After taking a moment to appreciate the perfect symmetry of the wooden gazebo, I step inside. A stone fireplace is situated on the wall directly opposite the door, and screened windows line the top half of the other walls. Low bookshelves flank the fireplace, so I walk over to examine them.
There's a healthy collection of Dr. Seuss and Little Golden Books, but not many adult reads. Adding to the kid-friendly dynamic, there's a basket of plastic blocks and toys tucked into a bottom shelf. Maybe Micah has extended family with small children who come to visit periodically, since he's no longer renting the place out.
A dinged-up table sits under a window with a retro kitchen chair shoved under it. Given the careworn look of its bare tabletop, it's safe to say it's not immune to the elements, so I make a mental note not to leave my laptop on it if I work out here.
It's hard to tell if the table's narrow drawers would be big enough to hold my pens and notebooks, so I step over and slide open the middle one. A typewritten, binder-clipped sheaf of slightly yellowed papers has been stuffed inside. I pull it out and read the title page, which is written in a giant, playful font. The story is called The Visitor by Jordan Larson.
I smile, picturing a teen girl holing up in the gazebo on her vacation, earnestly typing up her first "book." I did the same thing at age thirteen, when Emily's family took me along on their annual beach vacation. My mermaids-in-space tale has never seen the light of day, of course, but it taught me what it meant to put my hand to the plow and finish a book, even though it was only about 25,000 words long—what would be considered a novella today. Although I never edited it, it gave me the confidence I could actually complete a book. Once I got home and proudly announced my feat to my mom, she dismissed the entire thing, declaring that writers had to live hand-to-mouth. Hadn't I ever heard of a starving artist?
I guess I've proved that doesn't have to be the case.
The story in my hands looks to be the same length as that beach story. I flip open the curled papers, which look like they've absorbed too much moisture in the gazebo. Above the last chapter heading, someone—presumably Jordan—has scrawled a handwritten note. Given the way the rounded letters slant, I'm guessing she must be left-handed. But my smile fades as I make out what she's written:
I don't think I'm going to make it out of this sauna alive.
SEVEN
Curled papers rattling in hand, I sink onto a cushioned rattan armchair. I slowly close my eyes. Maybe when I open them, those hideous words will have disappeared. Perhaps I just imagined them.
Slowly blinking my way back to reality, I try some grounding techniques. I notice how the dark sky is pressing against the fading pink ribbon of the sunset. I soak in the comforting noise of the chirruping frogs in the creek. I run my fingers along the rough texture of the chair arm.
Some distant part of me understands that I should get inside before it gets dark and that I need to eat because it's time for dinner. But my brain is slow to process physical cues like "My stomach's rumbling, I must be hungry," or, "I have a headache, so I should take ibuprofen."
Right now, my mind is zooming down a one-way track, fixated on the story in my hands. It would seem that The Visitor wasn't written by some starry-eyed teen. It was written by the woman who died in the sauna.
I tuck the book under my arm and hurry inside, unwilling to look at it again until I get some food in my stomach. My therapist is always telling me to note when my last meal was, and, as it turns out, the last thing I ate was a cinnamon toaster pastry during my layover at O'Hare.
I arrange my chicken tenders and frozen rolls in even rows on a cookie sheet, which I slide into the oven. To add to my comforting carb intake, I throw a bag of herbed rice into the microwave.
Once my food is ready, I carry my plate over to the bench-style dining table. Jordan's book sits on the opposite end, practically daring me to pick it up again. I squeeze an inordinate amount of ketchup into a bowl, then shoot a glare at The Visitor. My curiosity about its morbid introductory comment has hijacked any thoughts I could spare for my own in-progress manuscript.
Is this some kind of sick joke? Did someone who stayed here after the sauna death decide to scrawl a phony note at the top of their own manuscript, then steam the pages to add shock value? That seems like a fairly convoluted process, and a far-fetched one, at that.
The most likely solution also happens to be the most horrifying: that Jordan herself was the woman who'd died, and for some reason, she'd taken her manuscript into the sauna. Then she wrote a note at the top to explain things to...whoever.
But why hadn't the manuscript been discovered alongside her body? Had someone taken it before the police came?
A text interrupts my thoughts, and I see it's from Micah. "My caretaker's name is Henry Basham. He cleans the cabin, does repairs, and keeps the yard up. He and his mother live in the small house on the other side of the creek, and she's in bad health. If you have any issues while you're there, he's the one to ask. I'm sorry, but there's no Wi-Fi at the cabin, since I wanted it to be as off-grid as possible. Try the gazebo for a stronger cell signal. I hope you're getting settled in."
Inconvenient, but the lack of Wi-Fi will probably help me to focus on my writing. I return to my previous line of thought. Since Henry is responsible for housecleaning, maybe he found Jordan's sheaf of clipped papers and shoved them into a drawer, not realizing their significance. It doesn't seem possible that he'd miss her desperate note, scrawled in plain view, but if the papers were turned over and he didn't even give them a second glance, I suppose he could have.
Or maybe the police had already found the manuscript and examined it. They could've returned it to the cabin. But they should have turned it over to the family, along with her other possessions.
Utterly confused as to how a dead woman's story came to be in my possession, I stand and slide The Visitor toward me. Trying to ignore the handwriting at the top, I start to read chapter one.
Jordan describes a naive, small-town writer who's moved to New York City in hopes of getting picked up by a publisher. The protagonist, who bears the rather Bond-like name of Aquarius, meets up with a more established author she's met in a critique group. As they discuss her upbringing in Iowa, she not-too-subtly delves into a recitation of her numerous childhood traumas. Although the writing style is a bit overwrought, my breath catches as I read the realistic description of her father talking down to and manipulating her mother.
I make it to the end of the first chapter, where Aquarius gets a job at a coffee shop and royally botches her first cappuccino. Objectively speaking, the beginning of the book doesn't have as much punch as it could. The author's made the classic mistake of sharing too much backstory at the front end. She could've worked any of these details in as the story went along, keeping her main character in the now.
But these are things authors learn with practice. My early books were abominable—murky swamps of poetic language that would bog readers down immediately. Thankfully, my first publishing house had a ruthless editor. Heather tore into my manuscripts, pulling my stories into focus and jettisoning my pretentious phrases until the plotline shone through. With Heather at my side, Natasha Summers was born.
Now Micah was keeping Natasha afloat. If only he could've gotten hold of The Visitor, the book might've had a chance to go somewhere. Jordan, the ingénue author, would've had her big break with a New York editor, just like Aquarius in her story. Art would imitate life, or vice versa.
I take a bite of lukewarm rice and force myself to eat it. I need to keep my strength up for my own writing tomorrow. Now that I've started reading Jordan's book, it doesn't feel so ominous. The note on the first page is off-putting, of course, but that could've been some kind of morbid joke. Maybe she wasn't even the one who'd died in the sauna. It could've been someone else. Maybe Jordan wrote the note later, as some kind of black humor. I never get black humor because it's so incongruous. Maybe I'm old-school, but I don't like joking about death.
With fresh resolution, I shove the book aside and pick up my plate. Time to solidify some kind of nightly routine in this house. After finding storage bowls for my leftovers and stashing them in the fridge, I wash my dishes, then head into the bedroom, giving myself a moment to take in its tasteful, nondescript decor.
The walls are a soothing gray-blue shade, and the matching furniture set is dark wood. The white and gray blankets look fluffy and inviting, and the tasteful oil paintings on the walls are filled with blues and greens. The overall effect of the room recalls a stormy day by the ocean. Micah's interior designer did a stellar job, and I realize I couldn't have chosen a color scheme more fitted to my sensibilities.
As I roll my clothes and stack them in the drawers, something pushes its way into my consciousness. The father in The Visitor. The way he acts toward his daughter and wife...gaslighting them and toying with their emotions for his own twisted pleasure—those behaviors hit too close to home.
I try not to let it stop my forward progress, but I can't seem to draw in enough breath. Renard did some of the same things to me.
I hadn't been able to recognize his narcissism for what it was, and on top of that, my autism compelled me to mask and pretend that everything was just fine. No wonder I was exhausted all the time—I spent every moment pretending to be someone other than myself. Someone less intense, less reflective. Someone Renard would find appealing and fun.
Things had all come into sharp focus one Sunday when we visited Emily's house for a cookout. Renard and Jeff were chatting, but then Renard lifted his head and asked—no, told—me to go inside and get the ketchup. How was he supposed to eat a hot dog without ketchup? Then he made some joke about how he knew I wouldn't want to do it, because the sloth was my favorite animal.
Emily drew her eyebrows together, but didn't say a word. Instead, she stood, placed a hand on my shoulder, and walked into the kitchen alongside me.
"Why does he think he can boss you around like that and insult you to your face? Calling you a sloth—are you kidding me? You're the least sloth-like person I know, writing your butt off all the time," she said. "If anything, he's the lazy one, plopping down at the table and demanding that you serve him. Mooching off your income so he can swan around like the king of the world."
"I hadn't really thought about it." I pulled the ketchup from the fridge. It was an honest answer—I didn't let myself think too deeply about how my husband treated me. Otherwise, I would despair.
"He's a jerk," Emily said simply. "This isn't the first time he's talked to you like this. Jeff mentioned it after your last visit."
"I thought Jeff liked him," I said.
