The offices of William Gaylord, Esq., occupied one of those former homes on North Main Street that had once housed the wealthiest citizens of Rutland. It had gray shingles and a Queen Anne turret, and sat just south of a traffic light between a forlorn dance studio and a chartered accountancy. Jake parked beside the single car in the lot behind the building and walked around to the front porch. There, a sign beside the door read LEGAL SERVICES. He could see a woman working inside.

He hadn’t given much thought to how he might justify his interest in a three-year-old real estate transaction to which he had no obvious connection, but he decided he’d have better luck knocking on the door than trying to explain his business over the phone. With Martin Purcell he had pretended to be a teacher in some small degree of mourning for his former student, and with Sally-the-barfly he’d been a clueless stranger out for a drink. With Betty and Sylvia he’d been nearly himself, a “famous writer” paying his respects to the home of a late acquaintance. None of this had been particularly easy for him. Unlike the devious fifteen-year-old girl in Saki’s most famous story, romance at short notice was not his specialty; he was far more than adept at constructing untruths on the page, when he had all the time in the world to get the fabrication right. True, he’d been able to walk away from each of these previous encounters with information he hadn’t had before, and that had been worth the personal discomfort, but here he couldn’t simply flounder through the conversation, hoping to learn something relevant. Here he actually knew what he was trying to find out, and it was hardly something he could come straight out and ask for.

He assembled his most pleasant smile and went inside.

The woman looked up. She was dark, southeast Asian—Indian or Bangladeshi, Jake thought—and wearing an acrylic blue sweater that managed to be loose at the top and tight as a cummerbund around her thick middle. She smiled, too, when she saw Jake enter, but her smile wasn’t as pleasant as his.

“I apologize for not calling first,” he said. “But I’m wondering if Mr. Gaylord is available for a few minutes?”

The woman was giving Jake a very thorough appraisal. He was glad he hadn’t gone full Vermont for this visit. He was wearing his last clean shirt and over it a black wool sweater Anna had given him for Christmas.

“May I ask what this is about?”

“Certainly. I’m interested in purchasing some real estate.”

“Residential or commercial?” she said, still plainly suspicious.

He hadn’t been expecting this. He might have lingered a moment too long. “Well, both, ultimately. But the priority is commercial. I’m thinking of moving my business to the area. I’ve been over at the library, and I asked one of the librarians to recommend an attorney who specializes in real estate.”

This, apparently, was what passed for flattery in Rutland, because it had an unmistakable effect. “Yes, Mr. Gaylord has an excellent reputation,” she informed Jake. “Would you like to take a seat? I can ask if he’s available to see you.”

Jake sat in the nook opposite her desk. There was a love seat facing the front window and an old trunk with a potted fern and a stack of Vermont Life issues, the most recent of which seemed to be from the year 2017. He could hear her somewhere behind him, talking to a man. He tried to remember what he’d just said about why he was here. Commercial real estate, moving a business to the area. Unfortunately he wasn’t entirely sure how to get from there to where he needed to go.

“Hello there.”

Jake looked up. The man standing over him was sturdy and tall, with abundant (but thankfully clean) nostril hair. He was neatly dressed in black pants, a white button-down shirt, and a tie that would have been at home on Wall Street.

“Oh, hi. My name’s Jacob Bonner.”

“Like the author?”

Still a surprise. Always would be, he suspected. Now what should he say about the business he was supposedly moving to the Rutland area?

“Yes, actually.”

“Well, not often a famous writer walks into my office. My wife read your book.”

Five monosyllabic words, speaking volumes.

“I appreciate that. I’m sorry to come in without an appointment. I was asking at the library, and they recommended—”

“Yes, so my wife said. Would you like to come in?”

He stepped out of the nook and past the apparent Mrs. Gaylord, following William Gaylord, Esq., back to his office.

Various local citations and memberships framed on the wall. A degree from the Vermont School of Law. Behind Gaylord, on the mantelpiece of a blocked-up fireplace, a few dusty framed pictures of himself and the woman with the less than pleasant smile.

“What brings you to Rutland?” Gaylord said. His chair creaked as he settled into it.

“I came up to do some work on a new book, and see a former student. I used to teach in northern Vermont. Until a couple of years ago.”

“Oh, yes? Where was that?”

“At Ripley College.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That place still in business?”

“Well, it was a low-residency program when I was there. Now I think it’s online only. I’m not sure what’s happened to the actual campus.”

“That’s a shame. Drove through Ripley not so many years ago. Pretty place.”

“Yes. I enjoyed teaching there.”

“And now,” said Gaylord, taking charge of the segue himself, “you’re thinking of moving your business—as a writer—to Rutland?”

“Well … not exactly. I can write anywhere, of course, but my wife … she works for a podcasting studio in the city. We’ve been thinking about moving out of New York, letting her set up a studio of her own. I told her I’d look around while I was here. It seemed to make sense. Rutland is such a crossroads for the state.”

Gaylord grinned, showing crowded teeth. “It is that. Can’t say that’s always a good thing for the town. But yes, we’re pretty much on the way from anywhere in Vermont to anywhere else. Not a bad place at all to put a business. Podcasting is quite the thing, isn’t it?”

Jake nodded.

“So you’d want something zoned commercial, I imagine?”

He let himself be led. At least fifteen minutes on the multiple “downtowns” of Rutland, the various state incentive schemes and earmarked loans for new businesses, the waivers sometimes available for companies aiming to employ more than five people. He had to keep nodding and making notes and pretending to be interested, all the while wondering how he could get them both to the house on Marble Street in West Rutland.

“I’m curious, though,” said William Gaylord. “I mean, I’m from this area, and I’m committed to the future here, but most folks, coming up from New York or Boston, they’re thinking Middlebury or Burlington.”

“Yeah, sure.” Jake nodded. “But I came here a bunch of times, as a kid. I think my parents had some friends in the area. In West Rutland?”

“Okay.” Gaylord nodded.

“And I remember visiting in the summers. I remember this donut shop. Wait …” He pretended to search for the name.

“Jones’?”

“Jones’! Yes! The best glazed donuts.”

“A personal favorite of mine,” Gaylord said, actually patting his gut.

“And this one swimming hole …”

There had better be a swimming hole. In a Vermont town? It seemed like a safe bet.

“Plenty of them. Which one?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I was probably seven or eight. I don’t even remember the name of my parents’ friends. You know what it’s like when you’re little, what you remember. For me it was the donuts and the swimming hole. Oh, and there was also this one house in West Rutland, right down from the quarry. My mother called it the marble house, because it was on Marble Street and it had a marble base. We knew when we passed it we were almost to our friends’ house.”

Gaylord nodded. “I think I know the house you mean. Actually I handled the sale of that house.”

Careful, thought Jake.

“It was sold?” he asked. Even to himself he sounded like a disappointed child. “Well, I guess that stands to reason. I have to tell you, I had this whole pipe dream going when I drove up here yesterday. We’d move to Rutland and I’d buy that old house I used to love when I was a kid.”

“Sold a couple of years ago. But it was a mess, you wouldn’t have wanted it. The buyers had to put in everything new. Heat, wiring, septic. And they paid way too much. Not my place to talk them out of it, though. I was acting for the seller.”

“Well, you’d have to expect to put some money into an old house like that. I remember how run-down it looked,” said Jake, recalling Betty’s childhood assessment of the place. “Of course, to a kid it doesn’t say ‘run-down.’ It says ‘haunted.’ I was a big Goosebumps reader, those summers. I was definitely into that haunted house in West Rutland.”

“Haunted.” Gaylord shook his head. “Well, I don’t know about that. A lot of plain old New England bad luck in that family, maybe. But I don’t know about any actual ghosts. Anyway, we can find you another old Vermont haunted house in the area, no shortage of them.”

He had Jake write down a few of the agents he worked with, then he spent a few minutes rhapsodizing about a Victorian up toward Pittsford that had been on the market for nearly a decade. It sounded delightful.

“But does it have a wraparound porch like that West Rutland house?”

Gaylord shrugged. “Don’t remember, tell you the truth. Is that a deal breaker? You can always add a porch.”