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She once bought me a sketch book after finding me lying on the courthouse steps drawing.

I was eleven and sketching a bird skeleton I’d found on the sidewalk. I did that kind of thing often enough back then that one of my friends started calling me Birdie, and somehow it stuck with half the kids at school for the next few years.

Marj said it looked concerning, then asked if I planned to keep it. She also brought me a juice box and told me to sit in the shade, which is how I learned that in Stillwater, being feral is tolerated as long as you’re hydrated and the nearest adult is only marginally less feral.

Tamsin makes a thoughtful noise. “Is there a discount if we promise not to solve anything so the town keeps its mystery?”

Marj is giddy. This is the best thing that’s happened to her all week. Possibly all year.

“Oh no,” she adjusts her glasses. “Business has been dreadful since the tubing launch shut down. But now—” She claps her hands once. “I’m booked solid. All four rooms.”

She slides the ledger toward me. “And there’s the people with the microphones,” she says, lowering her voice. “They keep talking to themselves. Just… into the air. They sit in the dayroom and narrate things. I think they’re recording, but I’ve learned not to ask questions that invite boring explanations.” She rolls her eyes, the movement deepening the network of wrinkles around them. “They really love to hear themselves talk. Though I do enjoy hearing their theories about what dreadful thing befell poor Casey.”

“Podcasters.” The word falls from my mouth.

She squints. “Podcasters? Is that the word for the people who come to ask questions about the disappearance? Oh good. I’ve been preparing. I have my own theories.”

Tamsin grins. “Oh, I’d love to hear those.”

Marj beams. “They’re very interested in the bones,” she continues, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Always working through possibilities. I can hear them through the walls in the middle of the night too. Not that I listen to my guest’s private conversations.”

She pauses, pleased with herself.

“Of course,” she adds, with quiet confidence, “most of their theories are wrong.”

I sign my name in the ledger, the pen scratching across the thick paper. Tamsin signs hers beneath it, her handwriting quick and slightly slanted.

Marjorie watches, clearly satisfied to be witnessing what she deems a minor historical event. When we finish, she reaches beneath the desk and produces two heavy brass keys. They land on the desktop with a solid metallic clink, each attached to a wooden room tag carved into the shape of an oar.

Tamsin takes her key without comment.

She learned a long time ago that privacy is one of my less negotiable requirements and has never taken it personally.

I sleep better with fewer variables: no discovering exactly how many sounds another human being can make while allegedly unconscious, a bathroom no one else has touched, and enough privacy to check the lock twice—or six times, if six is what it takes for the Compliance Department to accept that the lock has, in fact, remained locked since the previous five inspections, and that, no, my mother will not die if I don’t do it again.

The Compliance Department is what I call the part of my brain responsible for rejecting perfectly valid evidence and demanding I perform the same completely unnecessary procedure again.

It’s an asshole.

Clinically, it’s obsessive-compulsive disorder. In practice, it’s an understaffed government agency with unlimited authority and no appeals process.

“You’re in the blue room,” she tells me. “You,” to Tamsin, “are in the green. Breakfast is at seven.”

As we lug our things down the narrow hallway and up the stairs, Tamsin leans in. “This town is completely unserious, isn’t it? That’s really why you’ve avoided visiting for so long.”

I glance back at the desk, where Marj is already humming to herself, flipping through pages of an antiquated Better Homes & Gardens magazine. “You have no idea.”

“Well,” Tamsin pauses with her key in the air. “If we’re going to be surrounded by people trying to resurrect the past for content, at least the accommodations are charming. Small mercies.”

I snort. Charming. Right. “Do not talk to anyone.”

She smiles sweetly. “No promises.”

I feel fairly certain she’d love nothing more than to feed a true crime podcast full of absolute shit. Not the obvious kind either. Invented forensic anthropology details that sound legitimate if you’ve skimmed a textbook once and watched enough crime TV to feel confident. A made-up bone marker here, a misused term there. Just enough technical accuracy to pass, just enough nonsense to poison the well.

I love her so much.

She disappears into her room.