Teddy woke the next morning with an uneasy feeling in her belly.

It took her a few minutes, lying there in the patchwork-quilt-draped bed, staring up at the plain white ceiling, to realize what it was.

The nauseating feeling was a roiling mixture of nervousness and guilt, mixed with a high level of creep factor related to whatever had happened on top of the lighthouse last night. The nervousness and guilt were, of course, related to the fact that she’d made no progress on her book. But the creep factor—

She put it out of her mind.

“I can’t think about that right now,” she told herself. Because if she did, she’d have a nervous breakdown.

It was after seven thirty—a reasonable time for a writer on deadline to get her butt up and to work (whereas a writer who wasn’t on deadline might sleep until nine, and a writer who’d just finished her book might sleep until noon), so, feeling determined, she rolled out of bed.

Teddy showered in the clean, serviceable, but aged bathroom allotted to her suite, and decided on yoga pants and a tank top with a hoodie over it, as it was a little chilly yet this morning. Very comfortable, very get-down-to-work, she told herself.

She bundled up her damp hair with a bunch of clips and pins at the back of her head, uncaring how it looked and that a few strands straggled over her neck. She brushed her teeth (she couldn’t write unless she’d done so, and couldn’t understand people who claimed they immediately opened their laptop to start work, first thing in the morning, while still in bed), and padded out through the curve-topped door into the shared living space to get a cup of coffee.

Teddy was relieved when she heard the sound of the shower from down the hall where, presumably, Oscar’s room was. She didn’t want to see him this morning.

A different kind of walk of shame, I guess, she thought with a pained grin as she poured coffee into the filter of an ancient coffee maker.

While it hissed and burbled and went about exuding a delicious scent, she looked out the kitchen window. This side of the keeper’s house faced the woods that contained the little hot spring that Dr. London (for some reason, it tickled her to think of him by his title) was using as an escape from his real life. She caught a flash of russet—a deer—as it foraged in the thick greenery, and a red hawk was sitting in a tree, watching for its own opportunity for breakfast.

At last the coffee was done, and Teddy poured a full mug, added a glop of milk (wishing for one of those mini-frothers; she should ask Harriet to send her one) and some stevia, then quickly slipped out of the kitchen and back to her suite. Just as she was closing the door separating the two spaces, she heard the bathroom door open down the hall.

Whew.

When she got back to her room, she found a text from Declan, apologizing that he wasn’t going to be by this morning as planned, because he’d forgotten his sixteen-year-old daughter had a doctor appointment in Grand Rapids.

LMK when is a good time to come by. Don’t want to mess up your work, he added in a closing text.

All right, then. Good. No distractions this morning.

She could get right to work, and work all the way until lunch without having to stop.

Teddy sat down at her laptop, setting the mug of coffee next to it. Then she got up and found a pillow for the chair—it was too low without one. She settled that into place and sat down.

Then she got up and made her bed. Can’t work with a messy bed.

Then she sat back down, opened up the laptop, and was confronted by the same blank white screen she’d faced yesterday.