The Welcome Book Had a Page About Us

The place had one of those homey welcome books hosts leave out — local restaurant tips, wifi password, a guestbook section where past visitors write chirpy little thank-yous. We flicked through it on arrival the way you do, cooing at the nice notes, and then I turned to the last written page and the coo died in my throat.

The final entry was not from a past guest. It was in the host's handwriting — the same hand as the welcome note and the wifi instructions — and it was dated four days before our arrival. And it was about us. Not a generic 'welcome future guests' note. Us, specifically, by our first names, in a paragraph of detail that had no business existing.

It knew where we both worked — my partner's employer named, my own field named. It referenced our drive — 'they'll be coming up from the coast, probably arriving Friday evening.' It noted, and this is where my skin genuinely crawled, habits it had no way to know from a booking: 'she's the early riser, he likes a run before breakfast; they'll want the good coffee.' It knew my partner runs in the mornings. There is no field on a booking form for that. It ended, in a cheerful loop, 'Looking forward to hosting them. Should be a lovely week.' Signed with the host's first name.

I stood there doing frantic arithmetic on what a host could legitimately know. Names, yes, from the booking. Rough location, maybe, from a profile. But our JOBS, our arrival window, my partner's running habit — that's not booking data, that's research. Someone had looked us up, thoroughly, across whatever we'd left public online, assembled a little dossier, and then — the detail I can't move past — written it out longhand in the guestbook as if we were already a story he was pleased to be telling, days before we walked in.