her Ellingham fleece. As she went into the common room, she was shocked to see David awake, in pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt from a surfing brand, sitting cross-legged on the purple sofa, hunkered over his computer.
“Are you working?” she said.
He looked up. His eyes were red, like he had not slept, and there was shade around his jawline. His curly hair stood on end. He looked tumbled and . . . attractive.
“I go here,” he said. “Remember?”
“Do you?” Stevie said coolly, walking to the kitchen. Had she just thought David was attractive? Could he tell? It was acceptable to have the thought, but not for him to know, and somehow, he would know.
She filled her aluminum Ellingham bottle with coffee and left the house quickly, even before Nate came down.
It was an aggressively pretty morning, as if the season wanted to show off before everything went to pieces and the trees got naked and everything died. The sky was big and blue. Stevie had a real sense of purpose and lift as she made her way over to the sunken garden. This felt like going to school, she thought, as she looked around Ellingham. Up early on a fresh Saturday morning, coffee in hand, to make a project. The energy of the tunnel was still with her.
The door to the sunken garden was open, and Stevie stepped inside. There was no one there yet, so she took a moment to sit with her coffee and look.
Stevie was well aware that this man-made lake was large, but when you saw it in person, saw this massive crater in the earth, it brought home just what Albert Ellingham was willing to do to make his family happy. His wife loved to swim, so the ground was leveled, the rock blown away. When he got a tip suggesting that his wife and daughter or some evidence rested at the bottom, the lake was drained and dried and the earth scarred. And now, just the monuments remained—the statues that looked over the void, the observatory ridiculous on its little bump.
“Thanks for waiting,” said Nate, coming in from behind her.
“Sorry,” she said.
He was wearing cargo shorts, despite the fact that there was a little chill in the air, and a T-shirt that said MY OTHER CAR IS A DRAGON.
“You really love this stuff, don’t you?” he said, sitting down next to her on the damp grass. “It’s like you’re at murder Disney World.”
“Murder Disney World would be amazing.”
“That’s true,” he said. “I’d go to that too.”
“It’s just . . .” Stevie looked for the words. “I’ve seen so many pictures of this place. I’ve read all this stuff. It was like everything I had in my head is . . .”
She waved her hands helplessly in front of her. Luckily, Nate seemed to understand.
“Yeah,” Nate said. “I guess it would be like that if I could go somewhere in a book. I always wanted stories to be real, so I started writing my own. That seemed to make it more real. I’m kind of jealous you get to see your thing. Gandalf isn’t coming for me.”
“Never say never,” Stevie said.
There was the modest sound of a golf cart coming, and Mark from maintenance drove in with their supplies, with Dash along for the ride. Hayes and Maris arrived last, and though they weren’t holding hands, they walked close enough together and looked at each other in a way that made it clear that they had not parted ways right away last night.
There was a lot of moving things that day, lots of running and fetching. Janelle’s beloved poles were set into stands on which lights were attached. The ramp was placed into the sunken garden to create a place from which Hayes could row his imaginary boat. There was a generator to power the lights and the fog machines, which required lots of positioning and testing. Then the tripods were set, lights focused. It took hours, and it was boring. Nate and Stevie had little to do but obey commands to hold things and move things and get things. As Stevie and Nate went from the garden to the costume closet and back again, Stevie noted that Hayes didn’t seem to be doing a lot of running or holding or moving. He sat on a stone bench most of the time, looking at his computer. Stevie thought he was running his lines. The lines were all his—this was a monologue. The rest of