . Tess hated to think how long. Or had it? It didn’t feel brittle at all. It felt new. She put the letter down and picked up the glass paperweight with the orange swirls inside from the desk. It, too, was warm when she touched it, the way the marble had been.

She looked around the room and now it was different even than the room she’d walked into. At least the way she’d walked in was gone. There was no longer a staircase down to the lobby.

In fact, it didn’t seem as if there were any doors, at all. There was a window and outside Tess could see, even though it was nighttime, the snow falling again. White snow, sparkling against the street lamps.

Tess held on to the paperweight more tightly.

It was so strange to be in a room where there weren’t any doors, at all.