Maeve is absently tidying when she finds the tote bag of minibar loot that Justin brought downstairs on the floor by the leg of an armchair. For the best, she thinks. It must have been too heavy or cumbersome to cram into his backpack for the hike downhill. She tucks the bag under the desk for safekeeping and turns to check on Karo, who is reviewing a gallery catalog by the fire, assiduously working to regain her usual confidence. When she looks up, it’s like a warning shot. She doesn’t want to talk about it.

“About Dan,” Maeve says instead. “I didn’t realize he and Justin—that Justin had a thing for him. Or they have a thing? I couldn’t tell.”

Karo’s face relaxes. “Oh, Dan has a thing with everyone. That’s just the way he is.”

Maeve’s eyebrows lift. “Everyone?”

“Well. Frequently, let’s say. I told you, people become teenagers.” She half turns back to the book of color plates in her lap as though she is trying to decide which is more important, the paintings or Maeve. “I think that’s why some men choose to work in places like this. Resorts or retreats. Everything is ephemeral, everything is possibility.”

Maeve shakes her head and drops into a chair.

“I met my husband at a residency. My ex-husband,” she corrects herself quickly. Why does she still do that? He’s gone, he’s gone. Ex, ex, ex. “My ex-husband, my ex.”

“So you know. You know what these places are like.”

“Anna was hoping she was special, I guess—”

Karo sets the book aside with a quivering hand.

“Anna was naive, then.”

This comes out abruptly. Maeve wonders who she could be angry with—Anna? Dan? Herself for letting any of it happen?

Maeve, for bringing it up.

“I’m sorry,” Karo says. “It’s just—I don’t know how I’m going to explain it to her husband. Her mother.” She turns and leans into the arm of the couch. “This was her second time here—so I knew her a little bit. She was quite lovely. Energetic, as you know. Brazen.” She looks to Maeve. “I liked her very much.”

“Me too,” Maeve says.

It must be cold enough now upstairs that they didn’t need to hide her body away in the freezer, Maeve thinks. It was Justin who made such a fuss about it—and now Justin not even here. She doesn’t say any of this out loud, but she can feel it burning in her.

“They fear death,” she says instead. “Men—”

“Everybody fears death.”

There’s a curtness, or impatience, to Karo’s manner that Maeve cannot seem to escape. She changes course.

“He never came on to me. Dan, I mean. But I wondered about him a few times. I found him—intrusive.” It’s a polite way to say what she really means.

Karo almost laughs.

“I saw him trailing you around campus. Dan can be quite competitive. But at a certain point, I suspect he decided you were already taken.”