I’d heard this from a few of the women. There had been a big basketball tournament in the city this week, along with some college graduations, so no one has been able to switch to earlier flights.

Everyone is in a holding pattern at this hotel.

No conference to occupy their time, but still plenty of networking to be done.

“I’m a reporter, actually. I was covering MomBomb and now I’m working on some pieces about Grayson Sommers.” Why lie. Why pretend. Amy flinches at his name.

“Right. You wrote that piece for Modern Woman . I read it twice. It’s awful. What he did to her. I can’t get those images of her out of my mind. You were brave for writing that. Wherever Rebecca is…I hope she saw it.”

I don’t say that I hope so too. That it was the point, or some of the point at least, of me writing it.

“I thought tonight’s dinner was going to be off the record though,” Amy says nervously, rubbing circles around her belly. “I love talking to press. Don’t get me wrong, always be branding, but I don’t want to be involved in the Grayson Sommers story. I’m sure you can understand…the optics.”

“I’m not working tonight,” I assure her, now afraid that I’ve made a miscalculation coming here at all.

“Please don’t worry. I’m here as a guest.” That’s a half-truth.

Is anyone ever not working these days? Aren’t we always on?

Isn’t she searching for content here in the desert?

Someone will probably be live streaming this dune buggy ride.

Someone is probably live streaming us right now.

I see Veronica’s sisters, Betty and Skipper. So strange that I feel like I know them intimately despite never speaking to them.

Betty is much less militant than Veronica in her videos.

She’s a silly mom who loves pranking her kids and making slime.

Making slime seems to be a whole influencer category unto itself.

Skipper does mostly unboxing videos where she and her kids open dozens and dozens of boxes of toys a week.

Where does she keep it all? The three of them live in massive houses, but still.

The Barbies alone look like they’d take up the back of a Mack truck.

I look around for Katie, the easygoing woman I sat next to on day one at the conference, but she’s nowhere to be found.

She must have found a way out, must have gotten a flight.

Or maybe she’s a local. We hadn’t gotten into too many personal details.

I just liked her straightforward, no-bullshit vibe and view on this world, and I wish I’d gotten more of it.

She’d make a fun dinner companion and maybe a good source.

Cricket’s still here too. I wonder how Chad feels about that.

Chad is probably not very happy. I’ll bet babysitting his kids is driving him crazy.

She gives me a wide smile before strapping herself into the first vehicle that arrives to whisk us all away.

I’ve never been in one of these. It’s a glorified golf cart with massive wheels and seat belts that go over your head and strap across the chest like on a roller coaster.

“Would you like some goggles?” a hotel employee asks. “To protect your eye makeup.” I see everyone strapping goggles to their faces. Who knows what sand does to false lashes. No one wants to be the first to find out.

“Wait for me,” a voice calls out. Through the sandy haze I see a petite brunette jogging toward us. She’s in jeans and a T-shirt, her face free of makeup. Katie.

I wave for her to take the empty seat next to me. She collapses into it, breathless.

“I haven’t seen you around,” I say. “I thought you’d left.”

“No. Still here. Just busy…I’ve been hunkered down in my room, but then I heard about this dinner.” She shrugs. “I want to talk to as many of these women as possible. My app is going into beta and I want them to try it out.”

“Did Veronica invite you today too?”

“Yeah. At the last minute. I was kind of shocked. Maybe she messed up.”

I doubt Veronica messes anything up. Whoever is here is meant to be here.

The parade of dune buggies sets off in single file across the sand and then up the smooth rocks, across the vast expanse to Devil’s Staircase as the sun winks on the horizon.

Distances are deceptive in the desert. The drive is longer than I expected.

It’s dark by the time we arrive nearly an hour later.

We’re on a plateau of flat rock on the edge of the spiral.

As Veronica had explained we’re at a midway point.

The stairs ascend to the stars and then continue down the rock face into the vast canyon below.

Dinner is served on a flat outcropping in between the two. We’re on a plateau of purgatory.

There are at least ten vehicles, each carrying four women.

Perhaps this isn’t as exclusive as Veronica had made it seem.

The entire expanse is lit by tiki torches and fairy lights that must be plugged into some electric generator.

Two long tables with ten seats on either side are waiting for us.

As I step out of the cart a handsome man in too-tight black pants and a white button-down shirt that hugs his intensely toned physique holds out a black bag.

“Your phone, please.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your phone. We’ll be keeping them for the duration of the dinner.”

I feel naked the second my device is gone. Naked and slightly anxious. There should be a German word for that, I think, for the anxiety you feel when your phone is out of reach.

Music plays. A soothing but slightly ominous symphony and I’m reminded of Olivia’s ringtone. Will she be here tonight? I received a single text from her after I published my latest piece and all it contained was a thumbs-up emoji.

Another handsome young man who looks barely out of college approaches with a tray of canapes.

“The waiters are very good-looking,” I say to Katie.

“So handsome,” she agrees. “Veronica’s family is a big donor to the university here. They’re probably undergrads.”

“I feel slightly filthy ogling them like this.”

“Maybe that’s the point of them being so good-looking,” Katie says.

“To remind us to be good. That seems like Veronica. Dangling temptation right in front of you.” I wonder how well Katie knows Veronica, but then, as if we’ve conjured her, our host for the evening appears from behind a massive boulder.

No dress on tonight. Instead she’s clad in all black.

Still slightly retro, but more of an early sixties vibe than the fifties.

She’s got on snug black pedal pushers and a black turtleneck.

Her hair is pulled into a high and tight ponytail and she’s wearing large tortoise-framed reading glasses.

She could be going to a beat poetry reading, about to slam some Ginsberg.

I see her approach her sisters’ clique of ladies with hugs and kisses on the cheek.

“Will there be booze here?” I ask Katie.

“Doubtful. Veronica definitely doesn’t drink and her house, her rules, but someone here probably has some of that chocolate with magic mushrooms in it.

They all started on psilocybin last year for depression and anxiety.

Trying to be perfect all the time probably breaks them.

But I think the drugs just make them even weirder. ”

“Drugs are allowed?”

Katie shrugs. “As long as their doctors prescribe it. I also think it keeps them docile. Like sheep.”

“So Veronica’s father is the owner of the hotel?”

“Was. Died last year. Now the board is figuring out what to do with it. God forbid they give it to his three successful, competent daughters. Did you just find all this out? I thought everyone knew. The Smith family is probably the richest in the state. But her dad had three girls. Imagine his disappointment that he had no one to leave this empire to.”

“I suppose he was delighted then when Veronica married Marsden.”

“That’s an understatement.” Katie scoffs as she flags down a waiter for another appetizer.

“It was practically an arranged marriage. Probably planned from the womb. She was pretty much a child bride from what I know. Veronica definitely didn’t have much of a say in it.

They’re super conservative. It was one of those stay-at-home-daughter situations where the girls are groomed for nothing but marriage. ”

“Stay-at-home daughter?”

“Like they’re wedded to their fathers and trained to do all the wifely things until they can be passed on to a man. Veronica has been married to Marsden since she was seventeen. Never even went to college.”

“Wow. So you’re from here. You know all the gossip.”

“I’m not from here at all. I grew up in Southern California. I work here. It’s been about ten years now. And I live here.”

“So the app isn’t a full-time job?”

“Oh god, no. It’s a hobby. For now. A very expensive hobby. But I hope…we always hope, right?”

“What do you do? For work?”

“I’m a nanny,” she says.

“Is there even a market for that out here?” I think about what Bex told me about her own childcare situation, how she had help but never talked about it.

“Huge market. You just need to be discreet. But I’ve been with the same employer this whole time. We have an understanding.” I think I see her grimace, but the tiki torches are casting all kinds of strange shadows over everything so I can’t be sure.

“Do you like the family?”

“I love the kids like they’re my own.” Nothing about the parents.

Before we can chat more, Veronica strides over to us. She reaches out a perfectly manicured finger to pluck a stray hair off Katie’s jacket and flicks it into the wind.

“How’d you like the ride out? Gorgeous, right?”

“It is,” I agree. “Why’d you take our phones?” I ask pointedly.

Veronica wags a finger like a stern mother. “Because you don’t need them. Be present. Enjoy the moment.” She floats away, somehow graceful in the teetering heels despite the slippery surface of the rocks.