I laughed about it at first, teasing Mike. “What’s Rocky hiding in there? His stash of tennis balls?”

But Mike’s answer was always the same, with that same unbothered shrug. “Storage. That’s it.”

Weeks turned into months. I started staying over more often. The house felt comfortable, lived-in. Rocky adored me, and I adored him back. I loved the quiet hum of Mike’s life, so different from the chaos of mine. I worked in marketing for a tech start-up, which meant my days were full of tight deadlines, brainstorming meetings, and the constant thrum of Slack notifications. Mike was a carpenter. He built furniture by hand, solid and beautiful. He spent his days measuring, sanding, joining, finishing. His world was slower, more tactile, and I found myself craving it more and more.

The only unsettled thing — the only thing I couldn’t quite make sense of — was that locked door.

Rocky’s behavior around it grew stranger with time. He’d sometimes sit in front of it for minutes at a stretch, silent and tense, ears perked as though listening to something on the other side. Once, while I was getting ready for bed, I heard him pawing at it frantically, his nails scratching against the wood in a sound that made me shiver. When I told Mike, he frowned and muttered something about dogs being weird, then called Rocky away with a sharp whistle.