Page 13 of Summer on Lilac Island

The Grand Hotel didn’t consider herself a narcissist by any means, but she did like to show off. There was nothing wrong with

that, as she saw it. It would be a crime, really, to hide from the world when she’d been endowed with a beauty like hers.

she was a symbol of Gilded Age excess.

No two rooms were furnished the same. The suites were designed by seven former First Ladies. Legend had it that skeletons

were unearthed during the hotel’s construction due to the island’s shallow, limestone-riddled soil. Year after year, guests

claimed the hotel was haunted.

Since opening her doors in 1887 for wealthy families who traveled by steamboat from Chicago and Detroit for the summer, the

Grand had seen many romances. The front porch earned its nickname “Flirtation Walk,” Michigan’s version of the Italian passeggiata. Infamous “Resort Girls” chatted up young gents. Thanks to the remote beach setting, teenagers could disappear for trysts,

free of the chaperoning endured back home.

The Grand had secured a spot on the celebrity summer circuit and hosted her share of couples over the decades. Politicians and partners, actors and costars, musicians and groupies. But she had never had a couple quite like the one sitting there tonight at the dining room’s farthest window table.

It wasn’t the way the couple was dressed (though his style certainly stood out), nor the flutter of nerves (though she kept

bobbing forward and backward, as if being tugged on a marionette string), nor how they were sharing the calamari appetizer

while swapping stories, swapping glances. It was more the underlying fizz of it all. It was a common enough quality among

young lovers but a novelty among guests so... seasoned.

It was a delight, the hotel felt, to have them here tonight. The Grand and her army of ghosts (yes, the ghosts were real,

just too intelligent to let themselves be detected) would be doing all they could do to ensure the date went well. Because

it certainly was a date—just look at them. The smiles so giddy, so gooey!

The Grand wouldn’t intervene so much that the gentleman would invite the lady back to the Betty Ford suite with him. She would

never accept, and they had the whole summer before them. Best to let things unfold slowly. But a little nudge, a complimentary

top-up of their drinks. Well, it wouldn’t hurt.