Chapter 1

A trivial line of sunlight slips into the room, igniting the bright pink walls, but more than that, the mirror that Charlotte looks directly into as she lays on her side. The beam hits her eyes and she slowly comes to, taking a moment to remember where she is. She hears Alex snoring behind her back, and she is reminded: Lotus Valley. She blocks the glare from her eyes, and as she does, she catches a glimpse of the journals scattered over the floor. There’s a mixed feeling in her as she remembers both his thrill and her disappointment. She doesn’t remember him getting into bed.

Slowly, she stands, her head hurting slightly as it often does in the morning. She looks at Alex, his arm dangling over the edge of the bed. He snores uniquely, with a whisper, as if he were speaking. Living in apartments off campus, the two technically don’t live together, but spend most nights together, and Charlotte has become adjusted to the sound. Today, though, it sounds different, as if his breath being sent through the air at Lotus Valley means he’s saying something in his gibberish. Or like the house is speaking through him. Of course, that’s not the case. It must just be the peaceful feeling in this place.

She doesn’t wake him, but instead opens the door and walks out on the balcony. The ocean is different during the day. The air is calmer, and so the waves gently lap at the rocks and the precipice below. Looking directly down gives her vertigo, so instead, she gazes out onto the mass of glistening blue. It feels endless. In the distance, she can only make out the blur where the dark of the ocean meets the light of the cloudless sky. She feels small against it, but also, something else. Can one feel big and small at the same time? Only her eyes are on the ocean here, nobody else’s, as far up and down the coast as she can see. The ocean is massive, but it’s hers. For now. She feels her headache dissipate slightly.

There are no moments like this in Boston.

She steps back into the bedroom and begins to get dressed, deciding to let Alex sleep. Making her way out quietly, she opens a few doors on the second floor, until she finds herself in a large, extensive kitchen. It’s homey, with a space for cooking behind a counter, and Charlotte suspects it was intended for the two owners, not for making large quantities of food for guests. The art deco design contrasts with the new appliances. At least, she thinks, she won’t be cooking on a 1920s stove. Bizarrely, there is a mirror on the ceiling, reflecting her as well as the shimmering teal walls and gold trim. Either someone liked to watch themself cook, or no room was safe from the perversity here. She rolls her eyes but brushes the strange discomfort about it aside.

An egg cracks into a bowl. She thinks about last night. The moment when she squeezed his shoulders in that gentle way. He should have understood that. Right? That was an intimate gesture. Who feels that and doesn’t think about sex? Everyone knows that as a code for seduction.

But, then, Alex doesn’t always understand things. He’s a bit dense. Should she have been more explicit? Maybe she was being unfair to him. And, even if she had been more clear, she did bring him here to sate his curiosity. This was for him. Would it have been fair to Howard Carter to have tried to seduce him when he’d first opened King Tut’s tomb?

Had she not known Alex, she’d have never heard of Howard Carter. Now, the great explorer was a part of her consciousness, a reference point at the front of her mind. He’s someone Alex deeply admires. On the first anniversary of their first date, she’d bought him a biography of Carter, and he’d devoured it voraciously in less than a week, sharing with her every captivating detail. And now, he gets to follow in his idol’s footsteps. Why did they come here, after all? Was it not because she wanted to watch him explore, enjoy his thrill by proxy? Did she not get exactly that last night? Is she not being selfish by expecting sex, when he had, in fact, discovered something not seen in a century? That’s his dream, after all.