Page 1

Chapter One

The day the hotel changed forever began as any other.

June Porter Hudson woke before dawn in a basement apartment in the staff cottage closest to the hot springs.

She climbed out of bed, displacing three dachshunds (two smooth, one wiry), who poured to the floor to follow her at a polite distance.

She ducked beneath the clothesline hung across the room and unclipped her shirt and underwear before hanging her quilt in their place to air for the day.

By the light of a single bedside lamp, she dressed in her usual attire: waist-high wide-legged slacks, a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up neatly, a delicate wristwatch, a swipe of lipstick.

Her dark hair was bobbed just below her ears, and when she was working, she slicked it back elegantly with some grooming cream.

The entire look was out of step with the formal pin curls and dresses found inside the hotel, but the Rockefellers and the Roosevelts didn’t expect her to look like them; she certainly didn’t sound the same, not with her holler-bred accent.

They were used to their hoteliers having a French accent if they had any at all, and the only French June had was Vive l’empereur! , which one of her waiters used to hiss under his breath each time the chef came into view.

It did not matter.

The guests loved her anyway.

After she stepped into her low-heeled Mary Janes, June silently drank two full glasses of mineral water beside the kitchenette’s single window.

In the summer, the small, eye-level porthole offered a gray morning view of the mulch and shrubs around the porch, but now, in the winter, the dark glass merely reflected her face (wide-set eyes, arched eyebrows, lips pragmatic as a pencil).

Sweetwater, that was what the locals called it, although it tasted like a split lip and a mouthful of dust.

The water wasn’t named for the taste—it was named for what it did to the body.

What ailed you? Rheumatism, constipation, barrenness, grippe? Dyspepsia, malaria, biliousness, croup? Homesickness, homeliness, eczema, gout? Indigestion, inflammation, apoplexy, doubt? Medical journals and medical guests debated the springs’ potency, but June didn’t pay them much mind.

She just started and finished her day the same way, never missing those four glasses of mineral water.

After she’d drunk hers, she poured a glass into the dachshunds’ bowl, fed them some meat scraps from the icebox, and then got to work.

Work, work.

It never ended.

June oversaw 450 staff, 420 rooms, 418 acres, 212 Shropshire sheep, 110 Golden Delicious apple trees, sixty box stalls, twenty-one cottages, seven cabins, four bathhouses, three bottling rooms, and two mineral streams.

Every day there was staff to organize, supplies to inventory, events to execute, each heaving breath of this expensive beast accounted to the penny, so that the Gilfoyles, who owned the hotel, were reassured that none of their fortune was having fun without them.

The business of luxury: the first thing on her mind when she woke, the last thing on her mind when she went to bed.

On that day, January 25, the Avallon was hosting a tartan ball in honor of Robert Burns, a long-dead but still-lauded Scottish poet.

With her dachshunds in tow, June had joined her staff captain Griff Clemons on the ballroom balcony to observe a dress rehearsal of the technical components.

The ballroom was impressive.

At its center, a sweetwater fountain covered with carved rhododendron flowers filled the space with the scent of sweet earth and wildflowers.

The ceiling far above bore a brilliant mural of West Virginia scenes by Susie M.

Barstow, of the Hudson River School.

On the north wall was an enormous stage where the glamorous Geraldine Farrar had once reprised her Met role as Madama Butterfly.

On the south was a fireplace taken stone by stone from the ruins of the Battlesden House, gifted by the willing Duke of Bedford’s estate.

During a presidential stay, Grace Coolidge had had a hand in selecting the parquet floor.

Heiresses.

Presidents.

Royalty.

This was the nature of the average Avallon guest: people so high on the social ladder they had to duck for the sun to go overhead.

“How are your girls doing, Griff?” June asked.

“Fine enough,” he replied.

“Your voice says otherwise.”

The Avallon’s general manager and staff captain were an unusual pair of employees for a hotel of this status—a smiling White mountain woman and a half-sighted Black man—but they’d both done it the honest way, working their way up from the bottom. Neither of them was in any danger of seeing someone like themselves on a future guest list.

“One of them’s decided she’s in love,” Griff replied. “The other’s got her mind on revenge.”

Griff’s twin girls had only just turned five.

June said, “So times are tough in the Clemons household.”

“I thought girls were meant to be gentle.”

“Am I gentle?”

The staff captain gave one of his eyes a pensive rub, an unthinking gesture that often punctuated his conversations. Those big hazel peepers would spare him from the draft. The left was standard-issue, but the right had been merely decorative since he got kicked in the face by an irritable heifer at age six. She was grateful. The tall, wiry staff captain was her left hand, responsible for everything that happened back of house, out of guests’ sight. “I’m not answering that one, Hoss.”

Clunks, clatters, and jingling came from below as the sounds of feast preparation escaped from the Grotto. Trills and moans sounded from the orchestra pit. Most Burns Night parties were humble, sitting room ceilidhs of fiddle and pipes and haggis, but the Avallon’s would feature a full orchestra, hired pipe band from New York, five-course dinner, drinks deep as the ocean. The dancing would go on until four or five in the morning.

Ordinarily, it would be a modest offseason event, by Avallon standards. This year, of course, was different. This would be the first party since Mr. Francis Gilfoyle, the hotel’s owner and June’s mentor, had died on November 7, collapsing halfway in, halfway out of an elevator on the fourth floor. And the first since the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, plunging America into war. That made the Burns Night ball more than a party. It made it a decision : Would parties still happen in these times? The Hotel Monthly , a publication by hoteliers, for hoteliers, had recently published a six-page feature (“Defining American Luxury”) presenting the Avallon as a standard most could not hope to achieve but would do well to emulate. Its position on wartime activities would be noted and aped.

And what June had decided was this: for decades, presidents, foreign dignitaries, tastemakers, and decision-makers had relied on the Avallon to be a place where past and future were erased, replaced by an immutable, carefree present. To hesitate was to break the spell forever.

The party would go on.

A voice came from below. “Hoss, is that you I hear?”

“I’m here,” June replied. “Who’s that I’m listening to—Johnny?”

“Yep. Can you see the anchors from where you’re at? They all look flush?”

She put a Scots twist into her voice, for Burns. “Aye, laddie.”

Johnny accepted the game. “Aye, lassie! We’ll be set in just a moment.”

The night before, at three a.m., when she’d finally managed to steal away into her humble office behind the front desk to take a crack at dinner (cold chicken, potatoes in lemon glaze, leftover pilaf), she’d approved thirty thousand dollars in linens, nylons, sheets, and rubber bands, all items she expected would soon become scarce, even if the war was over by summer, as some were saying. As she finalized the purchase orders, it had felt like she was officially signing the war into existence. She had tried to avoid thinking about it to this point: she couldn’t quite bear the image of Sandy, the baby of the Gilfoyle family, in uniform. Edgar David Gilfoyle, Mr. Francis’s debonair oldest son and heir to the Avallon, had told June that he didn’t think the hotel would really be affected. This had been just a few days after Pearl Harbor and just about a month after his father’s funeral. He and June had been in bed together—a situation that had happened before but was not meant to have happened again—and Gilfoyle was dragging a blown pink rose from the bedside arrangement on a journey beginning at a sweaty point between her breasts and ending at a sweaty point below her belly button. War is not coming to the Avallon , he’d told her. How could it even find us?

And so far he was right. War had only lightly rummaged through the mountains: the 150th Infantry of the West Virginia National Guard had been transferred to the Panama Canal Zone and draft offices had appeared on a few coal-stained main streets. This latter truth urged June to change how she mentally catalogued her staff. Previously irrelevant attributes became assets. Her best carpenter had a limp, her boiler repairman was short a few fingers, her kindest registrar thankfully had an old case of miliary tuberculosis. Griff had his one eye. Simple gifts.

“Here we go,” called Johnny (over forty, too old for the draft). “Hoss, shout if you see anything come free.”

“Aye.”

“Aye!”

June propped her elbows on the balcony, expectant. Griff, never so casual, drew close to observe with his spine straight as a railroad tie. Above them, the ceiling twitched to life. The dachshunds cowered as a dull roar thrummed—less like a machine, more like a rising storm.

“Is that all right?” Griff asked.

June said, “The bagpipes will cover it.”

What was luxury? Nimble. In a drought, it was a glass of water; in a flood, a dry place to stand. Whatever made the Avallon luxurious a year ago would not be what made it luxurious now. For Burns Night, a famous designer who also happened to be the Avallon’s most persistent guest had helped design a surprise meant to remind guests that, even in wartime, luxury persisted. June was opinionated about luxury and, earlier in her career, Mr. Francis, proud of and defensive about his working-class novitiate, would send challengers her way. The most recent had been a member of the Delafield family well-known in New England real estate, who cornered her in her office.

The battle went quickly:

Delafield: Frank says you have some sort of religious theory that luxury and wealth have nothing to do with one another.

June: Good afternoon to you, too, Mr. Delafield. It’s simple enough, isn’t it? Wealth is just security. Luxury is living carefree.

Delafield: I’m carefree.

June: Sure you are. What do you want to hear, Mr. Delafield? A sermon? All right, I’ll preach: Wealth doesn’t care who you are deep down, at night, when you can’t sleep. Luxury doesn’t care about anything else; that’s how we can guess what you jaspers need before you even realize you need it. Didn’t you notice your room is different this visit? The registrar made sure you wouldn’t ever have to share an elevator with Miss Q; you’re welcome. Housekeeping moved your nightstand so you’d stop knocking your glasses behind it. And the stable boys know Commander’s your favorite, but he’s been a bit fresh with you the last few visits, hasn’t he, so they’ve been lunging him so he’ll be sweet as pie for you this week. Do you recall asking for any of that? I didn’t think so; it’s the Avallon’s pleasure to anticipate you. Now, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on the matter, seeing as this is my business and I’m always looking to improve it, but truth is, I already know you agree with me. Because you’re standing here with our luxury instead of back in Connecticut with your wealth. That’s a fur piece to come if wealth and luxury are the same thing.

Delafield:

Delafield: Go to bed with me.

June: I don’t possibly have the time, Mr. Delafield, but I can recommend a good book or two.

She didn’t mistake it for meaningful attraction. She’d just taken him by surprise. Powerful people forget they can be surprised—she knew this firsthand now, because, wonder of wonders, she had become a powerful person. June Hudson, mountaineer, woman, general manager of the Avallon. It was a miracle, all those words existing together. At her first hotel conference, during the cocktail meet and greet, when she’d first spoken aloud, the men standing closest had laughed . Not cruelly, just from shock. This slender woman, this outrageous accent.

Oh , one fellow had said. You’re the Avallon’s GM.

God, she’d been happier than a pig in the sunshine. Three hundred miles away, and they’d heard of her. How do you come up with your strategies? they asked.

The sweetwater is full of ideas , she said, because even then, she’d known a thing or two about legend-making.

Now June’s staff worked several hand cranks to jerkily lower a custom-built apparatus from where it had been tucked close to the mural. Dangling from its long wooden arms were hundreds of sheets of thick Bristol paper, each displaying a poem by Robert Burns.

“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”

The joyless winter-day

“It’s like a dog shivering in the rain!” shouted Johnny. “More smoothly!”

The apparatus’s progress became more subtle. The pages no longer heaved to the ground, but rather drifted, flew, flapped. They seemed alive, organic, twisting and turning, flocking and floating.

The machinery fell silent.

The poetry bobbed just at eye level, looking like a children’s mobile. This was what luxury looked like right now, in this moment, before it would have to shift again. Nimble.

June and Griff murmured wordlessly. June had had her doubts, but now she could envision the partygoers wondering at the mobile’s descent, stilling a twirling poem to read to their companions, beginning to dance once more, making slow, dreamy loops through papery clouds. June knew how it felt when one’s blood turned to fizzy champagne, how strawberries tasted when someone else fed them to you on those pale leather sofas. She could pass for one of these partygoers, for a little while. Her fingers pinched lightly at her side, as if she were reaching up for one of the poems herself. She could taste the words in her mouth:

Ae fond kiss and then we sever

Ah! She should’ve never gone back to Gilfoyle’s room after the funeral. This stupid hope . She knew better. She had known better for years. The mind remembered, the body forgot.

“Watch out!”

A cry and a crash, in one.

An object had fallen from somewhere above June and Griff, missing one of the workers by only a few inches. It skittered across the parquet floor, coming to a stop at Johnny’s feet.

“Land sakes!” June said. She scanned the apparatus for obvious signs of failure. “What is it?”

But when Johnny brandished the missile, she saw that it was just a wooden rung from the balcony above them. She said, “Did the apparatus catch hold of it?”

Someone, out of sight, replied, “It was thrown !”

“What’s happened to the end of it?” she asked.

“It’s rotted, Hoss,” replied Johnny.

The staff members muttered: no human actor was visible; everyone knew the rumors about the fourth floor; this was supernatural malice at work.

“Let’s not get carried away here,” June told them. The water damage was mysterious, but it proved how the apparatus could have so easily knocked it free. “Whoa, now, Griff, don’t you follow that rung down.” He was leaned over the railing, trying to get a better look at the floor above. The fourth floor was for the long-term guests, those who had both the fortune and the inclination to stay at the Avallon year-round. June knew them well—this was, in large part, why they stayed—and none were likely culprits for either mischief or clumsiness.

When June caught Griff’s expression, she said, “Not you, too!”

He rubbed his dud eye. “With Mr. Francis passing on, is it possible…”

She interrupted, “The water don’t work that way, Griff.”

Even if one never took a dip in the swimming or bathing pools, it was impossible to avoid the sweetwater at the Avallon. The volatile water flowed through pipes in the walls, filled up the fountains, and burst out of fonts on every floor. But it did not throw missiles from the fourth floor.

Or at least, it hadn’t.

“Hoss?” Here was Griff’s new runner boy, Theophilus Morse, who was just about the same age June had been when she first came to the Avallon. Eleven, twelve. Too young for the draft. His backstory was tragic, but this was West Virginia, tragedy was cheap and plentiful. Currently, the boy was doing his best to emulate Griff’s immutable good posture, but his chest was heaving. He’d run here.

“What’s the fire, Theo?” June asked.

“Mister—” He gulped for air. “Mr. Gilfoyle called—”

Just his name was sufficient to warm June’s throat. She hadn’t seen Gilfoyle since that night. A month. An endless amount of time, a nothing amount of time. She could still feel the petals on her skin.

“Get yourself together, boy,” Griff said. He stood straight. Theo stood straight. Together they breathed in, out, mirrors of each other.

Theo got air enough in him to deliver the rest. “Mr. Gilfoyle called.” Inhale. “He’s leaving New York right now for a meeting here.” Inhale. “He got us the list of attendees.” Inhale. “He wants you at the meeting.”

Gilfoyle, coming here, to the Avallon, to her.

She asked, “Who’s the client?”

“It’s the Feds, Hoss. The State Department.”

Griff’s mouth went odd.

“What do the Feds want with us?” June asked.

Theo hesitated.

June had long ago discovered that most people were bad listeners; they thought listening was synonymous with hearing . But the spoken was only half a conversation. True needs, wants, fears, and hopes hid not in the words that were said, but in the ones that weren’t, and all these formed the core of luxury. June had become a good listener.

This was how she heard a single unspoken word between them. Clouding the truth with smoke and digging trenches into their hearts.

Theo said, “They’re taking the hotel. For the war effort.”

War.

Coming for her hotel.

War is not coming to the Avallon , Gilfoyle had told her. How could it even find us?

Turned out, it could just drive up the mountain, and he would open the front door.