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Eden—Many Months Later

Being more or less a member of the Hott family means that weird stuff is always happening.

For example, this morning we’re trying out one of Natalie’s new concepts for resort activities, breakfast s’mores.

Rhys and I are both doing okay. Both of us would have been happy to stay in bed longer, but we can do this.

Preston and Quinn are busy poking an enormous campfire, trying to get the flames to settle down and coals to form.

Sonya is not a morning person. She is currently sitting on a stump, hunched over in misery.

“Seriously?” she whines when Natalie hands her a long-handled sandwich press and a tortilla. “Fully grown adults are going to wake up at the crack of dawn so they can make their own breakfast?”

Natalie grins. “If we call it Cowboy Breakfast S’mores, they will.”

There are three presses, a giant stack of tortillas, and bowls filled with toppings—Nutella, peanut butter, chocolate chips, bananas, marshmallows, strawberries, graham crackers.

The idea is you put a tortilla on the press, load on your toppings of choice, fold your tortilla over, close the press, and stick it in the fire.

“I’m going classic,” I tell the assembled crowd, tossing chocolate chips, marshmallows, and graham cracker crumbles into my s’more quesadilla.

“You warm enough?” Rhys asks. He drapes a quilt over my shoulders.

It’s one I made recently, squares from Rhys’s stash of T-shirts going all the way back to childhood.

The other side is flannel, and it’s warm and soft around my shoulders.

But most of the warmth is coming off Rhys himself as he wraps an arm around me.

For several months we kept our own places, but just recently we moved into a new apartment together, and we’re looking for a place to buy.

I still get scared sometimes that this relationship—like so many other ones in my life—will blow up in my face, but I’ve learned that the best thing to do when I get scared is to tell Rhys I’m freaking out.

He’s good at listening, talking me off the ledge, and reassuring me—with words, but also with his body.

I wouldn’t have guessed things could get even better between us, but the more I get to know him, the more I see what a fundamentally good man he is—the kind who takes care of people, who anticipates what they need and makes sure they get it.

Rhys has been working with Matias, Evelyn, and Chun since the beginning of the year, and we’ve all become good friends.

He loves his new job. He has presided over the dissolution of quite a few marriages in the last few months, all of them relatively peaceful.

But he’s actually been transitioning himself more toward the child-advocacy side of the firm’s work, and even though it can be extremely stressful, seeing kids in difficult situations, he loves that he’s able, so often, to make a difference.

I spend a lot of time with the other Hott wives and girlfriends—Ivy is now on the “wife” side of that equation, and Natalie and Preston are engaged, so it won’t be long for her, either. I still tell them I’m never getting engaged again?—

But we all know I don’t mean it.

“Hey. I have a question for you all,” Quinn says.

Quinn’s more talkative than Tucker, but he’s still not one to draw the conversation in his direction, so everyone turns with curiosity to hear what he has to say.

“You know how Blue Iron’s been under EPA monitoring for water safety violations for basically the last decade?”

“Yeah,” Preston says. “From the uranium days.”

“I heard through the lab grapevine?—”

“There’s a lab grapevine?” Shane demands.

“If there’s a bakery grapevine, there’s a lab grapevine, right?” Ivy says.

“Good point.”

Quinn waits patiently for silence, then continues, “Blue Iron just hired a consultant to?—”

“Well, hello, Hott family and friends,” a voice says from behind us.

We all turn.

“Hi, Attorney Weggers,” Sonya says. Given this family’s history with Weggers, her voice is admirably warm. “How’d you know we were out here?”

“Did a little sleuthing up at the lodge, and they sent me down here.” He sounds pretty damn proud of himself.

And the truth is, it’s hard to hate him, now that Rhys and I are living our happily ever after. Maybe he and Rhys’s grandfather even deserve a tiny—tiny!—bit of credit for it. Not that I’d ever admit that out loud.

I wonder if any of the other couples here feel any scraps of fondness for our blowhard friend—or his late client.

“How can we help you?” Natalie asks.

“I’m looking for Tucker,” he says.

Beside me, Rhys goes rigid. “He’s not here.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he is?” Weggers says. For the first time, I notice the sheet of paper he’s clutching in one of his hands. “I have something for him.”

We all shoot each other glances, but it’s not like we have to lie. None of us has seen much of Tucker, and when we do, it’s always brief glimpses. Nothing as dramatic as the night when he fled the party at Hanna’s—but not a lot of warm full-family togetherness, either.

“I haven’t,” I say, and we all take turns echoing it.

“I’ve been hunting him for weeks,” Weggers says, seeming not to grasp how disturbing his wording is. “Can’t find him anywhere.”

I have to imagine that if Tucker doesn’t want to be found, he probably won’t be. He is, after all, professionally trained in surveillance, among other things.

“Can’t help you,” Natalie says. “But let me send you off with a Cowboy Breakfast S’more.” She presses one into his hand—the one not clutching Tucker’s letter—and then gently steers him toward the parking lot. “Nice seeing you, Attorney Weggers! Good hunting!”

When he’s gone, it’s quiet for a minute.

Then Shane says, “Anyone else picturing Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner?”

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