Chapter 2
Parrish Eddings watched from her bedroom window as her father’s car sped backward down the sloping driveway. She heard the gears of the Porsche grind as Ric slammed it into first gear and raced away. Toward where?
“Anywhere but here,” she whispered aloud. Downstairs, she heard her stepmother slamming things. Pots and pans in the kitchen. She heard the sound of a glass shattering. The front door closed heavily with a thud, then reopened and slammed again. And again.
Just another typical Monday. No telling what the fight was about. Madelyn’s new kitten, a Himalayan, refused to use the litter box, preferring the clothes Ric inevitably left on their bedroom floor. Or maybe it was about Ric’s late hours. She’d heard him creeping up the stairs at 3:15 A.M. on Sunday night.
More likely it was about money. Madelyn no longer cared about her husband’s comings and goings. She’d known exactly what she was getting when she married Ric. Or so she thought.
Parrish went back to her packing. Her clothes were folded and arranged in tidy little piles atop her neatly made bed in her very adorable bedroom, which Madelyn had decorated without Parrish’s consent or input, after marrying Ric.
She could never pin down why she hated this room so much. She loved soft teal, aquas, and pale pinks, which was the current color palette. The bed was big and soft, and the first time she’d brought a boy home to it, she’d delighted in imagining what Madelyn would say if she’d known all the things they’d done atop that fluffy down duvet.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Back to packing. She’d given herself a strict mandate: the medium-sized rolling suitcase, and her backpack. Anything more she needed in Europe, she could buy. With her own damn money. She couldn’t wait to wave goodbye to the drama and the trauma of the Ric and Maddy show. Whee!
When her phone rang she almost didn’t pick up, but when she saw the caller ID, her resolve softened.
“Heyyyy,” Traci said.
Parrish’s body relaxed at the sound of her favorite aunt’s voice. Traci was on her side, always and forever. They were a team.
“Got plans for lunch?” Traci asked.
“I’m packing, but I guess I could take a break. What did you have in mind?”
“I’ll pick you up in ten,” Traci said. “And hey, this is just us. Right? Your dad and stepmom don’t need to know our plans.”
“As if,” Parrish said. “I’ll meet you down by the mailbox. You know what a sneaky little spy Madelyn can be.”
Traci took the coast road and they ended up at BluePointe, a new planned development fifteen miles north of the Saint.
“Checking out the competition?” Parrish asked as they walked toward the restaurant, which was located in the middle of the resort’s faux village of expensive shops and food trucks.
“Something like that. I’ll tell you after we’ve ordered.”
Parrish’s spidy-sense antennae were activated. Her aunt was being deliberately evasive.
They waited at the hostess stand for five minutes before a harried server rushed up and showed them to a table, handing them vinyl-covered menus that were sticky with what smelled like maple syrup.
“Ick.” Parrish pushed her menu away, squirting her hands from the tiny bottle of hand sanitizer she kept in her purse. “Since when does a fine dining restaurant hand customers a plastic menu? These aren’t exactly Waffle House prices, right?”
Traci was watching the server, who looked to be around Parrish’s age: petite, with white-blond hair chopped chin-length, and a tattoo of some sort peeking out from the short sleeve of her uniform blouse. “Looks like they’re shorthanded too. No valet parking. No hostess.” She nodded toward the steam table prominently displayed in the middle of the room. “And a lunch buffet. Not a healthy sign.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Parrish said. “Thanks but no thanks to the wilted iceberg lettuce and freeze-dried bacon bits and your gross gravy- covered chicken. I’ll just have a nineteen-dollar club sandwich. They can’t screw that up. Right?”
Traci laughed. “Nobody would ever know you were raised in the business.”
The server reappeared. “You ladies want the buffet? We have baked cod today. And fried shrimp!”
Parrish shuddered. “Just a club sandwich. And iced tea.”
“I’ll have the same,” Traci added. “No mayo on my bread.”
“Fries or coleslaw?”
“Fries,” the women said in unison.
They watched the girl hurry away. “How long has this place been open?” Parrish asked.
“Not even a year. You wouldn’t believe all the free publicity they got when they opened. The Atlanta paper sent reporters down. Southern Living did a piece because they hired some fancy chef away from a restaurant in Buckhead.” She looked around the dining room.
“See that wallpaper, and those window treatments? That’s Scalamandré, the paper and the fabric, done in a custom colorway too, which makes it even more ungodly expensive. I priced that same fabric out when we redid the garden room at the hotel years ago, and when I gave Hoke the quote he almost had a myocardial infarction.”
Parrish laughed. “Yeah, Uncle Hoke was not one to throw money around, that’s for sure.”
“All the same, that year, for my birthday, he had a pillow made out of that same fabric, sort of as a joke, but I loved it. Loved that he remembered, loved that he made the gesture,” Traci said.
Parrish needed to change the subject before her aunt got all misty-eyed the way she still did, even though Hoke had been gone for four years now.
“That poor girl,” Parrish murmured, nodding in the direction of their server as she hustled back toward the kitchen. “I think she’s the only one working this dining room today. I hope they at least let her keep all her tips.”
Their server brought their orders a few minutes later. Traci lifted the top slice of bread on her sandwich and sighed. “I knew it. Absolutely plastered with mayonnaise.” She set the bread aside and attacked the sandwich with knife and fork.
Parrish held up a pale, limp French fry. “Straight out of the freezer bag. I guess they must have waved it in the direction of the deep fryer before they plated up this mess.”
“Never mind,” Traci said, sipping her tea. “I’ve got something important I need to discuss with you.” She took a deep breath.
Parrish felt her stomach do a flip-flop. She grabbed for her aunt’s hand. “Traci? What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
“No, no, oh honey, no. I’m fine.”
Parrish was still skeptical. “You sure? You know you can tell me. I mean, you’ve been looking kind of pale lately, and distracted. Dark circles under your eyes…”
“I swear it. I’m healthy as a horse. Could use a little more sleep, a little more sunshine, and a lot less worry, but that’s not it at all.”
“Wow. You had me scared for a minute there. So then, what’s this super-secret emergency lunch about?”
“Mehdi’s quit. And Sam’s going with her.”
“Oh no.” Mehdi was the head chef at the Verandah, the Saint’s signature restaurant, and her impeccable cooking had earned the restaurant its first Mobil five-star rating, making it one of only two such restaurants in the state. And Sam, Mehdi’s husband, was the hotel’s guest relations manager. He was smart and warm, and like his wife, seemed to have made himself indispensable in the half dozen years since he’d come to work at the Saint.
“The timing couldn’t be worse,” Traci said. “We were already seriously shorthanded going into spring, but now, unless I can find some more staff, specifically a chef and someone to run the guest relations desk, I honestly don’t know if we can open.”
“Where’s Mehdi going?”
“Some resort in Hilton Head hired them both away. Charlie said they offered stupid money. Look, I hate to ask, but I’m out of options. I really, really need you back at the Saint this summer.”
Parrish was already shaking her head. “No way. You know I’m doing this program in Europe this summer. I’m already registered for my classes. I’m leaving Thursday. You’re always shorthanded at the Saint. Every year, and somehow you manage. Sorry, but you’re just gonna have to find someone else.”
“There is no one else,” Traci told her, desperation creeping into her voice. “I can’t just hire someone off the street to run guest relations. We’ve got to have someone who knows the property, knows the guests, knows how we do things at the Saint. The person running that desk is the image of our family business.”
Parrish found herself shredding the paper napkin in her lap, her face arranging itself into what everyone in the family called her “cement face.” Her eyes were dead, staring straight ahead, jaw stubbornly set, arms folded across her chest.
“You think I’m exaggerating?” Traci asked. “We’re in the same boat as every other business on the coast. So I’m going to have to offer something those other businesses can’t. On-site housing. More money. Recruiting bonuses. Hopefully, that’ll bring in some bodies, but the one body I absolutely have to have this summer is Parrish Eddings.”
Parrish was unmoved. She leaned into the table, her resolve steely. “I have worked at the Saint every year since you started me scooping ice cream in the Parlour at fourteen. You promised that after I graduated, I’d be liberated. I did everything y’all asked. Majored in hospitality management, got good grades, didn’t get arrested. And now it’s my time.”
She slapped her hands together as though wiping them clean of an invisible noxious substance. “I am done with working in the family business.” She would not cry. “And I can’t believe you, of all people, would try to guilt-trip me into coming back. Do you know what it’s like? Living in my house? Dad’s sneaking around seeing someone again. Madelyn knows, I know, and he knows we know. It’s gross. And the idea of working at the hotel with her? Bad enough I have to live under the same roof. I just want to start living my own life.”
“Oh, Parrish,” Traci said, her voice low and soft. She really knew how to work the sympathy angle. “I hate dumping this on you. But I’m out of options. I can’t open the Saint without enough staff. But I can’t not open, because, just between the two of us, we’ve been bleeding red ink. Hoke committed us to spending millions on the renovations, borrowing heavily. And you know what the past few summers were like, coming out of the pandemic. It’s been brutal. We’ve got to start recouping some of our losses—or there won’t be a Saint.”
Parrish didn’t allow the cement face to crack. Not even a little. “Not my problem.” She picked the bacon from her sandwich and nibbled on a corner of it.
“Except it is your problem. Like it or not, Parrish, you’re an Eddings. The Saint is your legacy. Those are your little-bitty handprints on the patio outside the dining room. Your grandmother pressed them into the concrete the day you started walking. Do you want to see this place, that’s been around for over a hundred years, taken over and run by bankers and venture capitalist vultures from New York?”
“You’re exaggerating,” Parrish said, but dammit, she could already feel the tiniest fissure working away at her fa?ade.
“Am I? Come into the office. You’re a smart girl. Take a look at the books. Talk to Charlie. You know he won’t sugarcoat it. Look, what about this? We postpone your summer program. I’ll pay the cancellation fees or whatever. You come to work at the Saint. Did I tell you we’re turning the old cart barn into a dorm for summer staff? You wouldn’t have to live at home, and I’ll make sure Madelyn keeps her distance. She’s never around that much, anyway. Who knows what she’s actually up to? You’ll get your own room at the dorm. You’ll be well paid. And you’ll have fun. And after this summer, I swear, Parrish, you can go do your Europe program. I’ll pay for it. All of it.”
“A dorm?” Parrish’s upper lip curled delicately. “I haven’t lived in a dorm since I was a college freshman.”
“Or you could stay with me,” Traci said. “And Lola,” she added.
Lola was her aunt’s gassy, wire-haired dachshund. “Oh God, no,” Parrish said quickly. “I’d rather live in a dorm.”
She could already feel her summer in Europe slipping away. Coming out of the pandemic, the past few summers, even she could tell that business was way off. If she didn’t do what her aunt wanted, maybe the Saint actually would close. And then what?
Time to cut a deal. She couldn’t let Traci totally off the hook. Especially if it meant living in a freakin’ dorm for the summer.
“I want to be paid what you paid Sam,” Parrish said firmly. “And you’re gonna have to explain this whole deal to Dad.”
She grinned, just thinking about that awkward conversation. Her father was civil to Traci, but just barely. He’d be absolutely livid about the nonrefundable fees he’d already paid for her trip. But mostly he’d be majorly pissed that Traci had outmaneuvered him.
“Then you’ll do it?” Traci let out a long sigh of relief. “Okay. I’ll talk to your dad. He won’t like it, but at least I’ll be able to breathe again.” She looked around the dining room, catching the server’s attention, motioning for her to bring the check.
“All set?” the girl asked, handing her a leather folder with the bill inside. She looked down at the mostly uneaten food on the table and lowered her voice. “I’m so sorry about your sandwich. I did put the no-mayo on your order, but we’ve got a new guy on the grill, and I think he gets off on screwing over the servers.”
Parrish rolled her eyes in sympathy. “Ugh. The worst.”
Traci reached for her billfold. “Parrish, why don’t you go ahead out to the car. I’ll just be another minute here.”
“Uh, okay.”