Page 13

Jess rolled out of bed early, quiet as a sigh, but she still managed to wake up Kiki. Because her grace didn’t extend to avoiding tripping over her own shoes, which she left in the middle of the floor.

“Sorry,” Jess whispered. Kiki slid her glasses on as she followed Jess into the darkened room. “I guess my stealth mode isn’t stealthing.”

“It’s OK,” Kiki grumbled. “Where are you heading?”

“Up to the kitchen to finalize the dinner details for Trenton and Diana’s big day,” she whispered as she walked into the kitchenette and reached for the custom-blended Golden Ash breakfast tea. The kettle, normally situated next to the mini-coffeepot, was nowhere to be found. “I’m trying to get out before Diana wakes up. Don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“So we’re still pretending it’s a surprise.” Kiki yawned.

“Have you seen the electric kettle?” Jess asked, turning around to inspect the pristine counters. “It was here before…”

“I’ll be honest.” Kiki blinked at her. “Up until now, I wasn’t aware that we had a kettle.”

“Weird,” Jess muttered. “Maybe housekeeping took it?”

Kiki shrugged. “Either way, could you order us coffee service while you’re up at the lodge?”

“Sure, and some of those mini chocolate croissant things. I’ll have Dean hide them under the fruit.”

“Oh, that’s why you’re my favorite.” Kiki sighed.

“Yeah, but consider my competition,” Jess said, jerking her head toward Diana and Aubrey’s door. Through the back window, Jess saw Sev loping across the lawn, dressed as if he’d gotten up for some early morning hike. That reminded her.

Jess cleared her throat. “So, I was talking to Sev. He seems really nice—”

“Oh, please don’t try to set me up with the spare cousin,” Kiki said with a groan. “It’s a little too matchy-matchy, don’t you think?”

“Actually, they’re not cousins. Sev is Chad’s uncle.”

Kiki stared at her. “Weird.”

“Yeah, but I’m not trying to set you up with him. I’m wondering if you should pitch your truffle idea to Sev instead of Trenton? He might have the connections to the right people within the company—the people who make decisions, as opposed to the people who humor Trenton. And he’ll see past the family baggage for the great idea it is.”

“It’s not a bad idea, but honestly, I find him so intimidating,” Kiki said, shuddering.

“I’m just saying, Sev seems to enjoy discussing work more than he enjoys spending time with any of us,” Jess told her. “He might jump at the chance to talk about anything other than…whatever it is Chad and Trenton want to talk about…golf, cars, probably something involving illegal underground gambling. You could make an opportunity out of that.”

And if Kiki could distract Sev from approaching Diana with the prenup, maybe Jess would have one less blowup to try to defuse. And it would make Jess very happy to help Kiki, which went without saying.

Kiki beamed at Jess. “That’s a good idea. Thanks, Jess.”

“Good ideas are what I do.” Jess grabbed her tote bag from its spot beside the couch and backed out of the door.

Jess hiked up the hill, marveling at the thick gray clouds gathering overhead. The forecast had been clear the day before, but Jess supposed the weather changed faster in the mountains. She only hoped it didn’t interfere with her plans for the outdoor picnic proposal the next day. Fortunately, she had a rain plan mapped out for a gazebo behind Harmony Villa. Maybe she could persuade Diana that a candlelit scene surrounded by raindrops in the background would be romantic and dreamy.

“Jessie!” She startled at the sound of her name. She hoped it was Sev, but no, Chad was sort of stumbling up the hill, looking like freeze-dried hell. His face was sallow, sort of clammy-looking, with dark circles under his eyes.

“You feeling all right?” Jess asked, taking a step back as he approached.

He waved her off. “Sure, sure. I’m heading up to the thermal suite, try to sweat out some of the booze.”

Frankly, Jess was surprised there was any booze left in his system, considering how much she’d seen him vomit the night before. But it seemed to be radiating out of his pores.

“Oof,” Jess said, fluttering her hand in front of her face. “I can smell your choices on you.”

“Grow up.” He scoffed, pulling a pack of Marlboros out of his hoodie pocket and a book of matches. When her brows lifted, he shrugged and waved a green paper matchbook. “I keep losing my damn lighter. That’s why I keep cheap shit like this around.”

“Really, you’re gonna light up a cigarette at a wellness retreat?” Jess asked, hitching the tote bag on her shoulder. “OK, sure. Of course you are.”

It was different when Jamie did it. He wasn’t there to get well. Also, Jess liked Jamie, so there. Chad plucked the last little cardboard match out of the book, lit the cigarette, and tossed the lit match over his shoulder. She glared at him, circled behind his back, and ground it under her foot.

Leaning closer, Chad said, “You know, Trenton’s been saying what a nice girl you are, how helpful .”

“Please breathe away from me,” Jess wheezed, trying not to inhale through her nose. She wondered if she should tell Jonquil all about Chad’s smoking. It would be worth the tattling, to see him subjected to involuntary chamomile.

“You really think you’re better than us, don’t you?” he asked with a smirk.

She took a deep breath of non-Chad-polluted air, telling herself she would not respond, but she’d stopped moving. Which gave Chad the chance to say, “Sometimes people who don’t have anything see us as not having any real values. You think you’re better than us, deep down where it counts, but really it’s just something you tell yourself at night so you can sleep.”

She smiled at him, lips stretched so thin she thought they might crack and bleed. “You know, if you could remember what happened before you fell asleep last night, I would probably take your moral philosophy a little more seriously. Go sweat it out, Chad.”

She walked off as quickly as possible so she couldn’t hear his response.

When she reached the kitchen, Dean was near the stove, sharpening a rather large butcher knife. Why was he always holding a weapon?

“Hey, you OK?” Dean stood in the kitchen door. Behind him on the kitchen counter, there were large piles of chopped mushrooms, onions, peppers—probably omelet ingredients. He had multiple burners going on the massive stove. She could see cinnamon rolls cooling on the counter.

Would it be weird to move her blankets in and sleep here? Probably.

“You know, I hope that we’ve moved to a phase in our relationship where you waving a knife around isn’t considered a threat,” she told Dean, smiling wryly.

“Be nice.” He rolled his eyes and pointed, with the knife, at a stool near a big metal worktable. “I’ll make you breakfast.”

Sliding a plate across the worktable, he dropped two toasted English muffins on it, then turned to a pot of simmering water. He deftly scooped out two poached eggs and slid them onto the muffins. The perfectly golden yolks were still jiggling as he practically drowned the plate in hollandaise sauce.

“If this is your attempt to flirt with me…you’re off to an amazing start,” she told him.

He smirked. “I noticed your passive-aggressive saucing yesterday.”

“The saucing was a passive-aggressive statement, yes, but it was also delicious,” she replied around a large bite of just-right eggs. He dropped two slices of thick-cut bacon on the rim of the plate. “Well, now you’re just showing off.”

“I’m only sorry it’s not a cheeseburger.” He turned back to his pile of chopped vegetables. She shook her head and flashed him a thumbs-up. Her mouth was too full of deliciousness to talk politely. “The cinnamon rolls are for the staff, but I’ll let you have one if you promise not to find any more dead bodies on the property.”

“I mean, I didn’t find the first one on purpose, but I’ll try to avoid it in the future,” she said, her mouth still half-full.

“I was hoping we could talk about the tasting menu while I work,” he said.

“Where’s Jamie?” she asked. “I didn’t realize I would be bothering you while you were working through the breakfast shift alone.”

“Farmer’s market, picking up some fruit,” he said. “Breakfast is a little easier to manage, as long as you keep the menu to a few specials. Otherwise, gluten-free, keto-friendly avocado chaos reigns. And on that note, I think we can keep your friend’s ‘tasting menu’ pretty simple, considering the lady only wants to eat fruit and her boyfriend favors mashed potatoes and chicken wings.”

“Can you make chicken wings sound fancy?” she wondered aloud. “What’s French for ‘chicken wing’?”

“Do you try this hard for all of your clients?” he asked, shaking his head. “Are you sure they deserve it?”

She chewed thoughtfully. “When I help people arrange their proposals, I’m a part of their story. Even if they don’t mention me when they tell it, I was there. I’m helping people build their lives.”

“But then they leave you, just like the people who eat here leave my table. And you’re left alone.” Something about the way he said “alone”—the depth of the grief one could feel with one word—had her looking up, her expression stricken.

He rolled his eyes heavenward and groaned. “They told you, didn’t they?”

“They did,” she said, nodding slowly. “As long as you’re asking if they told me about Emma Lee.”

“Please don’t tell me that you’re sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Or that you know how I feel, because you don’t.”

“I acknowledge that,” she said. “But I’m glad that they told me, so I didn’t shove my foot in my mouth.”

Overwhelming guilt for having forced him out of his comfort zone, for indulging in that kiss with him when he was still so torn up, boiled up through her gut, turning the divine egg in her mouth to ash.

“I was in a daze, that last semester of culinary school, a cooking robot. I never really wanted to go away to college anyway. I could have lived my whole life on the mountain, but Em insisted, saying we needed to experience the outside world if we were going to be sure about each other. After she was…gone, I buried myself in work, wherever I could get it. Moved all over. It kept me from feeling, and to be honest, I needed that. I needed to be numb, and I knew every single one of my family members would kick my ass if I tried to get that with booze or drugs. But the more I worked, the better I got in the kitchen—I know it sounds like an asshole thing to say, but it’s true—and I got more attention. My bosses were happy and I got left alone. The problem was, the more attention I got, the more people wanted to talk to me. I was expected to do interviews and schmooze. I hated it. You can’t hide if you’re expected to do interviews and social media and all that crap. And the girls, they were coming up with their big business plan to change the hotel. I ran home to be part of it. I was lucky they made room for me.”

“They don’t strike me as the ‘excluding’ type,” Jess noted.

“No, but I felt bad, horning in on this plan they’d been perfecting forever,” he said. “The girls had wanted to run this place from the time they were in high school. I just wanted to marry my girlfriend and have some kids. But when Emma Lee disappeared, that all sort of fell away.”

“The not knowing, it burns,” she said. “It’s like a poisonous fog that just sucks the oxygen out of your lungs. People watch as you suffocate from the inside out because you can’t explain it.”

He stared at her for a long silent moment, then added, “And after a while, it hurt less, but I was angry. I want more in my life now, but it scares me. I don’t want to get hurt like that again.”

“No one can promise you that you won’t get hurt again. That would be really patronizing,” she said. “But I spend my whole life seeing couples in love, seeing it work. There’s hope out there.”

“God, that optimism is annoying,” he huffed.

“Yep.” She picked at her remaining breakfast. He set about checking his order system, starting several omelets, dropping bread in the massive toasters.

Without looking up, Dean said, “So, uh, the suffocating fog thing…that seems very accurate. And specific.”

“So, what I learned in therapy is that sometimes, even if you don’t want a person who is missing to come back, your body can’t process the ‘not knowing’ any differently. You still get all the same stress responses. The anxiety. The sleeplessness. Nightmares when you do sleep.” Jess poked her fork at the brilliant yellow yolk film drying on her plate. When Dean’s face drained of color, she added quickly, “My grandparents had full legal custody of me by the time I was three. My mom—Hadley—had me young, and well, she took off. I don’t think she liked sharing my grandparents with me. She came back every year or so, usually around my birthday, loud and chaotic and kind of mean. Calling me Jessie , which I hated. Picking fights with me, and it was always over stupid things. She was mad that I was sleeping in her old bedroom. She was mad I was using her old tire swing. But later, it wasn’t silly anymore. She was honestly angry with me just for living in a house she’d left years ago. When I was nine, she insisted on driving me over state lines to some diner for pancakes in the middle of the night. The roads were slick and we crashed into a ditch. She left me, just wandered off from the scene and left me trapped in the car until some good Samaritan drove up and called nine-one-one. She didn’t come home until after I had surgery on a broken ankle. I don’t think my grandparents forgave her for leaving me there at the accident scene, because after that, she didn’t come back. Ever.”

“But you don’t know where she is now?” he asked.

She shook her head. “At my college graduation, my grandmother gave me the set of pearls that belonged to the original Jessamine, my great-grandmother. If Nana Blanche had any hope that the breach could be healed, she never would have given them to me. I think I knew then that I would never see her again.”

“I told you that you didn’t know how it felt,” he said, wincing.

“Yeah, but I don’t, really,” she reasoned. “I knew why Hadley left. You don’t know why Emma Lee is gone. Or if she left under her own power, which is so much worse.”

“It’s not a contest,” he reminded her. “Your story doesn’t have to be worse to be worth telling. And really, I’m glad for you; your grandparents sound pretty awesome.”

“They were. Nana Blanche still is. They got me into therapy, helped me cope with the sleep issues and nightmares resulting from being trapped in a car for what felt like hours. I think it was part of the reason they were so desperate for me to go to Wren Hill. They knew they weren’t going to be around forever, and they wanted to make sure they set me up for security later…Oh, God, were they trying to match me up with boys from good families? Oh, ew, how did this thought just occur to me?”

She opened her mouth to lament the possibility of being “matched” with somebody like Chad, but Dean crossed around the worktable and stopped her mouth with a kiss. He leaned forward and brushed those lips across hers, lips that should not have been nearly as soft as they were. She wanted to melt against him, to scrabble up his body and attach herself so he couldn’t let her go. She had never felt this sort of desire to be held by someone, to be kept close. She wanted to be claimed by him, to belong in this world built by his family, even if she knew it wouldn’t work long term. Maybe a little taste of it was better than never knowing it at all?

Just then, Jamie walked into the kitchen holding a crate of apples.

“Oh, sorry. I will…walk out now. Please keep doing what you’re doing,” he said, backing out of the room.

Dean burst out laughing and said, “Jamie likes you.”

She squinted at him. “Just Jamie?”

He pursed his lips. “I am not indifferent to you.”

Reluctantly, Jamie brought in the crate when Dean called him in. By the time they’d worked up a tasting menu that would fit Diana’s preferences and Trenton’s lack thereof, it was nearing lunch. Jess’s group was scheduled to be in Sis’s Pilates class.

“You know, you can just walk in at the thermal suite and use a sauna or something. You don’t have to wait for an appointment or anything,” Dean suggested, sliding a paper-packaged turkey wrap across the counter to her. “It doesn’t get busy until the afternoons.”

“It’s just such a shame that you couldn’t catch up to your group in time to join Sis’s class, which just started,” Jamie added cheerfully. “They have robes and stuff in the suite, so you don’t even have to go change back at your cabin.”

“Particularly if someone happened to take their bathing suit with them when they left the villa this morning,” Jess said, lifting the little tote bag where she’d stashed her pool gear. “Because this is the only time I’m going to have free today.”

“You really do plan for everything, don’t you?” Dean said, marveling.

“If that was said with even the tiniest bit of sarcasm, it would have hurt my feelings,” she told him, dashing out the door. “Good luck with lunch!”

Fueled by a lunch she could eat while sneaking across the grounds, she felt like she was leading some sort of clandestine mission centered on the strange near-Olympian thermal suite. Susan Treadaway was walking across the grounds near the lodge building. And while Jess felt some inclination to check in with her, following their cathartic late-husband-and-restaurant-bashing session…Jess really needed a little time to herself.

The front desk was manned by one of the spa’s younger staff members, Hannah, who was flipping through a magazine focused on not health or healing but the five key components to a better blow job. The olive-skinned brunette barely acknowledged Jess as she walked into the women’s locker room and slipped out of her clothes and into her sensible one-piece suit and robe.

For the next hour, Jess lost herself in a grown-up playground, the tiled warren of little alcoves and pools dedicated to helping people separate themselves from their racing thoughts and connect with their bodies for a little bit. The Polar Shower that sprayed you with a mist of peppermint-scented water so fine it felt like being hit with tiny snowflakes. The Persephone’s Garden Shower, warmed by amber and red lights and featuring clouds of flower-scented water that felt like kisses. And the Bliss Pool, tiled and surrounded in the perfect shade of tranquil sky blue and keyed in at exactly room temperature, which made her feel like she was gliding on air.

Jess’s Big Book of Life Plans: Just float.

Jess was able to tolerate just a few minutes of not thinking until Dean, of course, eventually drifted into her head.

It wasn’t as if they had any chance of long-term anything. He lived hours away, and neither of them was likely to move. But now, away from the noise and other people, where she could just think…she didn’t know. Could she really walk away from someone she felt this connected to? She wasn’t really built for that unfinished relationship business. And she didn’t even know how Dean felt, if he could feel something for her from under the fog of his past.

And there was the whole Jeremy Treadaway thing hanging over them. That seemed ominous in terms of dating. Could Dean have given Jeremy something that made him sick? Why? The man was obnoxious, but that wasn’t reason enough to kill him. Dean dealt with obnoxious guests all the time, and…he just didn’t seem the type. The worst she could imagine him doing to someone was serving them something made with margarine.

Climbing out of the Bliss Pool, Jess decided on one more round in the Polar Shower. Shivering and smelling of peppermint, she squeezed the excess water from her hair. Maybe a round in one of the saunas would help warm her up? Or maybe she was just trying to avoid going back to the villa and preparing for this evening and listening to Aubrey pick at her until she wanted to scream.

Probably the second one.

Wrapping herself in an oversized towel, Jess padded into the long tiled corridor, set with cedarwood doors that almost looked like vaults. Most of them were propped open ever so slightly—maybe for safety purposes? The humid air was thick with the scents of eucalyptus and peppermint and, well, wet wood. But as she passed the Alpine Steam Room, she detected a fouler, sour smell…like expired cheese.

It smelled like overgrown frat boy.

The door to the Alpine Steam Room was shut tight, the window in the middle dark and fogged over. A combination of dread and curiosity had her wrapping her hand around the handle. Jess opened the door and steam came billowing out, rushing over her like an unwelcome embrace from a clingy aunt. Waving her hand in front of her face, Jess’s eyes landed on a dark shape that seemed out of place on the green stone floor.

Is that who I think it is?

She’d thought she was alone in the thermal suite, but a mass of a person—she could see now, as the steam cleared, it was Chad—was slumped face down on the floor. His arm was thrown over his own body at an odd angle, just short of the door. It looked like he’d been trying to crawl toward it and passed out. There was a thin brownish puddle surrounding his head, with odd white chunks drying in the glaze of it. It absolutely reeked, and Jess had to pull back to the door to keep herself from throwing up on him.

Maybe he’d been more hungover than she thought?

“OK, get up,” Jess sighed. “This party-till-you-pass-out nonsense was embarrassing when you were twenty. Now it’s just sad.”

Jess knelt to shake his shoulder. When she rolled him over on his back, his eyes were open and vacant, staring up at the ceiling with no life behind them.

No. No no no. Nononononononoononono.

Chad wasn’t hungover. Chad was dead.

No pulse. Cool skin. Not breathing. Dead .

This couldn’t be happening to her again.

Jess let loose a strangled shriek, falling back over the lip of the door. She lost her towel, scrambling back against the far wall. She could feel it against her back, hard and warm, but there didn’t seem to be much else tethering her to this earth.

She couldn’t seem to produce any sound. How was she even breathing? How was this so much worse than finding Jeremy Treadaway’s body? Chad had been alive just this morning. He’d been his awful, creepy self, but he was alive.

Jess’s face felt cold. How was her face cold when there was steam pouring out of the saunas? Her hands scrabbled, numb and useless, against the tiles as she tried to stand up.

She tore herself away from the sight of Chad’s chalky-gray face and felt dizzy as her eyes seemed to zip about the room like a hummingbird. She couldn’t get them to focus on anything, and then something caught her attention.

She forced her eyes to focus and saw that it was a big red plastic circle inside a plastic case that read PRESS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY .

Grunting with the effort, she hoisted herself to her feet and slapped at the button. In the distance, she could hear a shrieking sort of alarm bell. It was as if the effort sucked all the energy out of her, and she sank back down to the floor. When she heard the footsteps coming, she was still staring at the husk of the person she’d never really cared for—and she was heartbroken for Chad that she was the first person to know he was gone.