Rock Paper Scissors

Amelia determines that someone intends to frighten them. When Adam tells her not to be afraid, she explains that she isn’t afraid, not believing in ghosts, but is angry that someone is trying to scare them.

Putting on the warmest clothes they have, which are still inadequate for the weather conditions, they go out to search for Bob. They find a statuary of strange wooden animals as well as a graveyard behind the chapel. Remembering the cottage that they saw driving in, they decide to walk to it. When no one responds to their knock on the door, Adam walks around the building. He returns to tell Amelia that he saw a woman with long gray hair inside sitting in chair and holding a rabbit. She came to the window where Adam stood and closed the curtains.

Robin goes around inside the cottage and closes all the curtains. Getting on her hands and knees, she crawls to the front door to listen to what Amelia and Adam might say outside. Although they surprised her by coming to the cottage, Robin’s plan continues to unfold as she planned. She’s convinced that she has the upper hand in dealing with them because she knows them so well: She “knows things about both of them that she is certain they do not know about each other” (153).

Amelia and Adam stand outside the cottage speculating on who the woman inside is and why she doesn’t answer. They decide to climb the hill overlooking Blackwater Chapel to see what signs of civilization may be near. Amelia writes a polite note to the woman in the cottage, which Adam slides under the door. They hear the woman pick it up and realize that she has been listening to their conversation about her.

Although their comments about her possibly being a witch and about the cottage being untidy hurt her feelings, Robin continues with her plans. She watches Adam and Amelia climb the hill until they’ve ascended far enough that they can’t interfere with her next steps. Putting on her coat, she gets ready to return to the chapel:

Robin slips a red leather collar inside her pocket, then heads off toward the chapel alone. She knows what happened to the visitors’ dog because she took him. But Robin doesn't feel guilty about that at all, even though she used to own a dog herself, and knows how upset they must be (158).

The sixth anniversary love letter to Adam comprises this chapter. It relates the star treatment Adam experiences by being in the inner circle of October’s orbit while working to bring a movie based on the screenplay of Rock Paper Scissors to fruition. Although Adam spent major portions of the year in Los Angeles with October and a producer, his wife views it as positive.

She enjoyed some of the perks of being a close associate of October’s as well. October opened her French villa in Champagne to the couple for their anniversary. She describes the luxury and beauty of the trip in lavish detail. As an anniversary gift of iron, she gives Adam a heavy key. Her intention is to explain why the key is important, but she changes her mind:

But when you unwrapped it, and held the key to everything in your hand, something felt wrong. Why ruin our present or jeopardize our future with my past? Better to let us live this happy version of ourselves a little while longer (164).

Standing atop the hill, overlooking the area around Blackwater Loch and the chapel, Adam watches his wife as she stops to rest. He feels a sense of déjà vu when looking in the cottage window. Trying to push the possibility of what he saw away, he focuses on looking at his wife and thinking of her. However, from the moment he looks in the cottage and sees the woman, Adam begins to suspect that the person behind this bizarre weekend is Robin. This possibility is heightened in his mind when he sees a woman in red going into the chapel, which is a mile distant from their position on the hilltop.

When they can’t see any source of civilization, Adam suggests to Amelia that they return to the chapel, build a fire, rest, and think of another plan. Soon after they start down the hill, sleet begins to fall, which turns into a cold, hard rain. The ground beneath them becomes even icier. Then, snow begins to fall again. Alerted by Amelia, Adam looks toward the chapel, still a half mile away, and sees a woman in a red kimono entering it.

Robin walks to the chapel. She knows that she has at least 30 minutes before Amelia and Adam can make it down the hill. Climbing to their bedroom, she first makes their bed, then rifles through their possessions, abusing some, taking some for herself, and leaving others alone. When she finds Amelia’s asthma inhaler, she empties it and puts it back where she found it. She removes the origami crane from Adam’s wallet:

It’s a little burned around the edges, but Robin knows that cranes are supposed to bring good luck, and the fact that he carries it around in his wallet makes her hate him a little less. She puts everything else back where she found it (173).

Adam races ahead of Amelia to see who has entered the chapel. Not as fit and having an asthma attack, Amelia follows behind him. The chapel bell begins to ring. When Amelia looks up, the heavy snow blinds her. She deduces that whoever entered the chapel is still there.

Going inside, she sees no one but notices an oversized pair of boots in the boot room. She struggles with her breathing as she climbs the stair looking for Adam. She nearly panics when she can’t find her inhaler. She continually calls for Adam, who finally answers her from a previously unseen room behind the library. Amelia stops in front of the door, thinking, “I hesitate before pushing it open, once again feeling as though I might have fallen down the rabbit hole, or become trapped in one of the dark and disturbing novels my husband loves to adapt” (176).

The seventh anniversary letter is decidedly more sober and reflective than the previous one, lingering on the fact that October, only 30 years old, apparently died by suicide, ingesting too many pills and alcohol. The letter notes that Adam, who “had become quite close” (177) to October, was one of the last people to see her, and acknowledges that Adam will grieve both the loss of a friend and that October’s death precludes production of his screenplay.

Another troubling note in the letter is the growing collaboration between Adam and Henry. Adam still doesn’t know that Henry is his wife’s father. The two men begin to spend a lot of time together. Adam and his wife travel to New York for Henry’s latest project. She spends most of her time alone, touring the Statue of Liberty and Coney Island.

Henry asks Adam to travel with him to Los Angeles. When his wife complains about the burden this will place on her and their marriage, Adam tells her that she isn’t career oriented enough to understand this opportunity. She reflects:

I love my job at Battersea Dogs Home. It makes me feel better about myself. Maybe because—like the animals I spend my time caring for—I too have often felt abandoned by the world. It’s really not their fault that they are unloved and unwanted, just like it was never mine (185).

The only redeeming aspect to this trip for her was the contact she received from her new work friend, Amelia, who texts to say that she misses her.

Hiding inside the chapel, Robin keeps Bob with her. She overhears the Amelia and Adam talking in the library upstairs. While she waits, she muses:

[E]veryone makes mistakes. Sometimes, the most innocent-seeming people turn out to be guilty of horrific things. Sometimes, the people who do bad things, are just bad people. But there is always a reason why a person behaves the way they do (189).

Adam deduces that the study behind the library is Henry’s writing room, recognizing the writing desk that Henry acquired in an auction from Agatha Christie’s estate. He speculates that Henry has somehow orchestrated the entire trip. Amelia, who can’t find her inhaler, responds to this possibility with fear: “I freeze. I’ve always been afraid of Henry, not just because of the dark and twisted books he writes. The thing that scared me the most the first time I saw him, were his eyes” (192).

Adam says that, now knowing who the chapel belongs to, his only desire is to find Bob and leave. At that moment, they hear a dog barking outside.

Adam and Amelia run out of the chapel into the snow but do not see the dog. While searching for him, they see a Henry look-alike snowman with Henry’s tweed jacket and pipe. As they study the snowman and look for Bob, Adam spots one of the headstones in the cemetery that has been swept clean of snow. Bob’s collar is sitting on the gravestone. As they approach, they read the words: “HENRY WINTER, FATHER OF ONE, AUTHOR OF MANY. 1937-2018” (197).

Unable to fathom what’s happening, Adam suggests that they go back into the chapel because they aren’t safe. They stand outside, debating about what’s happening and who could be behind it. If Henry is truly dead, they acknowledge, he can’t be the culprit. Their conversation reveals distrust of each other, as they pick apart each other’s comments, looking for clues. They agree to leave while it’s still daylight. Then, they discover that all four tires on Amelia’s car are flat.

Robin returns to her cottage with Bob. She reflects on Henry, her father, calling her from the hospital to tell her that he was dying and asking her to come. She drove him home to Blackwater Chapel, where he set out all his important papers and plans, giving her a list of things to do after his death. He showed her his protocol for submitting novels and contacting the outside world. His final novel, he learned, had made the New York Times bestseller list.

In a celebratory mood, Henry said, “There is some champagne in the crypt […] “Go and get us a bottle, will you? Have one drink with me to celebrate my last bestseller? Then I promise I’ll tell you everything you need to know” (208). When Robin returned with the champagne, which took more than half an hour, Henry was dead from an overdose of pills.

Robin buried him that night in the chapel graveyard but didn’t tell anyone he was dead. Instead, she broke off all lines of communication he had with the outside world, apart from his agent and his private detective. She stepped into his life, even adopting his white rabbit, Robin, a male that she renamed Oscar.