Chapter 29
D rake’s plan for a fresh start was working.
Some of the tension from the last movie had been washed away by the holidays; it was like a storm had dropped in and swept up the debris.
They kept their conversations light. They finalized flowers for the wedding.
They burned a roll of premade cookie dough, then scraped the seared edges off the pan while inventing real-life mysteries for Nancy to solve. The Case of the Scorched Chocolate.
But under the surface of the calm was a knowing that Drake couldn’t ignore. There were still two movies left to watch. Ellie would see the worst of it, of him, soon.
And when they sat down for the ninth movie that night, Drake learned that the worst was moments away.
TICKET NINE: HEARTbrEAK
Drake glanced at Ellie in the seat next to him and gave her a nod of encouragement. This is all going to be okay , the nod was trying to convince her. I promise that what you saw in the photo album will make sense . But before he could get any of that out, the memory started to play.
Ellie was inside of a grief group. A circle of fold-out chairs was arranged at the heart of the depressing space; it must have been a school on summer break or community center. Vague inspirational posters plastered the walls. You’ve Got This. The Only Way Out Is Through.
Drake hated that she was there alone. But then, she wasn’t.
“I tried therapy, but it was too stuffy,” Ellie told the man in the white Stetson. Dark circles underlined his stoic eyes, and a tattoo of a crow perched on a black fence decorated his forearm. The man had about ten years on Ellie and the kind of smile that might inspire her to make bad decisions.
Cowboy Love Affair , Drake remembered from the plaque.
“Anyway, that’s how I ended up here,” Ellie said. The cowboy nodded. He told Ellie about his late wife before he shared his name. “I’m Hudson,” he said a few minutes later, reaching for a glazed cruller inside a cardboard box. “Give me a doughnut, and I’ll play nice anywhere.”
Neither of them spoke much in the meeting.
When a woman went on a tangent about the printer at her office, which was somehow related to her grief story, Hudson squeezed Ellie’s leg.
Her eyes noted his touch; Ellie was drawn to him more than to the string of casual boyfriends they’d seen in the other movies.
When Hudson and Ellie walked out together after the meeting, she toyed with his brim. “What’s with the hat?” she teased.
“I’m still trying to figure out who I am without her,” Hudson admitted.
“So, now you wear hats?”
“Yeah. I’m trying a hat thing. Don’t knock it.
” Hudson spun toward Ellie and tipped the hat.
Then, he opened his passenger door to give her a ride.
While they rode to Ellie’s apartment, he mentioned a cabin his parents didn’t use anymore.
“It’s a short-enough drive to get glued to an audiobook—then—bam, you’ve arrived.
” He went there to be away from everything.
“I cook shit, blare the Lacrimosa movement, weep. It’s super healthy.
I call it Grief Mountain.” Hudson made the motion of gliding up a mountain with his hand.
“Sounds depressing,” Ellie said. “I think that would be good for my writing. Although I tend to hate cabins. And bugs.”
Hudson leaned closer to her. “Think of it as a small lodge. What do you write about?”
“Complicated people and things,” Ellie told him without hesitation. “Tragedy.” Hudson straightened in his seat. “Not really. But I am interested in things on the brink of death.”
“That’s not dark at all.” He nudged her. “So …do you want to join me at Grief Mountain sometime, or what?”
Grief Mountain was rustic. Hudson’s parents had left their mark everywhere, from WELCOME TO THE LAKE! signs to a statue of a proud bear holding a bass it presumably caught. Family photos clung to the wood-paneled walls of the living room, surrounding a flickering fire and suede couch.
While Hudson plated the complicated stir fry he’d “thrown together,” he shared more about his wife, Vanessa.
They’d met at her friend’s bachelorette party where he had worked as the private chef.
He and Vanessa chatted in the kitchen, then snuck a bottle of champagne out by the pool later that night.
The bride was “so very pissed off” by the distraction.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like,” Ellie said. “Losing your first love.”
Hudson shook his head as he tasted the food. “My first love was Jade Needer.” He got up and ducked his head inside a few cabinets, then turned back to Ellie. “Speaking of needer. This food needs … something.”
“What a name.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, returning to the table with a jar of chili oil.
“Yeah. But she inevitably broke my heart. So, I dated a lot. Et cetera.” Hudson made a hand gesture meant to explain away a series of life decisions.
Then he drizzled some oil onto Ellie’s plate, even though she was midbite.
“When I met Vanessa, I was ready. I was older. I had lived. I knew this is the person for me. ” He sighed.
“I like to think that a first love is finding yourself in someone else. And a second love,” he said, looking right at Ellie, “well, the second love is just sharing the self you found with somebody new. The real self, of course.”
“So, you felt more like yourself when you were with Vanessa than with Jade?”
“Yeah,” he told. “Yeah. Like … Okay, I used to think too much when I was younger, right? But Vanessa and I—we left that bachelorette party when it was over and drove off into the sunrise together. We stopped at this hole-in-the-wall burger place on the way home. I don’t think it had a name.
The menu was, like, written on scratch paper.
We ate one burger off the same plate. Fought over the fries.
You learn a lot about a person that way,” he said.
“Which way?” Ellie asked, hovering off her chair.
Hudson set his fork down. “Doing something intimate right off the bat.”
They kissed. It happened so suddenly that it was hard to tell who started it. Ellie dragged Hudson forward by the neck of his weathered black shirt. He stripped off the shirt she was wearing, mesmerized by each button. Then they fought their way to the couch, hell-bent on tearing each other apart.
A couple of nights later, Ellie found the dress in the cabin’s spare bedroom.
She was rummaging around the closet to look for cupcake pans.
There, behind all the coats and sweaters, Ellie spotted it—a pale Easter yellow with gold flowers running along the neck.
Abandoned. Lonely, she seemed to think. Ellie’s pajamas dropped to the floor.
She stepped inside the dress and pulled the zipper up right as Hudson moved behind her.
“Take it off,” he demanded, planting his hand on her shoulders. Ellie mistook Hudson’s tone and spun to kiss him. He jerked away from her. Why was she wearing his wife’s dress?
Ellie struggled to explain, as she did take it off, that she felt objects that were left behind deserved to be used.
She’d done the same thing when she was younger.
She tried to give things that reminded her of her brother away or push them to the back of a closet.
But you could revive someone through their things and stories, she argued in her defense.
She hung the dress back up, slammed the closet doors closed, and sat next to Hudson in the dark bedroom.
Neither of them bothered to turn the lights on.
“What are we doing here, man?” Hudson asked.
“I don’t know,” Ellie said. “I like you. A lot. I haven’t been tempted once to sneak out your window, which is unusual for me—”
“I don’t think this is good for us, Ellie.” He hung his weight over his knees. “Good for me. You and me—this thing—feels like, the world’s most dysfunctional bereavement group.”
That night, after Ellie packed her things, Hudson drove her down Grief Mountain, parked outside of her apartment, and gave her a light kiss. When Ellie’s hand reached for the car door, he stopped it. “Two things,” he said.
“All right.” She was icy. Rejected.
“I lied about the hat.” Hudson was wearing it again.
He took it off and dusted the crown with his hand.
“Vanessa gave this to me. It was meant to be a joke. Because I was so far off from being a cowboy. But, umm. Hey, why don’t you take it?
Something to remember me by.” He placed it onto Ellie’s head.
“I couldn’t,” she said.
“I insist. It looks good on you. I think it makes me sad.” Ellie offered a reluctant nod.
“One more thing.” He bit the edge of his fingernail.
“The hat is kind of a gesture for what I’m going to say next.
You told me that you write about these fascinating, tragic situations.
And I’ve got this sense … I’m asking you not to write about anything I’ve shared the last few days.
Please don’t drag all that up for me.” His eyes begged. “Please, Ellie.”
“Even if I did, it’s not like anyone would read it.”
“Ellie?” He turned her chin toward him. “I can trust you. I can trust you, can’t I?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Of course, you can.”
“Good. I’m glad. Really.” He brushed his hands off over his lap to mark something important had been cleared. “Okay, well good night.”
Ellie left him there and scurried up the stairs of her apartment.
Without even taking the hat off, she sat down and started to write.
It was a story about the importance of bringing back old things, she would tell people later, the one that began with a lonely dress tucked in a closet.
It was the first story in her book, the one where she quoted Hudson. The one that dragged up ghosts.
The one that made her famous.
Ellie’s lie made Drake sick. She should’ve understood Hudson’s grief and respected it, considering her own. She spoke the lie so easily, without a care in the world about what the ramifications would be for him.