There’s a note on the coffee table from Ezra. Apparently, the fire department called and he had to go deal with some things regarding his mom’s death in the fire. He didn’t want to wake me.

I get dressed and have just started the coffee-making process when Ezra’s home phone rings. I answer, thinking it could be something important. It’s Ezra. He’s at the fire department and needs his mom’s year of birth, which she has never revealed to anybody, for some paperwork. He asks me to go into the stone cottage to find her birth certificate and call him back with the information.

There’s an eerie feeling inside Willa’s house, as though she could appear at any moment. There are dishes in the drying rack and the soft sound of a fan whirring in another room. I find her purse sitting on a table by the front door and go through it but don’t find anything with her birth year on it.

I go into her bedroom and rummage around in a small writing desk but find only old bills and receipts for things. The only place left to look is a bedside table. It looks like a drawer filled entirely with old Kleenexes, but when I put my hand in and dig around, I come up with an old wallet. Inside is her birth certificate.

Shoving the wallet in my back pocket, I think about just closing the drawer as is but figure I should probably get rid of the garbage for Ezra’s sake. Gathering up all the Kleenexes into a ball, I catch a glimpse of something else sitting there in the drawer. A key ring with two keys on it, both tarnished with age. I lift it out to get a closer look. There’s an old tag tied to the key ring that reads AVRIL ISLAND, and the keys are each labeled with pieces of masking tape—one reads DOCK SHED, the other GARDEN SHED. It’s pretty much identical to the set of keys that has always hung on the key hook at the front door of our cottage, except that with this set, the main cottage key is missing. If I had to guess, I’d say it was West’s old set, and that most likely Willa was in possession of the missing key. I slip the key ring into my pocket and shut the drawer.

From the kitchen I call Ezra with the information he needs. He thanks me and says he’ll be back soon. Before leaving the stone cottage, I do a bit more looking around—pulling drawers open, lifting the lids on things to peer inside, opening closets, taking a look in the medicine cabinet.