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his carry-on. A perfect fit. It was nice when things worked out that way. Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad little house after all.
    He started to turn away from the closet, then, for some reason, opened the left-hand door, too. It wasn’t an invasion of privacy, he told himself. The door wasn’t locked, and there was no note saying he couldn’t. He was just curious to see what the clothing of a nonconformist looked like.
    Vivid, he immediately saw. Literally every color of the rainbow, and then some, met his eyes as he scanned the interior of the closet, which was crowded to capacity, doubtless because his hostess had condensed two closets into one to make room for her guest. But where he had anticipated suits and business wear—since what else would anyone have in their closet?—what he found instead were garments that were gauzy, sparkly, and velvety, and in no way suitable for business attire. The floor below them was completely obscured by shoes—all of which, he noted right away, fell into three categories: functional, quirky, and comfortable. The shelf above was filled with hatboxes in a million colors and textures. The interior of the closet was such a stark contrast to the pale furnishings of the room, as if someone had exploded a color bomb inside it whose power they had greatly underestimated.
    There was no telling what was in those boxes, Cole thought as he pushed the door closed again. What was strange was that he actually felt a twinge of curiosity about what their contents might be. What difference did that make? he asked himself. Who cared? The only thing he should be curious about at the moment was where he was going to stow his underwear.
    As he clicked the closet door shut, his gaze lit on the dresser, and he was surprised to realize he was looking for another note. He smiled when he saw it, on the bottom right-hand drawer, and immediately went to see what it said.
    “ Right makes might, ” it read in the same angular lettering as the one on the closet. Then, in parentheses below, “ It also makes room. ”
    Pulling the drawer open, Cole found it empty—and perfectly sized for the rest of his belongings, including his underwear. Naturally, that made him think that at least one of the other drawers contained her underwear. But that, he thought, would be a violation of privacy. So he refrained from prying. Nevertheless, he felt another surprising flutter of curiosity about what her underwear might look like. Probably like the things in her closet, full of rich color and lush textures. He was already forming an impression of his hostess as something of a hedonist.
    As he stood again—forgetting about the ceiling and bonking his head again—he noted a framed photograph on the dresser. Five women stood ankle-deep in water a fair distance from the camera, water that was clear enough and calm enough that Cole was reasonably certain it was the Caribbean. One of them, he wagered, was his hostess, and he studied each in turn. Four of the five wore swimsuits revealing enough to make him like what he saw. The fifth wore a T-shirt that fell down over her thighs, but it was wet enough to mold some truly luscious curves. All of the women seemed attractive, though the one in the T-shirt was squinting into the sunlight, her face obscured even more than the others’ by the shadow of the baseball cap she wore.
    The blonde in the white string bikini, he would wager, was breathtaking. Cole wondered if she was the owner of the house. Then he wondered why he was wondering that. He should be wondering if Silk Purse had been settled at Susannah’s friends’ farm by now.
    Collecting his toiletry kit, he made his way back downstairs and unpacked his things in the bathroom. A note affixed to the mirror informed him that the hot water sometimes took time to actually be hot water and that cold was sometimes a relative term. It ended with the philosophical observation that “ Patience is a virtue—not to mention very