“Yeah, I do.” She hesitated, then went on. “But I also want to keep changing, you know? I don’t like the idea that people will expect me to keep doing the same thing. That’s not interesting. Fifty years from now, I don’t want to be the Eagles still playing ‘Hotel California.’”

“You won’t be.”

“Thanks. I hope not.”

He reclined his seat slightly and pointed up.

“My very favorite part of this room is the ceiling. How the wooden beams are bent like the shell of an arc. All coming together, meeting at the very top. Jack and Bobby Alpine helped me install them. They’re all from the same tree; it was fifty feet around.”

“Imagine that,” she said in awe.

“Extraordinary find. In its prime, a monster of the forest.”

A monster. Like him. That’s what he wanted to say. He didn’t tell Zara this secret room held another secret. Twenty-five feet above, at the very point of the beams’ convergence, was where he’d carved his initials. H.C. He traced the letters now on the back of his own hand, wishing there were blades on his finger so it hurt, cut, burned—anything to punish him.

Zara

The secret room sold me on the house. So did my conversation with Henry. Like I said before, working with my TM guru had helped me tap into auras, and, honestly, there was something so damaged about Henry. I could sense that he’d taken that—whatever his trauma was—and funneled it into the house, tried to create something good and beautiful that he was missing in his life. Walking out of the secret room, I was ready to sign the contract. We could have done the deal right then and ended the party, but I was looking forward to the Secret Santa game and decided to wait until after that was over.