What the Maid Hid

My cousin Sara got married on a Saturday in October, and somehow I ended up being the one who stayed behind to watch the lodge. I'm Gail, twenty-eight years old, a project manager, and the family joke is that I'm the practical one. (Which, fine, I am. Somebody has to remember to bring the extension cords.)

The lodge belonged to some rich guy neither of us had ever met. Sara's new husband worked for him, and when the boss heard they needed a venue for forty people and a place for the bridal party to get ready, he offered the whole property. Free, apparently. Rich people are weird.

The weird part came after the wedding. Everyone packed into cars and vans and drove back down the mountain Sunday morning, and the boss's housekeeper handed me a laminated card on her way out. "You're staying the week, yes? Mr. Ashworth left instructions."

The card had six rules on it. Rule one, cook whatever you like, the pantry is yours. Rule two, the hot tub runs on a timer, don't fight it. Rule three, please water the orchids in the east hall on Tuesdays. Rule four, and I read this one three times, the west wing door is to remain unlocked at all times. Rule five, do not enter the west wing before nine at night. Rule six, thank you for respecting his privacy.

Who writes rules like that? Who laminates them?

So there I was, Monday evening, twenty-eight years old, alone in a lodge the size of a small hotel, holding a watering can and a laminated card and asking myself what kind of locked-then-unlocked-then-timed door situation this was. I watered the orchids Monday evening, a day early, and told myself the rule probably meant 'by Tuesday' anyway.

* * *

The west wing door was exactly where the card said, at the end of the east hall past a grandfather clock that ticked too loudly. Unlocked, like the card promised. I stood there with my hand on the handle for a solid minute arguing with myself.

"You're a grown woman," I told myself out loud. "If a man wants privacy, he can buy a door that locks."

I opened it.

The hallway inside was warm. Warmer than the rest of the lodge, like somebody had been running a space heater. There were lamps on. Lamps on means somebody's here, right? I told myself I'd just peek down the hall and leave.

Three doors. The first two were closets, linens and what looked like a small army of cleaning supplies. The third door was open a few inches, and light spilled out of it, and I heard humming. Somebody was in there, humming something that sounded like an old jazz standard.

I pushed the door with two fingers.

It was a dressing room. A big mirror with bulbs around it, a vanity covered in makeup, a garment rack with maybe ten dresses on it, all of them gorgeous, all of them in my size or close. And on the vanity chair, laid out like somebody had been interrupted mid-thought, a black and white maid's dress with the apron still pinned on, one sleeve turned inside out. A sewing kit sat open next to it. Scissors, pins, a pincushion shaped like a tomato.

Somebody had been sewing a maid costume. At nine at night. In a secret wing of a mountain lodge.

"Okay," I whispered. "This is either a very interesting story or a very bad one."

"Or neither."

I about jumped out of my skin. There was a man standing in the connecting doorway, and I hadn't heard a single footstep. He was tall, maybe thirty-two, thirty-three, dark hair going gray at the temples, wearing a robe like he'd just showered. And he looked absolutely terrified.

"I'm sorry!" I said, both hands up, watering can still in one of them for some reason. "The card said the door was unlocked! Rule four! I have the card."

"You have the card." He said it flat, the way a man watches a car crash in slow motion.

"Rule four. West wing stays unlocked. Rule five, not before nine. It's nine twenty. I checked. I'm a project manager, I don't just wander into rooms without checking."

He blinked. "You... read the card."

"All six rules." I set the watering can down on the tile, very slowly, like it was a bomb. "Look, I'm Gail. Sara's cousin. The one who stayed to house-sit. Nobody told me the owner was here. If I'd known the owner was here I would have knocked, or honestly I would have just watered the orchids and gone to bed, because that's the kind of person I am."

"The owner isn't here," he said. Then his shoulders did this thing where they just dropped, all at once, like he'd been holding them up for years. "I mean. I am the owner. Olaf Ashworth. But the man who owns this lodge isn't in this room right now, if that makes any sense."

"None of that makes sense."

"Fair." He looked at the dress on the chair, then at me, then at the floor. "You're going to be angry, or you're going to tell people, or both, and I'd appreciate it if you did the angry part quickly so I can start packing."

"Pack? It's your house."

"It's my house and my secret and you walked into both, so."

"Okay, first of all, your own laminated card invited me in. Second of all." I pointed at the garment rack. "Those are beautiful. Where did you get the green one? Is that silk?"

He stared at me. Genuinely stared, mouth slightly open. "You're not yelling."

"Do I seem like a yelling person? I brought a watering can to an argument."

"You're asking about the dress."

"The green one, with the beaded neckline. Is it silk?"

"Silk dupioni." He said it automatically, then caught himself. "Why aren't you yelling? I always figured people would yell. Or laugh."

"Well that guy sounds terrible." I stepped into the room a little, careful, like the floor might be a trapdoor. "Olaf. I have a question, and you can absolutely not answer it."

He braced himself. I watched him actually brace, hands curling at his sides.

"Is the maid dress for you?"

The silence went on long enough that I counted my own heartbeats. Four of them. Five.

"Yes," he said finally. "It's for me. I've been making it for three weeks and the sleeve is driving me insane and I come up here every night after the staff leaves and I sew and I wear the finished ones and I pretend, for a few hours, that I'm somebody who doesn't own four companies and a lodge nobody visits." He let out a breath. "There. Now you know. Was that so bad?"

"Only the four companies part. That's a lot of companies." I picked up the pincushion tomato, mostly so my hands had a job. "The sleeve is inside out on the left side. If that's the one driving you insane, that's why. The seam's rolled."

Olaf sat down on the edge of the vanity bench like his knees had quit. "You sew?"

"My mother taught me before I could drive. It's the one practical skill nobody respects until their hem goes." I looked at the dress, then at him, and something in my chest did a thing I wasn't ready to name. "Show me the sleeve, Olaf. If you want. You don't have to."

He looked at me for a moment longer, then turned the chair around and picked up the dress with both hands, careful as anything.

I rolled the seam flat between my thumb and finger while he watched like I was performing surgery. "See? It just rolled under the feed dogs. Happens to everyone. You'll want to pick it open about two inches and redo it."

He said yes in the way quiet men say yes, which is to say he said nothing at all, just stood there holding the maid dress until I took it out of his hands and hung it back on the chair.

The next evening I found the maid dress on the chair again, sleeve still inside out, needle parked mid-seam. Olaf stood in the doorway in the robe, hair damp, watching me with that terrified-hopeful look.

"You pick it open and I'll believe you're real," he said. "Nobody who reads laminated cards also fixes seams."

"I contain multitudes. It's a curse." I found the scissors and started picking stitches, sitting right there on the vanity bench next to a stranger in a robe who owned four companies. "So. Olaf. Can I ask you something kind of weird?"

"I feel like the whole evening is going to be kind of weird, so yes."

"The green dress. Have you ever worn it?"

"Once. Alone. I couldn't do the back closure by myself so I only wore it half-fastened and sat in that chair feeling like an idiot."

"Okay. Here's my deal." I set the dress down and turned to face him. "I stay the week. I have nothing to do but cook and water orchids and watch the hot tub timer do its thing. So here's what I'm offering. You let me watch you get ready. Shave, dress, the whole ritual. And I'll model the green one for you, properly fastened, so you can see it on an actual human instead of a hanger."

He made a noise I can only describe as a kettle giving up. "Why would you offer that?"

"Because nobody's worn your dresses, and that's a crime. And because I've spent thirty years being the practical one and I have never once in my life gotten to model a silk dupioni gown, and you have a rack of them in my size, which, by the way, how?"

"You'd be surprised how much I know about you," he said, then