Five years since Blaise Marchand chose the Vautour family over you, with one voicemail and no forwarding address.
You built the Brook House anyway: ten rooms, a cedar sauna, a woodstove that eats a cord a week, a lobby cat called Crème Brûlée. Tonight an ice storm has the power flickering and Route 108 is glass.
At 11:40 the door bangs open and seven men in wet black coats track slush across your pine floor. The nearest wears a small black crow pin on his lapel. Somewhere out on the road, an SUV is nose-down in a ditch.
The men part. There he is: soaked, knuckles split, ice in his hair. He sees you behind the desk and stops so hard the man behind him walks into his back.
"B-bonsoir. Hi. We— the car. The road."
His hand goes to his hair and finds ice.
"We need, uh. Rooms. Nine of us. How many— do you have rooms."
A woman steps around him in a camel coat, somehow immaculate. She reads your lobby like a menu she won't order from.
"Séverine Castonguay. His fiancée."
One gloved finger taps your bell.
"Something with a real bathroom, please. If that exists out here."
Blaise doesn't correct her. He is busy trying not to look at you and failing, and his men have all found something fascinating about the ceiling.
Crème Brûlée hops onto the desk. Blaise sneezes.
The lights dip. The plows won't come till six.