# Chapter Seventeen: Two Nights, Everything Except

## Monday

Sneha: not today
Sneha: mummy has a thing at nine and i have to drive her and i cant get out of it
Sneha: im sorry. i was looking forward to it

Vickey: It's fine.
Sneha: dont do that
Vickey: Don't do what
Sneha: "its fine". i can hear u being fine through the phone
Sneha: i'll fix it
Vickey: You don't have to fix it.
Sneha: i know i dont have to
Sneha: im going to anyway

That was Monday.

The rest of the week was a perfectly normal office week with a live wire under the floor. She walked past my desk on Tuesday in a grey kurti with her hair up, and I watched the whole length of her neck go by and looked at my screen like a man reading a spreadsheet. Wednesday at 2:40 my phone lit up: "i know ur looking at my back." She was right. She was three rows away with her back to me and I was looking at it.

Thursday night, 11:20, nine photos and a location pin.

A cottage. Low stone walls, slate roof, a porch with two chairs on it, and behind the porch, filling the frame, water. Grey-green, still, ringed with trees. The next photo was the room: one bed, white sheets, a wood stove, and a wall of glass facing the lake. The third was a bathroom with a tin bucket heater and a tub big enough for two.

Sneha: four hours from the station. theres one other cottage on the property and its empty till april
Sneha: i booked friday and saturday night
Sneha: i took the day off. u take the day off.
Vickey: Sneha.
Sneha: dont do the thing where u say my name
Vickey: I was going to say it's beautiful.
Sneha: oh
Sneha: ok
Sneha: good
Sneha: wear the blue shirt. the one i picked

I told my manager my cousin was getting engaged in a hill town four hours away. He said congratulations. I said thank you like a criminal.

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## The Train

She was standing at the far end of the platform with a duffel at her feet and a shawl over one shoulder, and I stopped walking about forty feet away just to take it in.

The top was white. Thin cotton, sleeveless, cut low and wide across …