Chapter 13
Traci closed her laptop, glanced at her phone, and stood. It was after eight. If she didn’t hustle, she’d miss sunset, which was an unforgiveable sin at the Saint.
Hoke’s mother had started the tradition shortly after she’d married into the family. Helen Parrish Eddings was from landlocked Iowa, and she never stopped marveling at the technicolor displays of sunsets over the river that divided the resort from the mainland.
Leo, the senior bellman, held the door as Traci entered the hotel lobby, crossed the nearly empty space, and stepped out onto the cobblestone courtyard of the Riverside Patio.
The bartender saw her approaching and handed her a glass of prosecco. “Thanks, Kendra,” Traci said.
She joined a knot of folks standing at the edge of the patio, facing the river. Some of them, the old guard who didn’t live at the Saint but maintained their family club memberships, greeted her with hugs and waves. A sunburnt family of six—grandparents, she assumed, with their grown children and two young grandchildren—stood slightly apart, not quite sure of the protocol. Hotel guests, Traci surmised, or maybe they were renting one of the bungalows for the week. She greeted them, directed them to the bar for their complimentary glasses of prosecco, then joined the regulars just as the sun hovered at the water’s edge.
Suddenly, a trumpeter stepped forward, and just as the sun slipped from view, he played the first bars of “Retreat.” Glancing around, Traci raised her glass and the other spectators followed suit. “Here’s to another beautiful summer at the Saint,” she called.
“Here, here!” The others joined the toast and drained their glasses.
She slipped quietly from the patio, walked back to her car, and as dusk settled over the island, she drove the winding roads, yet another ritual Hoke had insisted upon at the close of a business day.
“Why?” she’d asked, dumb as a rock at the age of nineteen, the first time she’d joined him on the golf cart ride around the property. “You have about a hundred employees working here. Why not let them do the tour? Why can’t we just go to the movies like normal people?”
“Granddad always did the rounds, and then Dad, and now it’s my turn,” he’d said, patting her knee. “Besides, this is something I enjoy. It’s the time of the day when I can really get a good look at the property. If a tree branch has fallen, or the trim on one of the bungalows needs paint, I can see it, make a note, and then address it first thing in the morning.”
It wasn’t until they’d been married nearly a year that Traci began to comprehend everything that went into running a historic family- owned resort like the Saint.
Nothing, it seemed, was too small a detail for Hoke to notice, and address. The soap in the men’s grill restroom (hand-milled in England), the thickness of the beach towels at the beach club (sourced in Italy, monogrammed locally), the slightly faded armchair fabric in the lobby of the hotel, all of it was important to him. And gradually, over the years, it became important to her too.
She drove slowly, with the Mercedes’ windows rolled down, inhaling the intoxicating scent of night-blooming jasmine. A possum skittered across the road in front of her, its eyes glowing red. She reached for her phone and dictated a note to ask the landscapers to make sure the creature hadn’t dug up any flowerbeds in the area.
As she rounded a bend in the road she noticed some roof tiles missing from Plumbago Cottage, and added that to the note. A few cottages away, lights burned at the largest of the two dozen bungalows scattered around the property. She pulled into the short driveway of the Gardenia. A Kia with faded blue paint was parked under the carport.
Traci knocked lightly on the door and a petite older woman answered.
“Hi, Alberta. I was just passing by and thought I’d drop in. Is he awake?”
“Hi, Traci. Come on in. This is good timing. He’s just had his bath and his meds.”
She opened the door wider and Traci stepped inside. The television was on, and there was a tray with a sandwich and a glass of iced tea on the coffee table.
“I’m sorry to interrupt dinner,” Traci apologized. “I won’t stay long. How’s he doing?”
The caretaker shrugged. “About the same. Honestly, I don’t think the new meds are making a difference. In fact, I think maybe they make him feel more drowsy.”
“Okay. I’ll speak to the doc. If they’re not helping, what’s the point?” She touched Alberta’s shoulder. “Go back to what you were doing. I’ll say hi, then I’ll get out of your hair.”
Traci glanced around the living/dining area. All the original furnishings had been moved out once her father-in-law finally accepted the fact that he could no longer live independently in the grand Spanish Colonial revival mansion his own father had designed and built on the ocean side of the resort. The winding stairway that led to the villa’s massive carved wooden front doors was one of the many features that made the house inaccessible, once the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease was pronounced, and confirmed by two more doctors.
Fred fought the move for months, but after he’d fallen and spent a brutal night alone, sprawled out on the floor of his bathroom, only to be found naked in a pool of his own urine the next day by his housekeeper, he’d had no choice.
Within two weeks, the Gardenia had been retrofitted with wider doorways, a wheelchair-accessible bathroom complete with shower lift, and private living quarters for the old man’s favorite housekeeper, Alberta, who’d tended to him with quiet devotion since his wife’s death eight years earlier. Madelyn had planned and engineered the lightning-fast remodel, and Traci had grudgingly admired her ruthless efficiency.
Traci stepped into the bedroom, which was illuminated by the soft light of a bedside lamp. The head of the hospital bed was raised.
Parkinson’s had diminished Fred in so many cruel ways. Though he was once a vigorous athlete who’d played A-level team tennis and scratch golf well into his eighties, the man she saw before her now was nearly unrecognizable.
His skin, pale and liver-spotted, was stretched tautly over his skull, where only thinning tufts of white hair remained of his once glossy mane. Bony collarbones were visible beneath his cotton pajama top, and his skeletal arms were arranged stiffly on top of the sheet.
Hooded eyes flickered when he saw her. Colorless lips moved, but no words emerged.
She sat in the chair beside his bed. “Alberta tells me the new meds aren’t helping much. Maybe I’ll ask the doctor to take you off them?”
He blinked once, which she took to mean yes.
“Sorry I haven’t been by this week. I’ve been super busy because we’re ramping up for opening weekend. Trying to hire enough staff. Mehdi, do you remember her? Our head chef? She and her husband, Sam, who was head of guest relations in the hotel, left to take jobs up the coast at that new resort.”
His expression was unchanging.
“I sweet-talked Parrish into postponing her Europe semester. She’s agreed to take over Sammy’s job. Ric is furious with me, but wouldn’t you think he’d be pleased to have the next generation of the family in such a front-facing position at the Saint? I think it’s a control issue.”
The old man’s lips turned up slightly. Was it a smile, or merely a cruel symptom of the Parkinson’s?
Fred was intimately familiar with control issues. For sixty years he’d ruled the family business and his sons with an iron hand. Somehow, Hoke had avoided turning into a carbon copy of his father. He was decent, caring, and warm, like his mother.
Fred snorted.
“Has Ric been by to see you lately?” she asked, her tone innocent.
She doubted he had. Ever since the Parkinson’s diagnosis, her brother-in-law avoided seeing his father, claiming it was too depressing. Ric had begun researching nursing homes after Fred’s fall, but Traci and Parrish had put a stop to that plan, instead insisting on moving Fred into Gardenia, where he had round-the-clock care.
Two years ago the doctors said Fred probably had less than six months to live. Yet here he was.
The old man’s head slowly swiveled back in her direction, his eyes blazing.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I know he’s been… busy.”
Traci looked around the room. The wall-mounted flat-screen television was on, tuned to Fred’s favorite financial news network, with the volume muted. It was an endless scroll of numbers—the highs and lows of the stock market, banking news. This, she supposed, was the only thing that regularly gave him joy—watching his net worth grow.
Such a depressing thought.
“Okay, I’m gonna go now,” Traci said, standing. “Sleep well.”
As soon as she walked in the door of her own bungalow, she collapsed into the nearest chair, overcome with guilt—for not doing more for Fred, even though she knew he silently detested her, and grief—oh God, the grief, the endless, relentless waves that rolled over her at the most unexpected times, and every day threatened to submerge her back into the darkness of that first, unbearable year after the plane crash.
And now, once again, she was wrestling with those two demon emotions. Hoke had been painfully aware of his father’s many failings, as a father, a husband, an employer, but to Hoke, family loyalty was everything. So she tried to treat her father-in-law with compassion.
But every encounter with the old bastard left her with this… rage. Why should this dreadful man still be alive, at his age, while Hoke, her first and only love, a truly decent man who had so much to give to the world… why should he be the one moldering in a grave? Where was the fairness in that?
Traci went into the kitchen, opened the door of the under- counter wine fridge, and reached for the nearest bottle, a nicely chilled bottle of sauvignon blanc. She was about to pour herself a glass, but paused.
Rebecca, her therapist, had warned against using alcohol as a crutch at times like these. Mindfulness, Rebecca counseled. Practice mindfulness.
She heard her cell phone ringing.
UNKNOWN CALLER. She clicked Connect anyway.
“Hello? This is Traci Eddings.”
A woman’s voice, husky, vibrating with fury. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
They hadn’t talked in decades, but she recognized that voice in an instant.
“Hi, Shannon,” she said. “How lovely to hear from you after all these years.”