The corridor was empty.
I stood in the doorway for a moment, one hand still on the door handle, and took a quiet inventory of the hallway stretching out in both directions. Same dark wood floors as the bedroom, same high ceilings, morning light coming through a window at the far end and laying a long pale rectangle across the floor. Quiet. Still. The house, in its daytime register, was a different creature entirely from what it had been last night, less threatening in the light, more large, more simply unfamiliar.
No Matteo.
I didn't examine the feeling that produced too closely.
I stepped out, pulled the door behind me, and stood for a moment trying to orient myself in a house I'd had exactly one guided tour of, approximately a lifetime ago, which I had spent trying to look composed r
