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Jess was starting to get the feeling she was just the latest in a long line of people responsible for untangling Trenton’s messes.

Poppy made Jess comfortable at the little table, where she was treated to a comfy armchair and a cordless phone with plenty of signal. She dialed Mavis’s number with relatively little difficulty and was pleased that her assistant picked up on the second ring.

Instead of greeting her, Jess said, “You know when you forced me to memorize yours and Nana Blanche’s numbers to the tune of that ‘Jenny’ song? And I said it was silly, but you asked me ‘What are you gonna do if you lose your precious phone and you have to call me?’?”

On the other end of the line, Jess heard a deep exhalation, as if Mavis had been holding her breath since they last spoke. “Well, you were right. This is your official phone call to notify you that you did, indeed, tell me so. Your ‘I told you so’ trophy is in the mail.”

“Honey, we both know there’s no trophy for ‘I told you so.’ There’s a ceremonial ‘I told you so’ dance. With jazz hands. I’m so glad it’s you,” Mavis sighed. “When I saw the spa come up on caller ID, I assumed the worst.”

Relief at hearing the voice of someone who loved her warmed Jess’s chest. “Mavis, I’m at a spa. It’s not exactly hazardous duty.”

It was for the best, Jess told herself, not to mention the dead body. The “I told you so” trophy would only increase in size. Jess’s trophy budget was limited. Also, Mavis would worry. She might even call Nana Blanche home from her trip.

“With those girls? I have my doubts,” Mavis countered. “The more I hear about this Helston family, the more they come across as a low-rent country-club crime family.”

“That’s not nice,” Jess chided her while wondering if she’d made the right decision, calling before checking with Poppy whether outgoing calls were recorded. “You’re not wrong, but…not nice, either.”

“?‘Nice’ is for bad dates and Christmas sweaters from elderly aunts,” Mavis retorted. “How’s it going? You feeling relaxed yet?”

Jess took too long to find an answer. From the other end of the line, Mavis sighed. “Uh-oh.”

That was the thing about Mavis, she was quietly supportive…until she felt Jess was being a dumbass, and then she pointed it out to her in full Technicolor detail. Sometimes there were PowerPoint slides involved, showing bullet points explaining her dumbass-ery. Sometimes she had research to back up her bullet points. Sometimes the slides had special sound effects when Mavis highlighted the bullet points.

Mavis showed considerably more technical skills than the average not-quite-retiree.

“It’s a long story, one that begins with me starting a whole new proposal for Trenton here at the spa and will probably end with me wearing a bridesmaid’s dress.” Jess sighed. Poppy’s head swiveled toward her, expression awash in confusion before she stood and walked to a table in the corner, where she turned on an electric kettle.

Jess outlined her preliminary thoughts on Trenton’s Proposal, version 2.0, while Mavis made notes. While she had Mavis on the phone, Jess asked for updates on several other clients whose plans were still in the initial stages. (A moonlit gourmet picnic with a backup rain plan. A scavenger hunt. A private blacksmithing lesson to forge the happy couple’s wedding rings post-proposal.) The guilt that Jess felt leaving Mavis to handle her work ran deep, but Mavis assured her that she had everything under control.

“Now, let’s go back to the bridesmaid thing. Don’t think I’m going to let you distract me from that,” Mavis insisted. “I don’t know what Diana Helston is trying to talk you into, but it’s not worth it. We don’t need fancy downstairs office money that bad.”

“?‘Fancy downstairs money’ sounds like it’s for something else entirely,” Jess said and snorted. Poppy burst out laughing, covering her mouth with her hands.

“This is not a reasonable expectation,” Mavis said, ignoring her. “This is not—you don’t have to stay. I looked up flights to Nashville for every day this week! I can book you home in five minutes.”

Jess closed her eyes. “I can’t do that, and you know why. It’s not just the office. I don’t want to lose my apartment, either.”

“We can figure something else out,” Mavis swore.

“Not fast enough,” Jess reminded her.

“At least tell me this is some long con where you just keep adding extra hot-stone massages to your tab until you bankrupt Tillard Pecans.”

“That would be a Mavis move.” Jess snickered while Mavis crowed in the affirmative.

“Call me when you can!” Mavis commanded. “If nothing else, I want to know you’re OK. And the gossip. I want the gossip. I am not proud.”

“You’re a terrible influence,” she told her.

“But a fantastic assistant!” was Mavis’s final shot before Jess hung up.

***

The rest of Jess’s day was very productive. She and Mavis worked in tandem to cancel the botanical garden party. Deposits were lost all over Nashville. The butterfly provider, in particular, was disappointed. Andrew could not come up in time to take Diana’s engagement photos, but Poppy helped Jess find a very nice local photographer who would know how to handle the lighting and terrain. Dean agreed to create the menu, and Beth was more than happy to arrange an extensive (also, expensive) floralscape to surround the “rustic sweethearts’ table.” She happened to have plenty of flowers in Cameo Coral from setting up their villa. Hell, Poppy even helped Jess find someone who could build them a tiny wooden platform, so Trenton wouldn’t have to kneel in the grass. And Diana’s expensive shoes wouldn’t have to touch actual nature. All in all, she’d set up a pretty nice proposal in less than eight hours, and in two days, Diana would be engaged and Jess wouldn’t have to worry about this bullshit anymore.

Jess’s Big Book of Life Plans: Finish proposal, celebrate with copious amounts of forbidden alcohol. Close self in apartment for a week. Speak to no one.

Jess supposed she shouldn’t resent Trenton’s thoughtlessness too much. Without his fickle decision-making skills, she might not have had the opportunity to spend so much time with the Osbournes. Kiki aside, they were certainly the preferable group.

Sev seemed Kiki-level reasonable, but Jess hadn’t made up her mind about him yet. So, she approached him slowly when she found him hunched over a bench near the meditation path, going over some papers in a manila folder.

“Hi, Sev. Fresh from a facial?” Jess asked.

“Sadly, no.” Sev chuckled, shutting the folder and gesturing to his face. “I thought you’d be able to tell from my lack of an exfoliated glow.”

“It’s a compliment, really, when you think about it,” she said, provoking a rather glorious grin from him. And unlike when Chad smiled, Jess was filled with a warm sense of, if not affection, at least regard.

“I spent the day at the family place, Hardcastle Pines. It’s on the other side of the bluff there.” Sev pointed to a ridge in the distance. “I wanted to make sure everything was all buttoned up. We have caretakers, of course, who live on the property, but there’s nothing like seeing to the job yourself.”

Clearly, Chad had never received that particular Hardcastle lesson.

“It’s so weird that y’all grew up around here,” Jess said.

“Eh, I wouldn’t go that far,” Sev told her. “We spent some summers here. Chad did more socializing than I did because I was usually cooped up in the house, doing extra summer coursework or working with a tutor. Hardcastles don’t just survive, son. Hardcastles surpass. ”

“Wow, that sounds…intense.”

“Well, they don’t call us Softcastles,” Sev replied.

She wrinkled her nose. “That was terrible.”

He grinned. “I got to spend some time with the Osbournes and their friends. It’s just that we weren’t that close, you know? We would see them at their beer bashes, July Fourth fireworks, the Flannel Days Festival, that sort of thing.” When Jess frowned at him, Sev added, “Flannel Days—It’s sort of like Founder’s Day in most towns. It’s the first Saturday in September and the official end of summer around here. Craft booths. Cakewalks. Moonshine tasting. The whole town dresses up in red flannel underwear with the button-up flaps in the back. They used to make them at a factory down the mountain. It was the first industry in the town. It’s a whole thing.”

“I am familiar with the concept of a Founder’s Day Festival,” she huffed, shivering at the memory of grain alcohol burning her throat. “Without the moonshine.”

“We all fell out of touch over the years, when my half siblings started insisting on their own vacation spots,” Sev said. “But I was happy to hear the Osbournes were doing so well with this place.”

Sev sounded like he meant it, and she liked him just a little better for it.

As they negotiated the steps down to the next level, Jess’s foot slipped on a loose stone and Sev grabbed her arm to steady her. While it did restore her faith in chivalry, it also meant that Sev’s papers spilled out onto the gravel.

“Sorry!” she exclaimed, stooping to pick up the paperwork. The letterhead was marked with the Tillard Pecans logo. The first sheet looked like a fax cover sheet with the subject line Last Round of Adjustments and the second had PRENUPTiAL AGREEMENT written in bold letters across the top. Diana’s and Trenton’s names were all over the text in all caps.

“What’s this?” she asked as they stood. She handed him the papers, and she appreciated that despite being considerably taller than her, he wasn’t looming. And she’d just grabbed at his legal papers, so that was another check in the “good” column, as far as Jess was concerned.

“Sev, is that a prenup in your folder?” she asked, finally processing what she had seen.

He chuckled awkwardly. “Maybe I’m just happy to see you.”

She glared up at him. “No, Sev. Please be better than that joke.”

“Yeah, sorry, that was bad,” he conceded. “Please, Jess, I can’t answer any questions about what you just saw. Attorney-client privilege and all that.”

“OK, I’ll try a different angle,” she said. “Sev, are you here to prevent Trenton and Diana’s engagement? Because that is really going to mess with my week.”

Briefly, Jess wondered if she should warn Diana and ask Beth to intervene on her behalf—arrange a sort of lawyer versus lawyer battle on the mountain. Like the legends of old.

Probably not. That wouldn’t be very nice to Beth, to give her a client like Diana.

He held up his large hands, as if in surrender. “Look, I can’t say—The family is…I wouldn’t describe them as ‘happy’ about the engagement, but when they saw that Trenton was joining Diana at such a picturesque location with Aubrey, a professional wedding planner, in tow…”

“They think this is an elopement,” she guessed, nodding. “And they wanted you to have the prenup papers on hand, just in case.”

His face lit up. “You understand.”

“Trenton can be very easily led,” she agreed. “Will-o’-the-wisp bait.”

Sev stared at her. “What?”

“Uh, apparently, in these parts, there are ghost lights that lure travelers off safe paths. I’ve been seeing them all week. Anyway, I think Trenton would be particularly easy to lure.”

“Truer words,” he said, and sighed. “It’s nothing personal. But Trenton’s first marriage ended after eleven months. After the pictures with the…dancers surfaced on social media. Because Chad thought it would be funny to post them. An ironclad prenup protected Trenton and the family’s interests.”

Jess’s shoulders sagged a bit in relief. “OK, but just so you know, Diana wouldn’t be happy with a quaint little justice-of-the-peace thing up here in the middle of nowhere. She wants a full bridal coronation. Her family demands it.”

“That’s part of the problem, her family,” he grumbled.

“I can’t help you there. Just be warned, ‘No prenup to our disadvantage’ is practically carved under the Helston family crest,” Jess told him. “You’re up for a fight.”

“Well, the company’s entire legal department had a hand in drafting this, so good luck to her,” Sev replied. “Honestly, I don’t usually handle this sort of thing. I like the minutia of business law. But my dad, he wants me to help protect his friend’s kid. I don’t want to let the Tillards down.”

They walked over the last rise before their villas and stopped in their tracks. Diana was standing on the grass between the two villas, talking to Chad…and it didn’t look like a particularly friendly conversation. Chad had his hands clenched around her upper arms while she was pulling away from him, a derisive scowl on her face. Diana was shaking her head, occasionally glancing over her shoulder, as if to check for anyone who might be nearby, listening. Chad’s jaw was tense, his head bent low, and it looked like whatever he was saying, it wasn’t Gee, Diana, I sure am glad you’re marrying my best buddy in the world. I look forward to years of Friendsgiving celebrations and weekend barbecues.

Was Chad trying to talk Diana out of marrying Trenton? Jess could see him demanding that Diana back off, if he thought he wouldn’t have Trenton to rely on for “bro time” anymore. Worse, Diana might stop letting Trenton pay for things for Chad, who seemed to enjoy a free ride despite having his own money. Maybe Chad was just trying to establish the pecking order of “people who benefit from Trenton’s cheerful obliviousness.” Chad clearly expected to remain at the front of the line.

With one last hissed reply, Diana shrugged him off and tried to walk away. Chad had size and strength on his side and dragged her back, but Diana did exactly what years of watching reality television had trained her to do—she reared her right hand back and delivered a loud stinging slap to Chad’s cheek.

Reality Housewife Chanterelle would have been proud.

Sev’s mouth dropped open in shock. Diana stomped off to her villa and slammed the door.

Jess asked, “Any idea what that’s about?”

Sev shook his head. “Not a clue.”

Jess asked, “Do Chad and Diana usually get along?”

“I wasn’t aware that they talked,” Sev said. “I thought they just sort of orbited around Trenton while he tries to orchestrate awkward conversations at parties.”

“Are you going to do anything about Diana assaulting your nephew?”

“Buy her a fruit basket?” Sev suggested. When Jess laughed, he added, “I have also dreamed of one day smacking Chad’s stupid face.”

Sev grinned at her. While that was lovely to look at, Jess caught sight of Susan Treadaway’s caftan (red and orange this time) blowing in the breeze, and her brain leaped at the chance for a distraction. Susan was walking over the hill from the treatment suite, but to Jess’s surprise, the woman veered toward the meditation hollow. She ducked under the yellow caution tape stretched across the entrance to the path, which the Osbournes had tried to dress up with a sign stating: This spa feature is closed. Please see the front office for alternate services.

“Would you excuse me?” she asked Sev.

“Sure, see you at dinner.”

Jess turned and followed Susan toward the hollow. She would think Susan would want to avoid the scene of her husband’s death…unless she was trying to find something? Something that Jeremy had dropped, besides the fork? Or was she looking for something that she dropped when she shoved Jeremy into the pool? Wasn’t there something that killers had about returning to the scene of the crime?

The police had left caution tape across the cave. Susan was standing in front of the tape, peering down into the water. Jess listened for the sound of crying and heard nothing but the splashing of the water. Susan’s shoulders were stone-still.

Maybe she shouldn’t have followed someone she suspected was capable of murder into this isolated location? Jess turned to leave but—

“Can I help you?” Susan called.

Well, no turning back now.

Careful to stay on the path and not set foot on the slippery gravel, Jess moved toward her. She had no idea what to say— Hi, just wanted to check in to see if you’re a murderer?

Susan filled the silence with, “I know I’m not supposed to be down here. And I also know that I owe you an apology. It’s been made clear to me that no matter how tragic my circumstances, it’s unacceptable to speak like that to anyone here at the Golden Ash, staff or not. Ms. Osbourne is right. I was terribly rude to you. I’ve been rude to everyone I’ve spoken to since I got here, and I can’t even blame Jeremy for my misery anymore. I think I’m just so accustomed to it that I don’t know any other way to be.”

“My condolences,” Jess replied, sounding uncertain.

“I hear the question mark in your voice and it’s entirely appropriate. He wasn’t always…that way.” Susan sighed. “When we got married, I was the wild one, if you can believe that. I was the one who wanted to try new things, vacation in places without a Forbes Travel rating, stay out salsa dancing until two. Jeremy was the calming influence, the sensible one. I resented him, I think, for pushing me to grow up, to take my job at my family’s company. And it got worse when things didn’t turn out so well for him at the bank. He is—he was an assistant regional manager of a branch, and that’s as high as he was ever going to rise. His brothers took money from their father’s life insurance settlement and invested it in some start-up app to help people find the right glasses for their facial shape. They asked Jeremy if he wanted in, and of course sensible, cautious Jeremy said no. But it took off and his brothers got rich. Not as well-off as my family, but very comfortable.

“It turns out that the boys had a knack for finding unlikely-but-somehow-successful investments. But after Jeremy had turned them down the first time, they never offered to bring him in again. I think that was as much fun for them as any luxury item they bought, rubbing the fact that Jeremy hadn’t believed in them right in his face.”

Jess stood absolutely still, because if she moved, Susan might stop talking. She had the weirdest feeling that she was about to hear a murder confession. Was she about to have some sort of Jinx moment? Should she call somebody? Surely Blister was more qualified to handle this sort of thing. Well, maybe not Blister, but somebody.

“Jeremy became obsessed with the idea that he could be just as successful as his brothers. He threw his money into any idea that he thought might take off. We turned forty and he got more frustrated—it was like my husband was replaced by an entirely different person. He decided his best chance at ‘hitting it big’ was this innovative restaurant concept. Because the only thing his brothers couldn’t make work was a high-end steakhouse. But even with that, they made a profit off selling the location. So, Jeremy’s big idea was a restaurant…in a decommissioned lighthouse in middle-of-nowhere Maine, with no parking. No matter what I said about what an absolutely stupid idea this was, he insisted he was going to make it work. He said he just needed investors and the right team. He started dressing flashier, using obnoxious hipster lingo, insisting on going to expensive restaurants to ‘scout talent.’ And worse, he flirted with women right in front of me. He’d never been that guy, the guy that needed so much validation.”

Susan’s eyes welled up with tears. “My promotion only made things worse. I understand that it’s not fair, that nepotism exists, but what was I supposed to do? Not take over my family’s company, just because it made Jeremy unhappy? When he announced this trip, I thought that it was an attempt at a fresh start, you know? I’ve been asking for this sort of trip for years , to help us reconnect, to focus on each other. But he’s been—was, he was being so awful. From the minute we got here, he was hitting on every woman he saw and trying to ingratiate himself with poor Dean Osbourne, who was just trying to do his job. He had to throw Jeremy out of the kitchen on our first night here. Chef Osbourne was too polite to do it physically, but the ‘fuck off out of my kitchen’ was obvious to everyone. Except Jeremy.”

Susan dropped to a seated position on one of the meditation boulders. Jess gingerly sat down next to her.

“When I realized he’d only brought me up here to try to recruit Dean for his ‘project,’ I think I actually felt something in my chest break. It was so desperate and hopeless and deranged. And it was so humiliating that he dragged me along for it. He didn’t care about our marriage anymore. He didn’t care about me. He only cared about this dream that was going to suck the life out of him. He didn’t even want the restaurant, really. He was just obsessed with not being less than his brothers. He didn’t even know that much about food! He ordered red wine with fish. He expected the tagliatelle ai funghi to come with clams . He ordered his steaks well done, and he was always confused as to why they were so tough.” Susan sniffled, even as she smiled. “And he covered them in ketchup.”

Jess awkwardly patted Susan’s shoulder, unsure of what to say.

“It makes sense that he died down here, in such a stupid, preventable accident. Such a waste.” She sighed. “A wasted marriage. A wasted life.”

The tears were flowing freely now, and in them, Jess saw the years of hurt. The scream Jess heard that night outside Harmony Villa was Susan mourning the marriage she thought she had. Jess imagined that Susan knew then it was over. Even if Jeremy had lived, the marriage was dead. And Susan had loved him, even if he was a bit of an ass.

“So, you think that Jeremy’s death was an accident?” Jess asked carefully.

“Of course I do.” Susan sniffed. “If I didn’t kill him, no one else could have.”

“Well, that logic is airtight,” Jess mused. She realized she was still patting Susan’s shoulder and withdrew her hand.

It was not Jess’s job to tell Susan that the authorities were investigating Jeremy’s death as something else. So instead, she asked, “Any idea why he might have come down here?”

“Honestly, no,” Susan admitted. “He didn’t want to come to the meditation classes. He thought they sounded ‘stupid’ and ‘pointless.’?”

Jess pursed her lips, wondering if this was a smart question to put to Susan, finally asking, “Could he have been meeting someone?”

Susan shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t want to think about it. But I don’t think that any of the ladies on staff had been receptive to his attentions. He probably came down here because he wanted to be away from me, which, I admit, isn’t entirely unreasonable. Being an awful bitch has really been the only way I’ve gotten a response from him in years. It’s almost second nature at this point.”

The space between them was filled with the sound of splashing water and rustling trees. After a long moment, Susan dabbed at her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. “This isn’t how I wanted my marriage to turn out. This isn’t the life I wanted. I don’t want to go home and face my empty house. I don’t want to plan a funeral for his awful family, knowing how they helped drive him over the edge. I just want to stay here.”

“OK,” Jess replied, patting her on the shoulder again. “We can just sit here for a while, picking apart the lighthouse restaurant idea.”

Susan sniffled. “All right.”

“Would the tables at the lighthouse restaurant go at the top?” Jess asked. Susan nodded. “Wouldn’t the food get cold by the time the waitstaff got it up there?”

“Yes!” Susan cried. “Which was why he wanted to focus on a menu of ‘fragrant salads.’ There were almost two hundred steps from the bottom to the top of the lighthouse, where the seating area would be. And there was only room for four tables! Jeremy said scarcity would drive reservations.”

“That is the stupidest idea for a restaurant I’ve ever heard,” Jess said, nodding.

“I know!” Susan wiped at her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. “The decor was going to be Tuscan inspired.”

“What? Why?!” Jess gasped. “It was a lighthouse . The theme was right there !”

***

Susan Treadaway seemed to feel a little better by the time they’d left the meditation hollow. She’d rambled for at least another twenty minutes about the stupidity of Jeremy’s restaurant plans. The ridiculous sixteen-page menu, which intentionally omitted desserts for health-conscious patrons. The plan to take out the internal workings of the lighthouse lamp and replace it with a rotating sushi bar. The fact that there was no room for bathroom facilities…or a kitchen. It was a veritable buffet of bad ideas.

While venting her troubles seemed to ease Susan’s mind, Jess was more confused than ever. She realized she wasn’t exactly an expert on these matters, but the grief on Susan’s face seemed so genuine. Jess just didn’t think that Susan had it in her to kill Jeremy.

Susan thought Jeremy’s death was an accident. But Owen didn’t…so, where did that leave them?

Jess looked up when she heard goats bleating in the distance, which only added to the pastoral coziness of the Osbournes’ “model village.” If the spa campus was the Shire, the Osbournes’ compound was Brigadoon, a row of neat little homes practically hidden away in the hills where no one could see. Jess thought if she changed positions, viewing the little valley from the wrong angle would make it disappear. She respected the Osbournes for using the mountain’s natural topography to their advantage when laying out the facilities.

Each house had a plaque on the front that reminded newcomers which branch of the Osbournes lived where—Poppy’s plaque denoted that she lived with Owen in the largest farmhouse-style house with the big wraparound porch. Sis lived alone in a tidy cottage with white carved wooden goats placed in herdlike groupings around the porch. By comparison, Dean’s cabin looked like he’d ordered it off a farm catalogue’s shed section.

Jonquil and Beth’s porch was overflowing with planters full of blooms in every color, surrounding huge picture windows. Nana Blanche’s home training had Jess chafing at the idea of showing up at their door without a hostess gift, but what was she supposed to bring them?

Before she could even knock, Beth opened the door and greeted her with a long hug. “Hi! I hear you’ve had a long day.”