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The moonbeam that shot through the room lit her silhouette as the door swung open. She sparkled in the light—red-blond hair, mussed like she’d been sleeping, and tight blue dress. The dog gave a happy whine and its tail thumped hard on the mattress.
“There you are, Fezzi.” Stanzi’s voice sounded warm and relieved.
It was the kind of tone you wanted for yourself, but Rhett knew it was for the dog. “His name’s Fezzi?” He nodded at the mutt, who rolled over on his back and stretched. Rhett noticed the dog was missing one of his front legs.
“Yeah. Fezziwig. Like the guy inA Christmas Carol? Who does the silly dancing? Fezzi hops around like that, because of his three legs.”
Rhett chuckled, despite himself.
“Sorry he’s on your bed. This is my room whenever I stay here. Fezzi knows how to open the doorknob with his one paw.”
Maybe it was the alcohol, but Rhett laughed. “No shit.” The dog thumped his tail, harder this time. Rhett reached up and petted his head.
“Yeah, Pete trained him, a long time ago, to do stuff for my dad. The doorknob thing wasn’t one of them, but Fezzi just kind of picked up on stuff on his own. He opened doors for Daddy when he struggled with his cane.”
“No shit,” Rhett said again.
“It didn’t even occur to me, when I gave you my room, that Fezzi might come in here. I’ll get him out of your way.”
Rhett leaned his head back on the mattress and appraised the woman in the moonlight. “You gave me your room, huh?”
Stanzi shrugged. “Cabins were full. I told you I’d take care of it.”
That’s the Stanzi he knew. Always adapting. Always finding a way. He wished he was still downstairs, dancing with her. If he’d had enough time, he’d have requested a salsa himself. “Don’t stand in the hallway.”
Stanzi hesitated only a second before she pushed the door shut and closed the distance between them. Her heels were missing, her feet bare, so her steps were silent as a mouse. She sank down next to him on the floor.
True to form, Stanzi didn’t ask any of the typical questions:Why are you sitting on the floor in the dark? What happened to Katrina?Instead, she was quiet awhile, perhaps absorbing the moonlight.
“My dad heard the spiders, too,” she eventually said softly. “He told me about it once, but only when he’d been drinking a lot of whiskey, which was unusual for him. And he’d only talk about it in sign language.”
Her words rippled inside him. At first, it felt like she’d poked the sensitive underbelly of the beast. That feeling changed to surprise. Then came the aftereffect—which Rhett didn’t have a name for—the recognition that Stanzi had not only remembered what Katrina said, but understood it.
“He said that sometimes, at night, even though he was partially deaf, it was like he could hear the dust in the beams. Or the spiders, talking in their corners.”
They were quiet again. “Well,” Rhett finally said, “that’s just fucking crazy.”
Stanzi, who had her arms wrapped around her shins and her chin on her knees, sputtered a laugh. She rolled over on to her back, clutching her middle, as she collapsed into giggles on the floor. Fezzi gave a soft woof of concern.
Rhett nudged her with his foot. “You’re scaring the dog.”
She kept laughing, until tears ran down her cheeks. Stanzi swiped at them with her knuckles, her chest rising and falling in gasps. Rhett hadn’t found his comment all that funny, but he thoroughly enjoyed watching her dissolve in front of him. The sleeves of her dress dipped down and the hem pushed up, which made it hard to divert his eyes. The room was dark, so hell with it. Rhett enjoyed the color of her creamy skin in the moonlight and the way the dress draped her legs.
Help her up, he told himself, but he just kept watching her, imagining the dress was gone. He held out a hand, she grasped it, and Rhett pulled her to sitting. He pulled a little too hard, and she fell against him, her hands planting on his chest. Her laughter died down but she still had a smile on her face. Rhett caught her wrists.
Stanzi’s smile slowly melted.
He loosened his grip, but didn’t release her.
For a moment, he thought she was going to kiss him again. Then she drew away and sank down next to him. He was both disappointed and relieved.
“Was that your girlfriend?”
Stanzi’s question marked the first official time that Rhett considered Katrina a buzzkill. “She’s a girl,” he said. “And she’s a... Well, I’m not really sure she’s a friend.”
“She wasn’t very friendly,” Stanzi agreed.
“I’m not feeling very friendly about her right now.”
