Chapter 6
Tessa blinked, as if what was in the hotel nightstand drawer might be an illusion, or imagined.
But there it was. An ordinary item, in an ordinary place, but certainly not the place it was supposed to be.
Tessa picked up the necklace. A locket. A slim rose gold heart, engraved with curlicues and flowers.
Weightier than it looked at first. Not a trinket.
A treasure. Someone’s left-behind treasure.
Some poor traveling mom, somewhere, was certainly distraught.
Tessa almost felt guilty as she edged a fingernail between the sides.
The locket popped open. Narrowing her eyes, she held it under the nightstand light.
Inside, a tiny photograph, of… what? She held it closer to the bulb, squinting.
Frowning. Then, feeling Nancy Drewish, she grabbed her phone and took a photo of it. Expanded the photo.
It was hard to tell, it was so small. But… parents? And a child. In front of some cabin-like structure at water’s edge.
Mother, father, daughter, in blue jeans—she guessed they were blue, the picture was black and white—and similar striped T-shirts.
How old was this? Impossible to tell with the father’s haircut, military, maybe.
Their T-shirts were timeless, as easily from a Sears catalog as from J.Crew.
The setting could even be a fake backdrop.
Black and white to look “vintage,” when it wasn’t.
Some copy editor at Waverly had flagged the word “nondescript” when Tessa used it in an early draft of All This , informing her that everything was describable. But that’s the first word that came to mind; ordinary, standard-issue. Three expressionless faces staring into someone’s camera.
It was no mystery what had happened, Tessa thought, creating a story about the picture, imagining the—wife?
Who had left this locket behind. A tenderhearted nostalgic mom who had carried it for memories of home, to wake up in the morning and see her daughter and husband first thing and remind herself that her sacrifice was important because she was doing something necessary.
Or perhaps that wasn’t the true story at all. The only certainty was that someone had left it behind. Someone would miss it. Had probably already missed it.
Tessa frowned, feeling her forehead crease. Her own phone camera held hundreds of photos of the kids, a modern version of the locket. Was she a bad mom for not also wearing their family photo? And didn’t that make this even more important, even more precious, for its eccentricity?
She picked up the landline on the nightstand, ignored the inexplicable buttons, pushed zero.
“May I help you, Ms. Calloway?”
“Has anyone called about something they left behind in room 3016? I found a—”
“One moment, please,” the voice, not Graciela, turned brusque, interrupting. “I’ll connect you to lost and found.”
“No, no, I—” But Tessa was already in transfer limbo. She hung up, stashing her guilt, and called room service for her salad. The usual, Caesar with grilled chicken.
That 4:00 a.m. pickup loomed ominously closer, and Tessa could almost hear the clock ticking.
The people in the photograph didn’t look happy or unhappy, just… there. But this tiny photo was the representation of someone’s memory, a memory they considered worthy of documenting. Important enough to be kept close to their heart.
Still. It shouldn’t be difficult to get the locket returned to its rightful owner.
The hotel certainly knew who had occupied this room right before Tessa, and it was unlikely that it had been left behind before that, because certainly the housekeeper would have discovered it. Though they hadn’t this time.
She picked up the house phone again. This time she knew the process. “Lost and found, please,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Calloway, lost and found is closed until tomorrow.”
How can lost and found be closed? “I found something in my room, I mean, someone left it. How can I—” she began.
“I’ll connect you to voicemail,” the clerk said. “They’ll return your call tomorrow at nine. Around nine.”
“But I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to leave early, before they’d—is there someone I can talk to tonight?” But the line had gone dead again.
She jammed her feet into her airplane shoes, made sure she had her key and the locket, and headed down to the lobby. On a mission. She was about to make someone happy, and that seemed nicely karmic. The world was making her happy, and she could pay it forward.
No Panera Guy in the hall, she reassured herself as she trotted toward the elevator and jabbed the button.
It slid open, empty, and deposited her in the marble-floored lobby, still bustling at this time of night, with a pack of almost out of control wild-haired kids scampering and chattering in front of a man and woman in Disney T-shirts, clearly parents, clearly defeated.
She and Henry could not afford to take Linnea and Zack on trips “before the book”—that’s how she and Henry both thought of it, “before the book”—but as soon as she got home from this trip, they’d do it up big.
She’d let Linnea choose their destination, give her some power.
Or have a family meeting about it. She calculated their future happiness as she walked to the registration desk.
All this could be yours , she whispered cross-country to Zack and Linny. I will make it happen.
“May I help you?” The desk clerk’s voice interrupted her thoughts. Her name tag said Darleen.
“Hi, Darleen, I’m Tessa Calloway,” she said, enunciating her full name, semi-hoping the woman might recognize her, like Graciela, and be extra helpful.
“And?”
Okay, then. “I think the last guest left something in my room, 3016? And I’m wondering—”
“Sure. Give it to me, thank you so much, that’s kind of you.” Darleen moused open her computer. “Lost and found is closed,” she said, as she typed, “but I’ll put it somewhere safe until morning.” She held out her hand. “Okay?”
It was almost as if the locket family was speaking to her, saying please don’t do this. We’ll be lost again. Tessa smiled at her sentimental storytelling. But the imaginary theoretical family was right, handing this left-behind treasure to a harried hotel clerk was certain to end unhappily.
“Listen, I’ll bring it down in the morning.” Tessa nodded, earnest. “Make it easier on you.”
She watched the clerk decide whether to let her leave with someone else’s property. Behind Tessa, a silver-haired epauletted pilot, obviously the leader of the uniformed airline pack trailing him, edged closer to the desk. He moved his roller bag closer to Tessa, encroaching on her space.
“Sure,” Darleen was saying. “Tomorrow’s good.” She turned to the pilot, instantly congenial. “Welcome, Captain. May I help you?”
Any other time, Tessa might have been annoyed, but in this case, his entitlement had worked in Tessa’s favor.
She scurried away, and with the necklace safely back in her pocket, clicked open her hotel room door again.
Twenty minutes until her salad would arrive.
The lights were still on, as she’d left them, and the streaming news channel chattering, voices of video strangers filling the silence.
She muted it, considering what to do next.
Then took another cell phone snapshot of the photograph, pursing her lips, perplexed.
It seemed an invasion of privacy to post the whole thing.
Zooming in on the husband only—she already thought of him as “the husband”—she then clicked another picture of him alone at the water’s edge. Then one of the mom, then the girl.
She popped her husband snapshot into Google Images, but the search brought up nothing as a match. Or even intriguingly close. And not for the mom, nor for the daughter. Time for a better search engine. Humans.
The lighting would be gruesome, but she had to try. She propped the phone against the nightstand lamp, clicked on to her live feed, watched the countdown, and began to talk.