The Gersons were a fairly unexceptional family. The maid had idly observed them upon their arrival at the Hotel Neversink as she vacuumed the length of the third-floor hallway. The father seemed like a type: late forties, slightly stooped by the punishing mundanity of his work life, clearly some sort of clerical job, as he was too reedy for manual labor and too timid for management or sales. The children were unremarkable, too: an older girl already drawing away from the family, buffered by an invisible wall of brooding solitude; a younger boy who yelled with excitement at nearly…