Day 17

Tabitha Jenkins arrived at the bed and breakfast at 6:02 pm, apologized to the woman at the registration desk for being late, and asked if she would still be able to use her reservation.

"Of course, honey!" said the woman behind the counter. She typed Tabitha's credit card information into the computer and rang for someone to carry her bags.

"Oh, it's just the one," Tabitha said. But the woman clucked her tongue at her and told the young man, likely a college student, to take Tabitha's bag to Room #6.

"You're on vacation, honey," the woman said. "Don't let me catch doing anything else!"

Tabitha followed the young man up a narrow flight of circular stairs to the second floor. The bed and breakfast was in an old Vermont home, which seemed too small from the outside to have the six bedrooms and 4 bathrooms that it advertised. Tabitha had been suspect at first when she saw it on the travel site, but the pictures online made the rooms seems tiny and simple, not like the falsely advertised grandiose rooms that ultimately turned out to have been photographed with fish-eye lenses and extensively photoshopped. She trusted the honesty of the photos, and the stoic feel of the rooms appealed to her.

At the top of the stairs, they entered a narrow hallway covered in orange and brown rugs along its entire length.

"They put down the rugs because the floors are so creaky," the young man said, anticipating the question that he must have heard many times. "The guests kept waking each other up going to the bathrooms."

They walked past Room #4 on the left and Room #5 on the right. The young man stopped outside of Room #6 and put down the bag. He handed her the key and pointed to the room at the far end.

"That's the shared bathroom for this floor," he said. "There's no one staying in #5 this weekend, so you're just sharing it with #4 until Monday. Enjoy!"

Tabitha watched him make his way back down the hallway and disappear down the stairs. She looked down at the key in her hand and felt its weight as she turned it over. It was old-fashioned and rounded, not flat like the key to her house. She looked at the lock and saw the round opening with a slot underneath, just right for the key in her hand. For a moment she felt like the heroine in a gothic novel, tempted by a locked door that shouldn't be opened. She imagined for a moment what might be behind such a door were it not the bedroom of a bed and breakfast. Then she heard footsteps on the circular stairs and, not wanting to be caught daydreaming in the hallway, unlocked the door and stepped inside with her bag, shutting the door behind her.

The room looked exactly as advertised. A small bed stood with its headboard along the wall on the left. A cream-colored quilt with a leaf pattern covered the bed, and a single matching pillow lay centered at the head. Along the right wall stood a low dresser with three drawers, on top of which stood a small TV set. A single window with lace curtains was centered on the wall opposite the door where she stood.

Tabitha left her bag by the door and went to look outside the window. She saw that she was facing the backyard, which was nearly as spartan as the room. She could see a deck holding a single large metal table with six matching chairs, and to the left of that stood a pile of cut wood. Beyond the table and the wood pile was a large green lawn which ended at a thick batch of trees that may have led to a forest or to another home. It was hard to tell from where she stood.

Tabitha stepped back from the window and lay down on the bed. She lay still, breathing in the air of the small, clean room. She felt herself relax into the quilt and she spread her fingers out wide, as if floating.