Sanctuary

shower facilities were also policed twice daily, scrubbed out, the supplies renewed. Since it was unlikely that Ginny had done her duty there since before the bonfire, Jo resigned herself to janitorial work.
    “I’ll deal with the bathrooms,” she told Sam as he carefully filled out the paperwork needed to check a group of impatient campers out. “Then I’ll walk over to Ginny’s cabin and see what’s up.”
    “Go to her cabin first,” Sam said without looking up. “The facilities are her job.”
    “All right. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. I’ll meet you back here.”
    She took the path heading east. If she’d been a heron, she thought with a little smile, she’d have been knocking on Ginny’s door in a blink. But the way the path wound and twisted, sliding between ponds and around the high duck grass, it was a good quarter mile hike.
    She passed a site with a neat little pop-up camper. Obviously no early risers there, she mused. The flaps were zipped tight. A pair of raccoons waddled across the path, eyed her shrewdly, then continued on toward breakfast.
    Ginny’s cabin was a tiny box of cedar tucked into the trees. It was livened up with two big, bright-red pots filled with wildly colored plastic flowers. They stood by the door, guarded by an old and weathered pair of pink flamingos. Ginny was fond of saying she dearly loved flowers and pets, but the plastic sort suited her best.
    Jo knocked once, waited a beat, then let herself in. The single main room was hardly thirty square feet, with the kitchen area separated from the living area by a narrow service bar. The lack of space hadn’t kept Ginny from collecting. Knickknacks crowded every flat surface. Water globes, souvenir ashtrays, china ladies in frilly dresses, crystal poodles.
    The walls were painted bright pink and covered with really bad prints—still lifes, for the most part, of flowers and fruit. Jo was both touched and amused to see one of her own black-and-white photos crammed in with them. It was a silly shot of Ginny sleeping in the rope hammock at Sanctuary, taken when they were teenagers.
    Jo smiled over it as she turned toward the bedroom. “Ginny, if you’re not alone in there, cover up. I’m coming in.”
    But the bedroom was empty. The bed was unmade and it, as well as a good deal of the floor, was covered with clothes. From the looks of it, Jo decided, Ginny had had a hard time picking out the right outfit for the bonfire.
    She looked in the bathroom just to be sure the cabin was empty. The plastic shelf over the tiny pedestal sink was crammed with cosmetics. The bowl of the sink was still dusted with face powder. Three bottles of shampoo stood on the lip of the tub, one of them still uncapped. A doll smiled from the top of the toilet tank, her pink and white crocheted gown spread full over an extra roll of toilet paper.
    It was so Ginny.
    “Whose bed are you sleeping in this morning, Ginny?” Jo murmured, and with a little sigh, left the cabin and prepared to scrub public rest rooms.
    When she reached the facilities, Jo took keys out of her back pocket and opened the small storage area. Inside, cleaning paraphernalia and bathroom supplies were ruthlessly organized. It was always a surprise to realize how disciplined Ginny could be about her work when the rest of her life appeared to be an unpredictable and often messy lark.
    Armed with mop and bucket, commercial cleaners, rags, and rubber gloves, Jo went into the women’s shower. A woman of about fifty was busily brushing her teeth at one of the sinks. Jo sent her an absentminded smile and began to fill her bucket.
    The woman rinsed, spat. “Where’s Ginny this morning?”
    “Oh.” Jo blinked her eyes against the strong fumes of the cleaner as it bubbled up. “Apparently among the missing.”
    “Overpartied,” the woman said with a friendly laugh. “It was a great bonfire. My husband and I enjoyed it—so much that we’re getting a very late start this morning.”
    “That’s what vacations are for. Enjoyment and late starts.”
    “It’s hard to convince him of the second part.” The woman took a small tube out of her travel kit and, squirting moisturizing lotion on her fingers, began to slather it on. “Dick’s a real bear about time schedules. We’re nearly an hour late for our morning hike.”
    “The island’s not going anywhere.”
    “Tell that to Dick.” She laughed again, then greeted a young woman and a girl of about three who came in.