Almost all the windows in the house had been shuttered and the rooms were dark and cool. There was something comforting about the way the house felt, lit in this dim way by a few lamps in the suffocatingly floral living room. Judging from the smell, Lorna’s storm preparations included baking; Desmond was almost overwhelmed by the smell of cookies and chocolate. How worried could she be about the weather if she’d spent most of the morning whipping up a batch of toll house cookies?

“Everything’s out there,” Lorna said, pointing to the sunporch. “Right where you left it. What happened to your young helpers?”

As Desmond wandered out to the sunporch, he heard Jane telling Lorna something about Chloe’s and Tim’s return to Boston on the last flight out. The light filtering through the cracks in the shutters did little to illuminate the sunporch. It was much cooler in here than it had been yesterday, but the humidity was still stifling. This was a room for storing exotic tropical plants or cigars, not a collection of perishable paper and vinyl. Tim had arranged the black canvas bags and the metal suitcases and the lights and the tripods in a neat pile by the door. It would take several trips to get it all out to the van. He picked up two heavy cases, carried them into the living room and set them beside the front door. From the kitchen, he heard Jane say, “Coffee would be fine, if you’re making it. They’re very good. Mine always come out dry. My son is trying to teach me how to bake, but I’m hopeless.”

He stepped back into the hot air of the porch. It had started to rain. He could hear it drumming loudly against the roof, but nothing out of the ordinary, certainly not the predicted apocalyptic deluge. He heard a rustling at the far end of the room, near the tables stacked with the Pauline Anderton collection. Probably an animal, come inside to take shelter from the rain, eating its way through the stacks of old clippings. Too bad they hadn’t been able to film that—mice munching on the last remains—a perfect shot to begin the documentary. The documentary that wasn’t to be. He gathered up an armload of cases.